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DEAN


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O F


SWARTHMORE
A QUAKER HUMANIST
BY
EMILY COOPER JOHNSON
PRESS OF
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA




b




FOREWORD
A LIFE lived in its early years near the heart
of some of America's most significant nineteenth
century developments-the Garri soni an agitation that sought to abolish slavery, the flowering
of American letters in New England, the experiment of higher education for women; a life that
in its middle years did creative and enduring
work in the field of education, particularly coeducation; a life that in old age arrived at visible
sainthood: this was Elizabeth Powell Bond's.
Mrs. Bond was often asked to compose her
story into a book, but she could never be induced
to begin the undertaking. At last fearing that
her recollections would be lost and her papers
scattered, some of her friends delegated the task
to the present writer. The material used has
been preponderantly furnished by Mrs. Bond,herself:. her memories, her diaries, her written
articles. She helped with the development of
iii




IV             FOREWORD
most of the chapters, although she did not live
to see them in their final form. To her the
author's most sincere and affectionate thanks will
always be due. To the number of other f riends
who have contributed material and helpful criticism and who have been of very great service
in many ways acknowledgment and thanks are
gratefully offered.




CONTENTS
CHAPTER                                PAGE
I. ABOLITION DAS.............
II. CAMBRIDGE AND CONCORD IN THE SIXTIES  37
III. VASSAR AT ITS OPENING....................... 61
IV.  MARRIAGE..................................... 99
V. SARTMORE.......................18
VI. SWARTHMORE.................................16
VII. MOTHER EMR~S............207








ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Elizabeth Powell Bond, Swarthmore College......... Frontispiece
Elizabeth Powell, When about Six Years Old.................... 3
Elizabeth and Aaron Powell................................. 7
The Powell Family........................................ 20
Bas Relief of Elizabeth Powell by Richard H. Park.............. 40
The District School at Ghent, Where Elizabeth Powell Studied
and Taught............................................. 42
Elizabeth Powell at the Time She Began Her Work in Boston 55.
Miss Powell in Her Room at Vassar.......................... 64
Letter from Matthew Vassar................................ 84
Miss Maria Mitchell, William Mitchell, Miss Lyman............ 91
Mrs. Bond with Her Husband and Son........................110o
Cameo of Henry Herrick Bond.............................. 114
Mrs. Bond in 1888......................................... 128
Swarthmore College about 1896.................................14.
Dean Bond at Her Desk................................... s
Swarthmore Ivies.......................................... 170
Miss Ellen Emerson, from the Portrait by Charles W. Hudson....18
Portrait of Mrs. Bond by Percy Bigland....................... 192
Mrs. Bond in a Flower Garden.............................. 209
Mrs. Bond with a Grandniece............................... 224








DEAN BOND OF
SWARTHMORE
A QUAKER HUMANIST
CHAPTER I
ABOLITION DAYS
ON THE edge of a kitchen garden where the
summer sun was giving fine growth to neat rows
of vegetables, a little girl sat on a milking stool.
She was half extinguished by the large black
snuffer of an umbrella that rested uneasily on
her shoulders. In f ront of her a young man
stooped to his weeding. It was only when a
remark from her brother made her sit up straight
and peer out from her enveloping shelter that
the little sister's face and occupation could be
distinguished. A brown-eyed, fair-haired child
replied to the young farmer and returned to the
task of reading aloud the columns of the AntiSlavery Standard. The little girl's name was
Elizabeth M. Powell, and the young man's was
Aaron. For the youth the cultivation of the garden could be of interest only if his mind was fed




2    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
with the yeasty ideas of the early fifties, and
Elizabeth's devotion to her adored brother would
lead her through almost incomprehensible pages
if thus she might share his society and the confidence of his dreams.
The garden of Elizabeth's and Aaron's effort
lay behind a large white square clapboard house
set by the road to Ghent. Beyond the garden
stretched the acres of a farm lying in Columbia
County, New York. It was eleven miles east of
the Hudson River and twenty-five miles south
of Albany. From some of the windows, but
better from a near-by hilltop, the irregular blue
line of the Catskills could be seen, thirty miles
to the west. The farm formerly belonged to
Abraham Macy, and there his daughter Catherine was married to Townsend Powell in 1831.
Mr. Powell had taken his bride to a f arm in
Dutchess County, where three of their children
were born: Aaron Macy in 1832, Elizabeth
Macy in 1841, and George T., in 1843. But
when Elizabeth was four years old her grandfather Macy died, and the Powells moved back
to the homestead near Ghent. Here the youngest




r


0z
CH




V.










ABOLITION DAYS3




child, Edwin, who lived only thirteen years,
was born.
To Aaron beginning to plan his future, to
Elizabeth, as also to the younger children, the
influences of that old home were real and lasting. It held in its background the memory of
pioneering ancestors who had made the great
venture in the Mayflower. There was also a long
inheritance f rom the Quakers of Nantucket to
whose f aith the family still gave its loyalty.
There was the emphasis of that f aith that righteousness is best expressed in honesty, justice,
simplicity, and lo~ve. Both Elizabeth's and
Aaron's purity of character evidenced a deeply
instilled integrity. Both of them all their lives
felt the insistent urge for social justice that has
been a characteristic accompaniment to the mystical element of Quakerism. Their home life
was simple and plain, but it was intelligent, considerate, and affectionate.
Mrs. Powell, a woman of happy and sympathetic disposition, was the keystone of this cheerful united household. Although the busy wife
of a f armer and the mother of young children






4DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE


could not have much leisure, she did find time
to make and cultivate a flower garden, and here
her little daughter worked with her, gaining a
love of flowers and of all growing things that in
years to come was to be a perennial interest
and joy.
Mrs. Powell also had a large degree of public
spirit, and very early became interested in the
anti-slavery cause. When her oldest son in his
early manhood definitely gave himself to this
movement she at once made his amfbitions her
own and her generous hospitality was f reely
offered to all the workers who, as young Mr.
Powell grew more prominent, passed in increasing numbers through Ghent. The entertainment
was never too much trouble and her interest was
unflagging. A tribute to her open-door home is
paid in a letter written by Wendell Phillips to
Aaron at the time of his mother's death. " How
well I remember that circle of earnest and
thoughtful workers I used to meet at Hudsontrained, far-sighted, and devoted. One could
see the rich soil in which your life had its roots.
No blessing greater than such a cradle."




ABOLITION DAYS5


5


Townsend Powell, Aaron's and Elizabeth's
father, was a wide-awake, progressive farmer,
and one of the trustees f or the Ghent public
school. He was actively interested in securing
the best possible instruction, and saw to it that
all the teachers were normal school graduates.
In a day when well-trained teachers were f ar
less common than now, such a school was a real
achievement for a small country town. A measure of the thoroughness of the instruction at
Ghent may be seen in the f act that when she was
sixteen, Elizabeth was able to take the course of
two years in one at the State Normal School on
account of the completeness of her preparation.
Yet although Mr. Powell was an alert man,
at first he did not at all share his family's interest
in anti-slavery. When he saw the results that
were developing in his son from association with
abolitionist agitators it is no wonder that he
felt somewhat apprehensive. He watched Aaron
at his most impressionable age being carried
away by what the father considered extremists.
But Mr. Powell's efforts at disuasion were never
harsh and in a comparatively short time he also




6     DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
was completely won over to the cause of freeing
the slaves.
This question had been focused for the
Powells by the visit at their home of Stephen
and Abby Foster in 1 85o. As lecturers of the
Anti-Slavery Society they had come to hold a
series of meetings in the village of Ghent, and
had been entertained by Mrs. Powell. Their
public addresses and still more their private conversation had made a powerful impression on
Aaron, and since that time he had been deeply
interested in the anti-slavery cause. He was
eagerly reading--or persuading Elizabeth to
read to him!-the Liberator and the National
Anti-Slavery Standard. He was taking part in
school debates. He was also sharing his enthusiasm and convictions with his small sister, his
constant companion.
For the tie between Elizabeth and Aaron was
always especially close, as the old daguerreotype
shows. Not every young man of seventeen wants
to have his picture taken with a sister nine years
younger. But there is no self-consciousness in
his attitude of protective affection, and Eliza



4w

I


ELIZABETH AND AARON POWELL








ABOLITION DAYS7




beth's serene eyes prove that this was an accustomed intimacy-a great support in the then
new and terrifying ordeal of going to the photographer's. Her efforts to keep up with the
interests of her older brother were encouraged
by her f amily so that her active mind was as
much the outgrowth of her home environment
as was her gentle, unassuming courtesy; just as
Aaron's matter-of -course affection was no less
surprising than his growing f ervor for a downtrodden race.
if it was primarily their love for each other
that brought about the literary-agricultural liaison in the garden, the result plainly was going
to be the rapid development of the little girl's
mind. She was learning the meaning of sectional
controversy between North and South, the names
of political leaders, and gaining a rising sense
of the injustice of slavery.
She listened to discussion in her own family
as to whether slavery should be permitted in the
great new territories of the West. Young as she
was, she grasped something of the feeling between North and South that brought a threat




8     DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
of disunion and resulted in Henry Clay's compromise, which included the second Fugitive
Slave Act. But the obligation thus assumed by
the North to return slaves that had escaped to
its free states, the abolitionists contended was a
relinquishment of its honor. They regarded the
law as a moral disaster and a national disgrace.
Some hint of the discussion it aroused in antislavery families may be gained from the fact
that Elizabeth Powell, though only nine years
old at the time, never f orgot the day that this
Act became law.
Two years later she was reading as eagerly
as were her parents and her older brother that
book of flaming evangelism, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Overdrawn though the picture was, the Powells
could not help rejoicing to see it stir public opinion generally in the North to increased protest
against slave holding.
-As she grew older, into her 'teens, Elizabeth
became so thoroughly versed in the history of
slavery in America that throughout her life she
kept referring to it. She saw it all as the long
consequence of that first slave cargo which




ABOLITION DAYS9




landed in Virginia in 1619. She studied the
gradual increase of slave power politicallyfrom its beginning in 1787 to the Missouri Compromise of 1820. She searched out these facts
because they were preliminary to the ones she
herself remembered: the passage of the Second
Fugitive Slave Law in '85o, and the repeal of
the Missouri Compromise in 1854..
At last in 1857, when she was old enough to
watch through her own eyes every move in
Washington, the Supreme Court passed the Dred
Scott Decision, by which it was decided virtually that the black man was not a citizen but
merely property, with no rights which the white
man was bound to respect. Elizabeth's sense of
justice was outraged by this crowning act of
oppression. The emotions of all anti-slavery
workers were white-hot. And among the most
active of these workers had now become enrolled
Elizabeth's brother Aaron.
It was in the summer of 1854, a year that had
already seen the stormy repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, that Stephen and Abby Foster
invited Aaron Powell to visit them at Worcester,




io DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
an innocent enough invitation that had f arreaching consequences. At this time, Aaron,
barely twenty-two, was expecting to become a
teacher and had entered the State Normal
School at Albany, planning when finished there
to attend Antioch College. But during his vacation visit the Fosters took Aaron with them to
Boston where they had an engagement to speak
in one of the suburbs. When the time of the
meeting arrived, Stephen Foster was too ill to
appear and Aaron Powell was asked to fill in.
He acquitted himself so well that the Executive
Committee of the Anti-Slavery Society asked
him to become one of its lecturing agents, and
so indeed he did. The normal course was unfinished, college put aside, and teaching never
entered upon. Instead he stayed in reform movements all his life, giving his whole time until
the close of the war to the work of f reeing the
Negroes, an ardent, whole-hearted abolitionist.
Elizabeth's own spirit was kindled by her
brother's decision. She soon comprehended that
the cause which Aaron had embraced was one
to which lives were dedicated with a religious




ABOLITION DAYS      I


I I


zeal and which involved the same sort of consequences. Families divided on the issue, as did
church congregations. Anti-slavery meetings
were sometimes mobbed, and speakers subjected
to personal insult and rough treatment. Unrest
and disturbances reached everywhere and many
were the anxieties of the families who had dear
ones among the anti-slavery agitators. Among
teachers, preachers, and at the public lyceums,
slavery was a test question. Public opinion even
in New England and New York did not generally crystallize in favor of abolition until John
Brown's memorable act of 1859, two years after
the Dred Scott Decision. But a fair share of the
credit for the formation of public opinion on
the side of progress and justice must be given
to the more and less prominent workers, like
Elizabeth's brother, who spent years in organizing anti-slavery societies, debating the question
in open meetings through towns, villages and
the larger cities and who bravely faced social
ostracism by their own circles as well as the frequent and often dangerous hostility of the public.
In the Powell's own religious Society,




12   DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
although a large proportion of the anti-slavery
leaders and workers were Friends and although
slavery had been officially abolished in the
denomination, there were still conservative members who were strongly opposed to Aaron's activities and who did not welcome him. Up and
down the Hudson river valley anger against the
abolitionists focused upon him to the extent of
plotting against his life, so that Aaron had to
leave Ghent for a time until the hatred of the
" copperhead " mob cooled. Very generally
abolitionists were looked on at least with distrust, as if they might wreck the country to gain
their ends, a spirit never actually present.
Elizabeth Powell herself, while still under
twenty, presented a formidable aspect to the fearful antagonists of a new idea. A middle-aged
woman Friend proposed that Elizabeth should
go with her to the County Poor House and read
to the inmates on Sunday afternoons. The
superintendent was approached and gave his
consent, but told them that the matter must be
submitted to the county officials. The latters'
keen scent f or politics was able to find traces of




ABOLITION DAYS


13


it even in the wholly guileless kindness of two
unenfranchised women offering solace to the
cast-off wreckage of society. The gentlemen
refused their consent on the ground that there
was much danger in opening the doors to all
kinds of isms. " Yes," said one looking straight
at Elizabeth, " Abolitionism I " Just what great
influence the sad old paupers would wield was
not made clear, but the terror of allowing antislavery to get in anywhere or touch anything
was quite apparent.
Yet if the abolitionists were a good deal
despised first and last, and if there were a good
many dangers and sad breaks in families and
associations, there were also great compensations. Very close ties existed between those who
worked in the movement. The group experienced the exaltation of its faith in the inherent
rightness of its cause.
Aaron Powell rapidly worked into the very
center of the abolition organization. He developed warm friendships with William Lloyd
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and other leaders
who made the Powell's home a stopping place




14 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
and opened to them horizons of metropolitan
culture that even their progressive minds would
never else have attained. The very fact that
Ghent was close to Albany was part of the reason
why so many of the anti-slavery workers visited
the Powells. Albany was the headquarters f or
the campaign in New York State; the strategists
found the quiet home in Ghent a happy meeting
point. Elizabeth, growing up, eagerly absorbed
the excitement and interest of these visits.
She was very much impressed by her brother's
friends. Modestly, but starry-eyed, she offered
her share of hospitality.
Among the first comers was Susan B.
Anthony. Her earliest public work was antislavery crusading, and herein she gained executive training as well as an ability for extemporaneous and fluent public speaking 'invaluable to
her later. For several years following 1855 she
was constantly associated with Aaron M. Powell.
In one of the state campaigns for which Mr.
Powell was a lecturer Miss Anthony was
appointed general manager, putting through
endless details with great precision. The many




ABOLITION DAYS      '


15


conferences involved were often held at Ghent,
Miss Anthony sometimes staying days together
at the Powell home, Her Quaker parentage as
well as her present work made her very congenial to Mr. and Mrs. Powell; she was kind to
their little daughter, who returned her attention
with a great admiration.
Another frequent visitor at the Powell's, a
hero to Elizabeth, a warm friend of Aaron's,
a welcome guest to his parents, was Wendell
Phillips, perhaps the most brilliant figure of the
anti-slavery movement. He was at this time at
the height of his power. His splendid native
gifts had been well trained at the Boston Latin
School, Harvard College, and Harvard Law
School, and his family had expected him to
attain prominence. His attention had been first
called to the anti-slavery movement when one
day soon af ter he began to practice law he witnessed the dragging of William Lloyd Garrison
through the streets of Boston by a pro-slavery
mob. This was in 1835. Two years later the
murder of the Reverend Elijah Lovejoy and the
destruction of his anti-slavery printing press in




i6 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
Alton, Illinois, so stirred Phillips that at a public indignation meeting 'in Boston he made his
first great speech. Soon afterward he gave up
his career in law, threw all his fortunes in with
the anti-slavery cause and in its behalf became,
according to James Bryce's later judgment, one
of the first orators of the century. He sacrificed
brilliant professional prospects, social position,
and many friendships to his new undertaking.
By the time the Powells knew him, he was
capable of arousing audiences to great heights,
was merciless in denunciation, and had grown
into a towering champion of human liberty.
Yet gin personal life Mr. Phillips was never as
harshly critical a man as his speeches perhaps
indicated, but kindly, helpful, and sympathetic.
He gave Aaron Powell many practical sugges-.
tions at the beginning of the younger man's
work, and he followed with very real interest as
long as he lived Mr. Powell's developing career.
Of course to Phillips, to Miss Anthony, to
Aaron Powell, and to the little circle at Ghent
as well as to anti-slavery workers everywhere,
the real head of the entire movement, both in




ABOLITION DAYS


17


fact and in spirit, was William Lloyd Garrison.
He had begun his work for emancipation of the
slaves as early as 1829 at the invitation of
Benjamin Lundy, a pioneer abolitionist. In
183I, Garrison became editor of the Liberator,
a post that he held until the paper was discontinued in 1865, and in 1833, he founded the
American Anti-Slavery Society. He was the
organizer and leader, the inspiring executive of
this Society until the close of the Civil War.
For a generation he was the central figure in the
fevered agitation that spread through the East.
A remarkable writer and an able speaker, he
was always ready for a fight and could be fierce
and bitter in attack. He has been called a hard,
vindictive reformer, a determined propagandist, a violent fanatic. But as the Powells knew
him on his many stops in Ghent, he was gentle,
sunny, and full of humor. Years afterwards in
describing him, Elizabeth Powell remarked,
" It is the benignity of his nature that remains
in the memory of those who knew him intimately
as a man as well as an agitator. No gentler man
ever made home a heavenly place. When he
2




18 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
came into a room it was straightway sunny from
his presence." And she remembered incidents
that showed his waggish, human self. For instance, during the days of great disturbance of
the peace, when hootings and hissings and sometimes personal violence occurred at anti-slavery
meetings, there was an occasion when Mr.
Garrison spent the night at the Ghent farm.
The next morning Mrs. Powell inquired whether
he had had a comfortable night. " Oh, yes," he
replied, " as comfortable as could be expected
with such quiet! "
At another time Mr. Garrison went on a two
days' driving trip in the Catskill Mountains with
Aaron and Elizabeth Powell. In a ravine, Aaron
and Mr. Garrison were standing upon two rocks
that f aced each other, when at the same instant
both men lost their footing and fell. Mr.
Garrison's exclamation was, "Well, it's a consolation to know that the wicked stand in
slippery places!I"
Elizabeth rejoiced that Mr. Garrison lived
long enough to see a marked change 'in public
feeling toward him. After the war he was highly




ABOLITION DAYS


19


honored by his fellow-citizens. In later years
when she visited Boston, Elizabeth often paused
in satisfaction before the bronze statue on Commonwealth Avenue of the man who had formerly been dragged through the city's streets by
those who styled themselves " gentlemen of
property and standing." But in the seething days
before Sumter was fired on, Mr. Garrison
needed all of his courage and sense of humor
to carry him through the abuse that was heaped
upon him, and to uphold him in his position of
master-spirit of the abolitionists.
The warm friendship between Mr. Garrison
and all the Powell family endured to the end
of his life. He had children of his own about
the age of Elizabeth and her younger brothers.
For Aaron his attachment was characterized not
only by their association in public work, and by
Mr. Garrison's visits to the Powell home, but
also by the older gentleman's hospitality to his
young coadjutor in Boston, especially when the
annual meetings of the Anti-Slavery Society
were held there.
It was when Aaron was arranging to go to




20   DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
one of these "Anniversary" meetings in the
spring of 1856 that Elizabeth was electrified to
hear her brother propose to take her with him.
To her immeasurable delight her parents decided that she might go. What a wealth of
exciting anticipation was conjured upl Elizabeth's experience had been mainly limited to
the quiet town of Ghent and the open country;
she had never been so far from home as Boston.
To see this great city with her brother, to attend
the annual sessions of the organization that was
her greatest interest, to meet Mr. Garrison's
family-that was a glorious prospect for the
fifteen-year-old girl.
So May 26th was a marked day long before
it arrived, and soon after it dawned the family
was astir. At six-thirty in the morning the train
was boarded at Chatham, two miles from Ghent;
it was almost three in the afternoon when Aaron
and Elizabeth reached Boston. The journey
was full of enjoyment, " the country abounds in
the most romantic scenery" her journal remarks,
and she was especially pleased with Springfield,
thinking that if she had to seek a city home, this




. I


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F-4 -

F - II)N,


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THE POWELL FAMILY










ABOLITION DAYS      2


21


would be her choice. A fleeting question crosses
our minds, wondering if she remembered this
when several years later she did choose to make
her home close to Springfield. Her journal also
comments on the pretty villages through which
they passed. "The yards are laid out and
arranged with great taste, and even with the
gates open they are safe from intrusion as all
cattle are kept from the streets."
In Boston the Powells were welcomed at the
home of Mr. Francis Jackson, a kind host, as
well as an active and generous member of the
Anti-Slavery Society. The next morning its
sessions started. The speakers at this annual
convention were the best that the organization
had to offer, and the addresses by Wendell
Phillips, Theodore Parker, Stephen Foster,
Charles L. Remond (a colored man), William
Lloyd Garrison, Parker Pillsbury, and others
were of " thrilling interest." At the close of one
of these inspiring meetings, Elizabeth says, " I
have not time to note down my feelings, but they
are indellibly written on my heart."
Elizabeth and Aaron were invited by Mr.




22    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
Garrison to his house for dinner during the days
of the convention, and after its close, he took
them on a trip through Mt. Auburn cemetery,
pointing out the graves that were already making it an object of pilgrimage, and then brought
them home to supper with him. His children
were most congenial to Elizabeth and this week
marked the beginning of an intimacy with the
Garrison family that lasted through many years
and was one of her happiest associations.
Before she returned home, Elizabeth had
seen Boston's historic streets and landmarks, she
had climbed Bunker Hill monument and caught
her first glimpse of the sea. She started back to
Ghent with her mind stored with pictures and
memories of stirring experiences. But she remarks "pleasing as are all these objects of
interest to me, there is nothing which has
afforded me such heartfelt satisfaction as mingling with the brave and true-hearted champions
of freedom." She had been introduced to the
best that Boston had to offer. The journey made
the difference between an ordinary farm life
which shared only as an onlooker the great




ABOLITION DAYS


23


movements of the time, and one that had
acquired exhilarating personal interests as well
as connections of importance to her later career.
She had met besides the Garrisons and some
other young people a girl of her own age who
was destined to become one of the closest friends
of her life, Sarah March Nowell. She felt in the
enthusiasm of her youth that her life had turned
a corner on to new prospects, and she was right.
To be sure, she could scarcely expect the
immediate future to keep up in daily interest
with her great week in Boston. Her years at
school must be completed. But her brother's
work henceforth had new meaning for her.
Although the abolition of slavery had been the
uppermost interest for her since the time she
could think, now as she helped to entertain the
itinerant speakers she could talk to them from
her own acquaintance, and when she accompanied her brother's guests to the little hilltop
back of the house, she spoke to her own friends
while they watched the changing sky with the
sun dipping behind the Catskills.
And they were grave events that were talked




24 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
over, for the political life of the nation grew
constantly more agitated.
Throughout America tides of emotion were
rising month by month. The Dred Scott Decision was followed by the famous series of debates
between Senator Douglas and Abraham Lincoln.
Although the latter lost the senatorship f rom
Illinois, he gained the reputation that made him
President in i 86o. The hot-headed action of
John Brown at Harper's Ferry in 1859 and his
subsequent hanging had been a further incitement to fever. The abolitionists stuck to their
main argument of justice and right, ignoring as
far as possible the political factors of territorial
rights, secession, and the split in the Democratic
party. The anti-slavery workers were far from
wanting to accomplish their ends by the terrible
means of bloodshed, but more powerful factors
were driving the nation irretrievably toward
conflict.
In April, 1861, after months of seething
excitement, war was declared between the North
and South. On September 22, 1862, when Elizabeth was twenty-one years old, President Lincoln




ABOLITION DAYS      2


25


issued his Preliminary Proclamation giving
warning that on the first day of January 1863,
all persons held as slaves should be forever free
if by then the states 'in which they lived had not
rejoined the Union. This was great news for
Elizabeth and her friends. To them the actual
freeing of the slaves was the greatest moral
question involved in the struggle. As the months
and weeks and days of 1862 ran out, the antislavery societies hoped and looked and prayed
for the culmination of their labors.
In this same winter, Elizabeth Powell had
been invited to Boston to visit the Nowells and
the Garrisons, with both of whom acquaintance
had been ripening through the years since her
first journey there. In December she went to
the home in Cambridge that Mrs. Nowell,
already a widow, made for her four children.
Her husband had suffered deeply for his support of the anti-slavery cause. The church of
which he had been an honored member and a
great support had dismissed him from membership when he became an abolitionist, and he and
his family had endured a heavy social handicap




26 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
for their conviction. After Mr. Nowell's death,
Mrs. Nowell moved to Cambridge to give her
children better educational advantages. Of her
two sons and two daughters, Sarah was always
Elizabeth Powell's especial friend and it was
Sarah's invitation that had brought her to
Cambridge.
The social group in which Elizabeth found
herself contained many of the most interesting
people of Boston, all of them people with active
minds and forward-looking ideas. The rising
generation had merry times together going to
concerts, to anti-slavery plays, driving through
the country, and having all the fun that a group
of light-hearted young people can concoct. The
four Nowell juniors, the five young Garrisons,
Wendell Phillips's adopted daughter Phoebe
Garnaut, and various others made up this set
who could be at the same time full of life and
also full of ideas of social reconstruction.
A few days before Christmas, Elizabeth
Powell moved in to Boston to the Garrisons'
home. On Sunday and on Christmas day she
heard preaching that very much impressed her,




ABOLITION DAYS      2


27


dealing of course with the freeing of the slaves.
The eloquent and popular ministers were a treat
to a country girl accustomed to the quiet of a
small Friends' meeting. James Freeman Clarke
was one of those she greatly enjoyed, and Moncure D. Conway, a very liberal minister. The
latter preached at Music Hall to a looselyorganized congregation holding informal services, which seemed to Elizabeth in many ways
similar to the worship of her own Society.
Mr. Conway and his wife, now living at
Concord, were among those whom Miss Powell
met at various dinner and " tea " (i.e., supper)
parties, and she was greatly attracted to them
both. Mr. Conway walked with her one evening
when a whole tea party moved over to a large
reception given by the Reverend and Mrs. John
T. Sargent, both active abolitionists, Mrs. Sargent an extremely gifted hostess. In Elizabeth's
memory the walk through the streets rivaled
the brilliance of the subsequent event because
Mr. Conway talked so absorbingly of his friend,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom he evidently considered the greatest of contemporary writers.




28    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
However, a letter home does remark on the
presence at the reception of the Governor of the
State, and on the fact that Elizabeth found herself in the midst of the f ashion and wealth of
Boston. " My plain dress " she says, " was quite
in contrast with the laces and ribbons and
jewelry and fans and embroidered handkerchiefs of the other ladies, old and young, but I
felt glorious to have it so, and was quite at ease.
0a.Edmund Quincy 1 was present and asked
Mrs. Sargent to introduce him to me, solIhad a
pleasant little talk. He asked if I was sister to
Aaron Powell and being informed in the affirmative, he said, 'Well, you are sister to a
good man.'"
The letter closes with an exuberant anticipation. "And now I come to the climax!I What do
you think awaits me? At 4 o'clk. this afternoon
I go to Concord to spend Sunday with Mr. and
Mrs. Conway, and to see Mr. Emerson in the
evening. This is entirely unlooked for. Mr.
Conway said to me: 'I am glad you love Emer1 On the staff of the Anti-Slavery Standard. He was a son
of Josiah Quincy, formerly President of Harvard University.




ABOLITION DAYS


29


son, and you must come.' To be sure I miss a
concert to-night, Mr. Phillips to-morrow morning, and an oratorio to-morrow evening-but I
do not hesitate."
Were it not for the seismic events that followed four days later, the first meeting with Mr.
Emerson and his family would have stood out
in even bolder relief, but the approach of New
Year's Day had its own significance to the active
opponents of slavery, and to the nation.
On the last night of the old year, the young
people of the Garrison.household, including
Miss Powell, went to a watch meeting in one of
the churches of the colored people. They could
scarcely have done anything better calculated to
make them feel the foreshadowing of great
events. To abolitionists the night was full of
expectancy that the morrow would bring the
culmination and triumph of their years, generations of labor. But to the humble Negroes,
gathered for worship, the expectation was of
their own people redeemed from bondage, the
mighty arm of God bringing deliverance to the
captive. There was yet no certainty that Presi



30   DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
dent Lincoln would issue the proclamation. It
was only that the time limit set in his warning
of three months bef ore was now at hand. The
services conducted by the f reed men were wholly
devoted to the cause of their enslaved brothers.
Impassioned prayers were interspersed with
reverent silences in which excitement was
deepened into burning emotion. When at last
the solemn hour struck that ushered in the New
Year, the congregation had been f used into one
united supplication. Surely it must prevail.
Our young friends went home, but scarcely
to sleep at all. They knew that a great meeting
had been planned for New Year's Day in anticipation of the President's message. They knew
that Senator Sumner had told the committee to
proceed with its plans, and that he stood close
enough to Mr. Lincoln to be confident of his
purpose. But until the actual word from the
White House should arrive, there must remain
the sense of taut waiting..0
At two p.m. the doors of Boston's Music Hall
opened. At three the auditorium was thronged
and the jubilee Concert was starting. Bee



ABOLITION DAYS      3


31


thoven, Mendelssohn) and Handel made the
program for this great occasion, interpreted by
the Philharmonic Orchestra and a full chorus.
As the audience responded to the closing bars
of Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise
"The night is departing, the day is approaching,
Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness and let us gird on the armor of light,"
the announcement was made that General Saxton had f reed the slaves of his department in
South Carolina. Cheers greeted the news and
the suspense was heightened.
Ralph Waldo Emerson recited his Boston
Hymn, written for the day, and Oliver Wendell
Holmes's Army Hymn was sung. As the chorus
finished the last lines,
" Till fort and field, till shore and sea,
join our loud anthem, Praise to Thee!"
Josiah Quincy, Jr., one of the committee in
charge, stepped to the platform. He paused
until there was complete silence. When he
spoke, the exultation in his voice told the great




32    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
audience sooner than his words that the great
moment had come. " The President's Proclamation is now coming over the wires!" he cried,
and all the high-pitched emotion of that great
company broke loose.
The excitement was almost unendurable.
Tears were many, and shout af ter shout rose in
the house. Cheers and cheers were raised f or
President Lincoln, then again and again for
William Lloyd Garrison. Beside that gallant
warrior sat Elizabeth Powell. It seemed as if
her young heart would burst.
At last the orchestra was able to begin
Beethoven's great Fifth Symphony, and after it
the chorus sang from the Elijah:
"He watching over Israel slumbers not nor
sleeps. Shouldst thou, walking in grief,
languish, He will quicken thee,"
and closed with the Hallelujah Chorus from the
Messiah. The people were finally sent away
with the strains of the Overture to William Tell
sounding in their ears, trying to assimilate this
tremendous af ternoon.,




ABOLITION DAYS


33


But for Miss Powell and her hosts the day
was not yet done. In the evening came a large
reception to celebrate the unveiling of a portrait
bust of John Brown. The party was given in
their Medford home by Mr. and Mrs. George
L. Stearnes, neither of whom Elizabeth had yet
met. But the scant word of formal greeting, all
that was possible that night, gave rise to a second
and more familiar occasion for Miss Powell to
make the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Stearnes,
when on the following Sunday the Garrisons and
their young guest were invited to Medford to
supper. Then Mrs. Stearnes found an unusually congenial spirit in the eager Quaker girl
from Ghent, and from these two meetings arose
a friendship that endured throughout Mrs.
Stearnes's life, a friendship "that in its thirtynine years knew no commonplaces."
The significance of the New Year's evening
reception made Elizabeth Powell largely lose
sight of the fact that the occasion had brought
her to the most luxurious house she had ever
entered. Mr. Stearnes, a wealthy merchant, was
also a conspicuous and generous abolitionist.
3




34   DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
Mrs. Stearnes, as active in the cause as her husband, had watched with him the varying fortunes of John Brown. They had been deeply
interested in his struggle to prevent the extension
of slavery into Kansas, where the pro-slavery
party made every effort, legitimate and illegitimate, to control the elections after the repeal
of the Missouri Compromise. Later when John
Brown was in prison in Charlestown awaiting
trial, it was Mrs. Stearnes who persuaded him
to allow Edward A. Brackett, the Boston sculptor, to make a study of him. This portrait,
recently completed in marble, had been placed
in the hall of the Stearnes home, and to-night
Wendell Phillips was to uncover it. The beautiful home, the graciousness of the hosts, the
gathering of distinguished people, added to the
significance of the day and the relief from its
earlier anxieties combined to make a party of
gay rejoicing. The best of Boston, Medford, and
Concord met in happy congratulation and vivacious intercourse until the ceremonies started.
Then Wendell Phillips removed the drapery
from the marble portrait, and with his inimi



ABOLITION DAYS


35


table eloquence made the speech of dedication.
Mr. Emerson repeated the poem he had recited
in the afternoon and Julia Ward Howe gave
her hymn to the flag, " Mine eyes have seen the
glory of the coming of the Lord."
At last the great day came to an end-the
most eventful twenty-four hours that Elizabeth
Powell had ever lived. Filled with events,
crowded with emotions, distinguished by the
nationally known figures who took part in it,
Boston's celebration of Emancipation Day must
be ineffaceable in the memory of the young visitor. After years could not easily match this
experience; it remained flood-height in the current of her life. Many times she has told the
story to groups of eager listeners. Sixty years
later the program of the Musical Festival, carefully preserved, still brings back echoes of the
exultant orchestra, and the cover, in old style
type, announcing the purpose of the jubilee with
capitals and exclamation points, somehow reflects the tense audience. The names of the Committee that arranged the occasion are all set
forth, and the long list that contains H. W.




36   DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
Longfellow, Edw. E. Hale, Francis Parkman,
James T. Fields, R. W. Emerson, Chas. F.
Norton, 0. W. Holmes, J. S. Dwight, J. G.
Whittier, is its own comment on the signal success of the occasion. That Elizabeth Powell
should have witnessed it-what an unguessed,
unimaginable reward for those hours of difficult
reading in the vegetable garden!




CHAPTER II


CAMBRIDGE AND CONCORD IN THE SIXTIES
WHILE Elizabeth Powell was staying with
the Garrisons in the memorable winter of 1862 -1863, she and Fanny Garrison went calling one
day upon a Doctor and Mrs. Lewis. Crowded
among the excitements of those days, this small
event was at the time obscured, but its influence
upon Elizabeth's personal life reached far into
future years. That call was her first step upon
a road that led away from the life in Ghent, and
that faced her toward the highway of her independent career.
She had, to be sure, already decided upon
teaching as her profession, and was embarked
upon it in the school at Ghent. She had even
lived away from home a little during her preparation for this position but nothing in her experience thus far had really separated her from her
home and f amily-nor had she yet grown fully
mistress of herself. Her visit to Boston as she
37




38


38 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE


was approaching her twenty-second birthday
gave her new confidence and new ambition.
Dr. Dio Lewis, whom she and Miss Garrison
wished to interview, was an innovator in the
field of physical culture, leading classes that had
grown extremely popular in the two years of
their existence. Miss Powell liked new things
and wanted to investigate this system of calisthenics. The approach was easy enough, for
Mrs. Lewis was a relative of Mrs. Caroline F.
Severance, a well-known abolitionist and a
friend of the Powells.
With such a link, the two young inquirers
were given a cordial welcome by Doctor and
Mrs. Lewis, who gladly explained their apparatus and class work, as well as. the theory that
underlay their practice. At the conclusion of her
call Elizabeth was convinced that her good, but
not extremely robust, health could be much benefited by exercises at home and less confinement
to her teaching. She was also ready to consider
seriously Doctor and Mrs. Lewis's advice that
she take their normal course in order to make
physical training her work. For the immediate




CAMBRIDGE AND CONCORD


39


present, exercises in her own room and a few
lessons with Doctor Lewis must be sufficient in
the midst of the stirring events of this vacation.
But when the momentous days were over and
Miss Powell went home to Ghent and her teaching, she had fully made up her mind to take
Doctor Lewis's normal course the following
summer.
Her decision was more of a turning point
than she herself realized. It meant the close of
the early period of her life-her childhood at
home, her school days, her first efforts in teaching, her intentness upon her brother Aaron's
affairs; it meant the beginning of her mature,
self-directed life. She came back from Boston
treasuring in her mind the unforgettable scenes
she had witnessed; her ideas actually, if not quite
consciously, grown beyond the limits of the farm
and the small town of Ghent. She had been for
a little while a part of the larger world, and her
self-reliance was now secure enough to keep
her there.
Elizabeth's chief previous experience in living away from home had been at Albany. After




40    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
she had finished as a pupil in the school in Ghent
in 1857, she spent a year at the State Normal
School to prepare herself for teaching. But as
Albany was only twenty-eight miles away from
Ghent, she could easily go home for Sunday
whenever she wanted to, though she lived in the
capital during the week.
The delightful oval bas-relief of Miss
Powell's head, long f amiliar to many of her
f ri ends, was a by-product of that winter. Boarding in the same house with her were a Mr. and
Mrs. Richard H. Park. Mr. Park, whose memorial to Edgar Allen Poe may be seen in the
Metropolitan Museum in New York, was now
a student of sculpture with Erastus Dow Palmer
of Albany. Mr. Park in need of a model, asked
Miss Powell to pose for him. His instructor
gave criticisms on the work as it progressed, and
on its completion, Mr. Park presented it to his
accommodating subject. When she carried it
home to Ghent all of her f amily were pleased
with it. Her mother especially found it a very
satisfying likeness of the seventeen-year-old
daughter,




AIlt






BAS RELIEF OF ELIZABETH POWELL BY RICHARD H. PARK




I




CAMBRIDGE AND CONCORD


41


A briefer trial farther from home came the
next year. As has been stated Elizabeth took
the regular two years' course at the Normal
School in one. After her graduation in the
spring of I858, she almost at once started upon
her first venture in teaching. A position at
Mamaroneck, New York, was offered her, and
in May she began her work there. But it was
really too large an undertaking for so young a
girl. She found herself in charge of a very large
school, very far away from Ghent, and very
homesick. School terms were not arranged then
as now, and when in July she was called home
on account of the death of her brother Edwin,
she resigned her appointment.
The loss of the youngest boy, a much loved
child of great promise, was a grievous blow to
his family. After such a break Elizabeth's place
seemed to be at home. Her experiment at
Mamaroneck made her all the more content to
live quietly for the next four years on the farm
at Ghent.
In the course of those years she taught at the
school which she herself had attended, where




42    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
the children did not take very seriously their
erstwhile fellow-member's elevation to the dignity of teacher, for they called her "Libbie."
One year she studied at Claverack Collegiate
Institute, as a further preparation for her profession. Since Claverack was only about ten
miles from Ghent, Miss Powell attended -as a
day student, going back and forth by train. She
seized upon an opportunity for a course in
botany with a teacher who was especially fond
of this subject. The scientific foundation gained
here for her constant experimenting with plants
and flowers was one of Elizabeth's permanent
satisfactions and of 'Itself made the term at
Claverack worthwhile.
Three years after Edwin's death the family
circle experienced another change-this time
one of good fortune. Aaron Powell in April of
1861 was married to Miss Judith Anna Rice
of Worcester, Massachusetts. The wedding was
held at the Ghent home, and the young couple
lived for several years in a part of this house that
was arranged for them. Aaron's bride entered
so heartily into her husband's family that she at




hi /7


- -,--


r




THF DISTRICT SCHOOL AT GHENTXWHERE ELIZAB3ETH PO0XWELL
STULDIED AND TAUGHT










CAMBRIDGE AND CONCORD


43


once won a secure position there, and Elizabeth
found in her first sister all that she had hoped
for. It attests well to the character and devotion
of each of these three persons that the love that
already existed between the brother and sister
was only given a broader foundation and an
added happiness by the coming of the new wife.
Elizabeth shared many pleasant experiences
with Mr. and Mrs. Aaron Powell, as for instance, a visit to the home of Mr. John Jay.
They had all three been attending a series of
anti-slavery meetings in the vicinity of Bedford,
New York. Mr. Jay, unable to be present, invited them to his home. Elizabeth was very much
impressed at finding herself in the Jay mansion.
The old house was rich with many historic
associations, full of interesting mementos not
only of Mr. Jay's father, Judge William Jay,
but also of the grandfather whose name their
host bore, the first Chief Justice of the United
States. The present Mr. Jay inherited his grandfather's interest in statesmanship and his father's
devotion to philanthropy. He was several times
the counsel for fugitive slaves in the courts, he




44 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
was influential in public affairs, and his great
capabilities were given open recognition by
President Grant when in 1869 he appointed
Mr. Jay Minister from the United States to
Austria. His genial personality made him a delightful host. Her visit to his home was for
Elizabeth one more experience of the world of
important people and affairs.
From this background of pleasure and work
Miss Powell made her decision early in 1863 to
go to Doctor Lewis's School for the summer
term. Although she was unaware of it, the six
intervening months she now had with her parents were to be the last that she would spend with
their roof as her permanent shelter. She did
come back to it many times for vacations, visits
and rests, but after mid-summer of 1863 her
place was in the outside world. In July she set
her f ace toward Boston. Her new adventure was
her boldest attempt as yet at independence, but
this time she was ready f or it. She entered the
Normal Institute for Physical Education for a
regular ten weeks' course, living at the school.
Doctor Lewis himself Miss Powell found tQ




CABRIDGE AND CONCORD


45


be a genial, energetic man, with a good deal of
ability to push his ideas forward. He had
studied medicine, but never practiced much.
He had given his time largely to lecturing on
his two especial hobbies, temperance and health,
until he turned hi's attention to physical training,
then in an almost undeveloped state.
Heretofore a few systems of exercise had
found followers-military drills, the Jahn gymnastics, advocates of manual labor in shops or
on farms, and a rather elementary form of calisthenics for girls and women, but they had none
of them amounted to more than temporary fads.
Meanwhile educators were becoming increasingly aware of the necessity of physical training.
They were looking for trained teachers to
organize athletic development in schools and
colleges, and there were none to be had.
At this fortunately chosen moment Doctor
Lewis perfected his largely original form of
calisthenic movements, and in 1861 opened in
Boston his school to prepare teachers in his
methods. Incorporated as a normal institute,
it sent out in the seven years of its greatest activ



46    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
ity more than two hundred and fifty graduates
who carried his system widely over the country
and laid the foundations of the greater expansion of physical training in later years. The
apparatus was very simple, so that expensive
installations were not necessary for the many
offshoots from the parent school planted about
the country. Physical training became very
popular and the teachers trained by Doctor
Lewis could find all the work they wanted.
The " New Gymnastics" incorporated several novelties. One was the discountenancing of
violent exertion with heavy apparatus and the
substitution of a gentle, continuous, and comprehensive development of the whole body.
Doctor Lewis used light Indian clubs and
wands, he substituted wooden dumb-bells for
the iron ones heretofore used, he invented
wooden rings about nine inches in diameter, now
largely obsolete, and he also invented the familiar bean-bag, ubiquitous among children for
years. The floor of the gymnasium was marked
with the then-considered-correct position of the
feet; heels together, toes turned far out. Much




CA'"MBRIDGE AND CONCORD  4


47


attention was paid to correct posture and proper
walking. Doctor Lewis constantly advocated
simple and healthful dressing, sunshine, plain
food, and daily cold sponge baths, in a day when
none of these matters was considered important.
The most popular feature of the work probably
was the f act that the exercises were set to music
and that there were mixed classes of men and
women, so that the quest f or health became a
series of social occasions. Colloquially, the
Institute was known as the "Baptist dancing
school."
When she finished the course at the Normal
Institute, Miss Powell had decided to open public classes of her own af ter Doctor Lewis's
method. Ghent was too small a town, but the
environs of Boston where she now had many
friends were already aroused to a popular interest in calisthenics. So she settled upon Cambridge
as her best location, and there for three years
she carried on successful courses in physical
culture. One of the winters she lived at Mrs.
Nowell's, al-ways a second home to her, where
she found the friendly interest of the family in




48    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
all her doings as cordial and sincere as that of
her own people. Miss Sarah Nowell and her
sister came to the classes and several of their
cousins, also the Garrisons and many of their
relatives and young friends. Classes for girls
met in the afternoon; in the evening came the
mixed groups of men and women. Miss Powell
had no assistance in conducting the work excepting the pianist, though the groups were very
large, numbering up to eighty or more. But she
was young, her pupils were congenial to her
and to each other, and they all had very good
times together.
The experience was splendid training. It
gave Miss Powell practice in dealing with large
groups, it gave her poise and social experience,
it taught her how to guide and control others,
it enlarged her acquaintance among the intellectual people who gravitated to Boston, it initiated
her into public work.
We are apt to think of the young women
of our day as having a larger freedom and more
ability to carry through big enterprises than the
sheltered damsels of two generations ago. But




CAMBRIDGE AND CONCORD


49


the vision of this charming looking girl of
twenty-two, with light hair arranged in the fashionable waterfall, a becoming costume, and a
gracious manner, organizing and conducting
single-handed large classes that needed a social
leader as well as a qualified physical instructor
-this somehow   takes away a little of our
prided modernity.
Miss Powell had learned a certain degree of
confidence in her own sex from seeing the part
that women have always taken in the meetings
both for worship and for business in the Society
of Friends; she had also seen women in prominent positions in the anti-slavery societies. Their
work in the abolition cause was in fact the forerunner of the great woman's suffrage movement.
But these examples cannot wholly account for
the initiative and perseverance and determination to succeed in a comparatively new field; such
qualities were of the real fiber of Elizabeth
Powell's character.
Besides her numerous classes in Cambridge,
Miss Powell held some in Concord. We have
learned of her first visit to Mr. and Mrs. Con4




50 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
way, which introduced her to the town and to
the neighbors who gathered at Mr. Emerson's
on his Sunday evening " at homes ": the Hawthornes, the Alcotts, the Hoars, the Sanborns,
members of the Horace Mann family, and
others. Repeated visits had furthered acquaintance with the younger generation who bore these
names, especially with Miss Ellen Emerson, the
essayist's older daughter. Miss Emerson's interest in Doctor Lewis' s method of physical culture
was roused and had grown to the point of wishing to have classes in Concord. It was she who
gathered up members from the families she
knew and arranged for Miss Powell to come
out twice a week to lead them. Miss Powell
was happy to undertake this addition to her
work, for she loved Concord. As the winter
progressed she was frequently invited to stay
over between classes at the home of one or
another of her pupils, visits that were a delight
to her.
Since Ellen Emerson was her closest friend
in the group, Miss Powell found herself often
at the Emerson home. It was a house very com



CAMBRIDGE AND CONCORD.  5


51


fortable in size, but very simply furnished.
" Carpets were made to serve all the years which
darning could make them endure," said Miss
Powell. " Carpets had to wait upon the books
wished for the library. But who could give a
second thought to carpets or china, once admitted
to the genial 'high thinking' of that homel1"
In these years at the height of his power,
Mr. Emerson was according to Miss Powell's
description a gentle refined man, so modest as
to be almost timid, never talkative, yet with a
nobility of countenance and a quiet smile that
endeared him to many. On one of Miss Powell's
visits she reports that "it fell to me to wait his
return one evening from the Concord Club. My
memory has kept a vivid picture of that smile
from under a rather battered tall hat all flecked
with the falling snow in the darkness beyond
the threshold."
She always enjoyed a story, now recorded by
Mr. Emerson's son, of a washer-woman in Con-.
cord who was leaving her work early one day
for the reason that Mr. Emerson was going to
lecture and she must hear him. When asked if




52   DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
she understood him she answered, "Not a word,
but I like to go and see him stand up there and
look as if he thought everyone was as good as
he was!I"
Yet Miss Powell was always just a little
afraid of him in the familiarity of his home,
partly perhaps on account of his reserved manner. Or perhaps it was because she had felt a
bit humbled when on one occasion he asked her
if she enjoyed Shakespeare's sonnets, and she
was obliged to own that she had not read them.
Mr. Emerson quietly commented that he knew
young people who carried these sonnets in their
pockets! Miss Powell longed to retort that she
could have passed a much better examination
on Mr. Emerson' s writings, but she did not quite
dare. However his sense of humor would
doubtless have stood the test, for it often came
to the surface. Once when Miss Powell was at
hi's home for supper, Mr. Emerson came in with
the remark, " I have been in the orchard this
afternoon, trying to convince the worms that life
is short, and hardly worth the living." And
when he had lost something he would say,




CAMBRIDGE AND CONCORD


53


"There is a familiar spirit in this house whose
name is whisk. He borrows things and when
he is ready, he returns them."
Mr. Emerson was a great believer in the
value of reading aloud and memorizing for
recitation as a discipline and education for
young people. One of Miss Powell's happiest
evenings with him was on a day when he had
attended the dinner of the Contributors Club of
the Atlantic Monthly. At this meeting Whittier
had been the guest of honor. In describing the
occasion at home, Mr. Emerson mentioned how
much pleased he was to find in the Club a growing appreciation of Whittier, and then for the
rest of the evening he read aloud from Whittier's
poems. Miss Powell treasured dearly this
memory-the comfortable, red-carpeted parlor;
the lamp-lit circle of the gathered family, ethereal looking Mrs. Emerson with her delicate,
pale face, the three children, Ellen, Edward,
and Edith; the quiet voiced poet interpreting
his brother poet.
Another home in which Miss Powell sometimes stayed between her classes was that of




54   DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
Mr. Emerson's near neighbor and friend, Mr.
A. Bronson Alcott. While the Alcotts' homekeeping was still extremely simple in the day of
Miss Powell's visits, at least the family was
beyond its hardest poverty, for the star of
Louisa's fame had already begun to rise. Hospital Sketches and Moods were being widely
read and bringing in good returns, to their
author's great relief and satisfaction. When
Miss Powell stayed among them she could see
no trace of the financial anxiety that until very
recently had been acute for Mrs. Alcott and
the older daughters. They had never allowed
Mr. Alcott to be aware of it at all, and now it
had left no mark in the gay good humor of
the household.
The family lived in these years at Orchard
House, the home that Louisa called Apple
Slump. " Woods were behind it and great elms
sheltered its face. Within it were contentment
and joy," said Miss Powell.
Anna Alcott was married to Mr. Pratt,
Lizzie had died, so that only Louisa and May
were living at home with the parents. Mrs.




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I;C. )
~ ~~-~ ir~~


ELIZABETH POWELL AT THE TIME SHE BEGAN HER WORK IN BOSTON








CAMBRIDGE AND CONCORD


55


Alcott talked with a wit and brightness all her
own, and Miss Powell found it easy to see
Louisa's happy inheritance from the mother she
so dearly loved. May, Miss Powell described as
tall, well formed, and merry, a sprightly and
amusing young person, but it was Louisa who
was Elizabeth's especial friend. Miss Powell
often said that Louisa scarcely opened her mouth
without making people smile, and she was so
light-hearted as she took up everyone's burdens,
that no one ever seemed to know how many
she lifted.
If the classes in calisthenics were the immediate cause for Miss Powell's visits to the
Alcotts, they were by no means her only bond
with the family. A far stronger one was their
common interest in the cause of abolition, so
recently come to fruition, and the fact that
Louisa Alcott's uncle had been allied in this
work with Elizabeth Powell's brother.
The Reverend Samuel J. May, a brother of
Mrs. Alcott's, had been one of the early associates of William Lloyd Garrison in anti-slavery
work. He had encountered persecution and




S6DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
f aced i t bravely, always with the heartening
sympathy of the Alcotts. He frequently had met
and worked with Aaron M. Powell. Thus again
her brother's name and the cause of the Negro
strengthened Miss Powell's own friendships.
Later Louisa Alcott also met Mr. and Mrs.
Aaron Powell and once spent a Christmas day
escorting the Powells' friend, Abby Hopper
Gibbons, upon one of her philanthropic undertakings. Mrs. Gibbons was a daughter of Isaac
T. Hopper, and a fearless champion of the
unfortunate. Miss Alcott's picture of their day
together is delicious as she describes it to
Mrs. Powell.
" The fog did not daunt me, and I found
Mrs. G. on the boat without any trouble. I lost
my heart to the dear little lady in five minutes,
for she gave the Mayor and Commissioner. 0.
such a splendid lecture on pauperism and crime
that the important gentlemen hadn't a leg to
stand upon. I enjoyed it immensely; and the
officials appeared no more.
" The poor children welcomed her like the
sun; and we spent the time in giving out toys




CAMBRIDGE AND CONCORD


57


and sweeties to the orphans, idiots and babies.
It was pathetic yet beautiful to see their happiness as the friend of thirty years came among
them, so motherly and sweet; and I am sure a
sort of halo surrounded the little black bonnet
as she led us from  room to room   like a Xmas
good angel in a waterproof."
Such connections as this one continued to
keep Miss Powell in touch with the Alcott
family even after the stimulating visits to
Orchard House came to an end because of Miss
Powell's change of work. While she never carried on a regular correspondence with Louisa
Alcott, occasional letters were exchanged, one
of which written three years after Miss Powell
had left Cambridge and had gone to Vassar,
presents some comments on its author's most
famous achievement, as well as her cordiality
toward her friend.
Concord Mar. 20th, [1869].
DEAR MIss POWELL:
I feel highly honored that my stupid " Little Women"
have been admitted to your College, & hope they will behave
themselves in such learned society for the poor things have
had few advantages & are rather bashful, like their Ma.




58 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
Pray make them useful for the cure of headaches or any
other ill which they can lighten, that being the best use that
can be made of the little book.
A sequel will be out early in April, and like all sequels
will probably disappoint or disgust most readers, for publishers
won't let authors finish up as they like but insist on having
people married off in a wholesale manner which much afflicts
me. " Jo " should have remained -a literary spinster but so
many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously
demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that
I didn't dare refuse & out of perversity went & made a
f unny match for her. I expect vials of wrath to be poured
out upon my head, but rather enjoy the prospect.
If you ever come this way remember Concord & pay us
a visit. We are all to be at home in the summer, having spent
the winter in Boston, & all will be glad to see you, especially
father, who considers Miss Powell one of his " fine maids,"
as he calls his favorites.
With thanks for your kind reception of my daughters
I am                              Yrs truly,
L. M. ALCOTT.
Close by the Alcotts lived the shy Nathaniel
Hawthorne. Miss Powell scarcely knew him
as he died in the spring of 1864 soon after her
visits to Concord began. But she played croquet
with the elder daughter, and she enjoyed gentle
Mrs. Hawthorne " whose ideality and delicacy,"




CA11MB RIDGE AND CONCORD  5


59


she says, " leave her in memory almost a translated being."
Among all these families there was very little
formal entertaining, but a great deal of neighborly visiting and an outdoor, wholesome life
lived in much simplicity. Tramps to the great
ledge that Emerson loved, drives to Walden
Pond, where Thoreau had watched the industrious ways of little beasts, walks to the battle
ground famous for the " shot heard round the
world," made part of the pleasures that came
between working hours. And at all times there
was open warm-hearted sociability that freely
welcomed Miss Powell to its midst.
The young physical instructor of course did
not come empty-handed to its doors. She brought
with her a mind actively interested in almost
everything, but especially in nature and in ideas.
She believed in the value of spiritual forces and
she as eagerly roved the fields of ethics and
social idealism as she did earthly fields to study
flowers or the stars. Such character isti cs were
especially calculated to make her congenial to
Concord. It enjoyed the sweetness and distinc



6o    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
tion of her individuality as she delighted in its
unaffected highmindedness.
Her three years of association there provided
her life with permanent treasure. The memories
of the days when she knew Concord best, when
she had personal acquaintance with the creators of its Golden Age, she shared again and
again with her friends. The figures of the little
New England town grew vivid with her portrayal to many groups on both sides of the
Atlantic. Especially she loved to bring before
new generations of young people the human
charm of its simple society. In hundreds of
students she heightened literary interest and
appreciation as she reflected upon the screen of
their imagination the likenesses of the unworldly
and illustrious sons and daughters of Concord.




CHAPTER III


VASSAR AT ITS OPENING
EARLY in 1866 the mail one morning brought
to Miss Powell an exciting and momentous letter.
It was headed" Vassar Female College," a name
that spelled new adventure in the educational
world in this first year of its career. The purport of the letter was that Miss Delia F. Woods,
Instructor in the Department of Physical Training was forced to give up her work and had
recommended Miss Powell as a candidate for
the position. Would she therefore consider the
matter and come to Vassar for an interview?
The journey to the college was soon undertaken. Upon her arrival, Miss Powell endured
the conference with President Raymond and
Miss Lyman, the Lady Principal, with a good
deal of nervousness, but she was charmed with
the place and came home filled with desire for
the position. For days afterward she anxiously
scanned every mail until at last the announcement of her appointment came. Sorry as she was
61




62    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
to leave her work and her friends in Cambridge,
she was overjoyed with the new opportunities
before her and the connection with a college of
such auspicious prospects.
On the twenty-first of April she reached
Vassar, ready for immediate action-rather
more ready than the administration, it would
seem. In a letter written four days later to her
family she says, " I came last Friday, and have
not yet seen the President, tho' I have copied
all the names, and wait now for him to send for
me to organize the work. I shall wait patiently
through to-day, and if he does not send for me,
I shall make a bold move to-morrow and go to
his library on my own responsibility. For this
delay of my work is painfully like waiting for
the dentist. Being presented to my classes is the
ordeal that I dread, and I am impatient to get
through it. These three visiting days have been
exceedingly pleasant, and if when my work shall
have commenced I find myself 'the man for the
hour,' my happiness will be very great."
The campus that lay open to her inspection
was a rather bare lawn-trees and shrubbery




VASSAR AT ITS OPENING


63


only recently set out-imperiously presided over
by the brobdingnagian Main Building. The
dimensions of this structure had been advertised
with great pride: over five hundred feet in
length, four stories high in some portions, five
in others, with accommodations for about four
hundred students and teachers, recitation rooms,
library, art gallery, and museum. A speech by
an enthusiastic well-wisher referred to it with
fervor as an " acre of consecrated bricks." In
a day of undeveloped collegiate architecture it
was looked on with pride and admiration, and
we, with better trained eyes, cannot fail to see in
its stark proportions the symbol of courageous
effort in an untried field. There were two other
buildings, the observatory and the gymnasium.
The latter was not yet ready for occupancy but
in another year it, like the observatory, could
be mentioned in the catalogue as an " independent brick structure, large, elegant and completely equipped."
Miss Powell's letter continues, "Aaron came
up with me on Friday, and I left him at Po.
Miss Lyman met me very cordially, as did Mr.




64    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
Vassar who chanced to be here when I came.
My room is on the first floor at the rear end of
the transverse corridor that I have marked in
the picture. It looks over a beautiful green
lawn to the Observatory where live Miss Mitchell and her dear old f ather. It is a corner
room, having two windows, and is neatly f urnished with oak furniture." She mentions the
wardrobe, the washstand, the black walnut table,
and the " whatnot," showing that the room was
complete with the approved accoutrements- of
i Fts day; there was a small-figured ingrain carpet
on the floor. When Miss Powell had hung some
of her own pictures and finished her arranging
she was well pleased with her quarters. Her
letter concludes: " It is late in the evening now,
and I have seen President Raymond and have
been at work all the afternoon making out the
classes. There are to be eight classes, four to
exercise on one day, and four on the succeeding day. The periods are forty minutes. The
gymnasium is not finished, and we are to exercise in one of the corridors. I am just as happy
as can be."




1'Nd S S,  V A I  008O )II"',H NI 'ITIMOd SS11i


t.




fJ


I










VASSAR AT ITS OPENING


' 65


Miss Powell was not alone in her pleasant
anticipations, for at the same time a letter was
journeying from one of the students to her
mother, in which appeared the sentence " To-day
the new gymnastic teacher came. I know we
shall like her, she is a lovely looking woman."
Vassar Female College had been in operation just seven months when Miss Powell arrived.
For four years the opening of its doors had been
heralded, while plans were being worked out
and buildings erected. During that time discussion had been provoked far and wide in regard
to Mr. Vassar's ambitious designs and the wisdom of his generosity in providing a large first
rank college for women, similar in standing to
those open to men. By many people, women
were still considered incapable both mentally
and physically of higher education; they regarded this experiment as not only foolish but
also dangerous. Fortunately Mr. Vassar and his
board of trustees were unafraid and unwavering.
In 1864 they issued a circular stating that, " It
was not the Founder's design in the establishment of a Female College to come into competi5




66 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
tion with these excellent institutions (Schools
and Ladies Seminaries already in successful
operation) but to make an honest and earnest
effort to carry the education of women one step
higher, receiving those of their graduates whose
thirst for improvement is still unsatisfied, and
furnishing them with liberal facilities for the
carrying out and completion of their culture."
When the long awaited day of September 20,
1865 dawned, there were more than three hundred of these thirsting young women ready to
try their fortune at the new institution. As they
came with all sorts of previou's training, several
weeks were necessary to classify them, arrange
programs for both professors and students, and
organize a working basis.
It must be remembered that in those early
days there could be no standardized entrance
requirements; there were no special preparatory
schools; the colleges either exclusively for
women or open to them were few, scattered, and
generally not of high grade. The total number
of women who had hitherto undertaken college
work was very small. So that at the opening of




VASSAR AT ITS OPENING    6


67


Vassar students were accepted first and exammned afterward. To reassure them a circular
letter to applicants in the previous summer had
stated, " These examinations will not be public
or severe; the object on the present occasion
being to ascertain the exact proficiency of the
young ladies in their several studies, with a view
to their proper classification."
In the months prior to Miss Powell's advent,
many of these matters had been straightened out,
the first and second preparatory classes had been
started for the more poorly trained pupils, and
some unity of work had been established.
The community of which Miss Powell now
became a part, she found to be one animated by
very earnest purpose. The students realized that
upon them rested much of the future of education for women. They differed in their degrees
of preparation, they differed in age from fifteen
to twenty-four years, they differed in their plans
for the future use of their education, but almost
all of them were impressed with the seriousness
of their work. Because a college course for girls
was not at all the accepted thing, these young




68    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
people had come only after long-weighed judgment, and each felt that her attendance was both
a privilege and a responsibility. Vassar would
be a conspicuous testing ground for women's
abilities. If it did of course harbor some frivibous and less able students, they were a very
small proportion among the company who were
letermined to make a good record. Consequently
there was an intensity in the atmosphere that is
hard to realize now-a zeal to make creditable
a doubtful cause, to prove the justice of scholarship for women.
Everything in Miss Powell responded to this
attitude. She believed in women's having the
same opportunities as men, she was sure of their
capabilities by her observation and experience,
she was accustomed to unpopular crusades, and
she rejoiced to help in a new reform. Very
soon she discovered that many of the faculty
also shared this point of view, especially the
President.
President Raymond, building on foundations
laid by Mr. Jewett (who was President before
the college opened), was planning courses for a




VASSAR AT ITS OPENING


69


truly liberal education. He made every effort
to establish and maintain a collegiate standard
of work, and one of his able successors, President Taylor, says that his pioneer work for
women's education can scarcely be overestimated. His personality was a great help to him.
Miss Powell and the other members of the faculty found in him a man of noble ideals and at
the same time a chief who kept things running
smoothly. He was easy to work with and had
so great a genius for organization that to him
may be ascribed a large part of the success in
winning for Vassar recognition from the educational world. To the students, President Raymond was approachable and cordial, a cultured,
dignified gentleman. They did not come into
very intimate contact with him, but he held their
admiration and respect. Although he took some
classes, frequently preached in chapel and conducted evening prayers, his time was of course
largely given to administrative work.
The general scheme for the college which
he worked out and which was issued in the Prospectus of 1865, is of interest as showing where




70 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
the emphasis was placed in the academic plans.
The headings and some of the explanatory comment, so revealing of the point of view of their
generation, are as follows:
i. Physical Education [see below].
2. Intellectual Education: the special function of a college.
3. Moral and Religious Education: the foremost place in intrinsic importance.
4. Domestic Education: the household is by
common consent woman's peculiar
sphere. But home is the proper school
for this art. The Trustees are satisfied
that a full course in Domestic Economy cannot be successfully incorporated in a system of liberal or college
education. Yet Domestic Economy will
be taught theoretically through textbooks and lectures, and visible illustrations of the principles under discussion
will be furnished,.. in the college
kitchen, larder. 0. etc. (in order that
the student shall not form tastes and
habits tending to unfit her for her
allotted sphere.)




VASSAR AT ITS OPENING


71


5. Social Education: woman's sphere is to
refine, illumine, purify, adorn-not under any ordinary circumstances, to govern or contend.
6. Professional Education: teaching, telegraphing, phonographic reporting,
bookkeeping.
The long extract under Domestic Education
is given because it throws an interesting light on
Vassar's earliest attitude on this much mooted
point. Its recent establishment of a department
of euthenics for the study of efficient domestic
and social life, involving, as it does, the building of a splendid new laboratory, is most suggestive of the change in public opinion. In the
6o's woman's ability in other fields than the home
was what had to be demonstrated. Now, confidently, a department of euthenics is planned so
that home-making may be as profoundly studied
by as well trained minds as are the older sciences
or the humanities.
Religious instruction while emphatically not
sectarian, was adequately given, and all students
were assigned to Bible classes. Professional Edu



72    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
cation was never actually undertaken, but the
subjects thought suitable for women are worth
noting.
Physical Education is of course the feature
in which Miss Powell was immediately concerned. Its position in the Prospectus challenges
attention at once, and is explained thus: " This
is placed first, not as first in intrinsic importance,
but as fundamental to all the rest, and in order
to indicate the purpose of the managers of this
Institution to give it, not nominally but really,
its true place in their plan. " 0. In the education of American women, as compared with
that of Europeans, it is believed that the claims
of the body have been too much f orgotten or
too entirely subordinated to intellectual cultivation and the consequences are seen. 0. in a
style of feminine beauty among us, which however refined and spirituel, too often blooms but
palely for a languid or a suffering life, if not
f or an early tomb.
" It is established, therefore, as a maxim in
this college, that the health of its students is not
to be sacrificed to any other object whatever,"




VASSAR AT ITS OPENING    7


73


and in order to carry out this purpose ' a special
' school of Physical Training' will.. be created and placed under charge of a competent
lady-professor. In this department regular instruction will ultimately be given, to such as
desire it, in the arts of Riding, Flower-adn
ing, Swimming, Boating, Skating and other physical accomplishments suitable for ladies to
acquire, and promotive of bodily strength and
grace... Recreations, particularly in the open
air, will not only be encouraged but regulated
and taught, and, to a certain extent, required of
all students.. Apparatus required for the
Swedish Calisthenics (or Boston Light Gymnastics) and such simple feminine sports as archery,
croquet (or ladies' cricket) graces, shuttlecock,
etc., will be supplied by the college."
The flowery old style sentences should not
obscure the f act that Vassar's stressing of physical
training was advanced. This rather unusual
emphasis was of course a special recommendation to Miss Powell of the position she had
accepted. For according to one investigator
there had been little serious effort in any Ameni



74    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
can college until 186o to provide systematic
gymnastic instruction or facilities for athletic
sports. Some schools and colleges had gymnasiums, marching calisthenics were taught occasionally, Mt. Holyoke was giving " calisthenic
exercises " in the gymnasium, but in spite of
these beginnings, physical culture had not held
an assured place in the eyes of most college
authorities.
Then about the time of the Civil War, a
greatly increased interest in physical development grew up, and several "systems" were
worked out, as has been described in the previous chapter. By 1865 the whole subject was
prominent in the public mind. Therefore it
was good advertising as well as good judgment
to make it clear that the health of the prospective students would be carefully guarded, and
to try to reassure the public that the excursions
of the young ladies into the broad fields of mental labor would be attended with the greatest
watchfulness over their physical state. Besides
giving parents confidence, this physical training was undoubtedly popular with girls wishing




VASSAR AT ITS OPENING     7


75


to matriculate, and the first catalogue cannily
states that "' the system of Light Gymnastics, as
perfected by Dr. Dio Lewis, will be taught to
all the College without extra charge "!I
Miss Delia F. Woods, a graduate of Doctor
Lewis's school, was the first appointee to the
responsible position of inaugurating the department of physical education, but when it became
evident that she could not continue, as we have
seen, it was her recommendation of her classmate that brought Miss Powell to Vassar.
As Miss Powell started upon her duties she
found besides Dr. Raymond another adviser
whose help was freely given and invaluable.
Miss Hannah W. Lyman, the Lady Principal,
because of her intimate knowledge of the girls
was Miss Powell's consultant in many details
of physical training as well as in the personal
guidance oJf the students that all teachers were
expected to render. Trained by Mrs. Bannister
and Mary Lyon, Miss Lyman later had conducted a private school in Montreal. She accepted with reluctance the position of what we
should now call dean, but when the matter was




76    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
settled, she addressed herself with great conscientiousness to the task of establishing a proper
domestic life in her great, new, unacquainted
family.
Miss Lyman's appearance was that of a great
lady, with her snow-white hair, most carefully
arranged, her lace shawl, her pale, delicate face
and dignified carriage. She was not an especially tall woman but she had an imposing presence, and her prestige was heightened by the
fact that she brought with her to Vassar her
maid, Winnie. Personal maids had not existed
within the horizon of most of the people at
Vassar, hence this large, stronge creature whose
one concern was her mistress made an impression. But Winnie's presence was no matter of
display, for it was only her experienced and
jealous care that kept the Lady Principal's
never vigorous health equal to its task in the
myriad duties that beset her.
The social life of the students, their behavior outside of class, even their personal habits
were under Miss Lyman's supervision. The strict
rules of conduct, irksome to some students, but




VASSAR AT ITS OPENING


77


doubtless considered a great safeguard by parents
and outside observers, were instituted to avoid
hostile criticism as much as possible. The
Students' Manual of 1867 arranges a sixteen
hour day for the young women with every
moment accounted for from the 6 a.m. rising to
the to p.m. retiring, and with the divisions of the
day marked by signal bells. Among its regulations we find that:
"No entertainments of any kind are to be
given in the students' rooms, except by permission of the Lady Principal and no student may change her bedroom even for a
single night without like permission.
" Young ladies under age who wish to
make purchases in Poughkeepsie will present to the Lady Principal a list of the articles desired, which if approved is given to
the teacher in whose charge they go, and no
other purchases are permitted.
" Twenty minutes in the morning and
twenty minutes in the evening are secured
to each student for a period of quiet retirement and privacy. During these periods




78    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
silence is enjoined throughout the College,
a separate room is assigned to each young
lady and no one is at liberty to intrude upon
or in any way disturb her."
These quiet periods were continued for several years until the number of students grew so
that it was impossible to give each of them a solitary place. All of the girls did not enjoy the
custom, but Miss Powell thought that it had very
great value, for whether they used the time for
private devotion or for study or for extra reading, they relaxed from the excitement of the day
and gained a surer grasp on themselves. When
the practice had to be given up the college
suffered to Miss Powell's eyes a perceptible loss.
Simplicity of dress was constantly urged
upon the students by the Lady Principal. Her
cautions in this particular sound detailed and
fussy to-day only because the point she insisted
on has become so completely adopted. When
we look at the fashions of the 6o's and 70's with
their hoop skirts, ruffles, shirrings, and elaborate construction, we agree that Miss Lyman
was a very sensible woman. A wholesome,




VASSAR AT ITS OPENING    7


79


unhampered, out-door life she wished for the
girls, and she wrote to parents of the necessity
for thick boots, india-rubber overshoes, and a
waterproof  cloak.  The   waterproof  cloak,
which figures in a number of catalogues, appears to have developed into a truly indispensable garment. Miss Frances A. Wood suggests in Earliest Years at Vassar that it was the
too extensive use of this convenient covering
that caused morning prayers to be changed from
before to after breakfast!
Miss Lyman was particular in all the niceties
of behavior and was herself a woman of much
elegance of manner. She taught etiquette and
she had such a keen eye that the students were
rather afraid of her comprehensive observation
which seemed to span the whole length of
deportment and dress. She was a stately figure
in the new college, expecting due observance of
all formalities, and if she often had to be strict
she was also Just. Her memory 'is held in real
love and reverence by those who were her students, and many incidents are told of her kindlioness, courtesy and tact. Miss Powell found




8o    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
her a true friend, entirely without arrogance.
She f rankly owned to Miss Powell one day when
taking the younger woman driving, " No student who came to Vassar on that first day had
so much to learn as I had."
All of Vassar's first faculty were conscientious workers, as convinced as either Doctor Raymond or Miss Lyman that the foundations of the
new structure must be honestly and wisely set.
Miss Powell felt a high regard for all her colleagues and especially for Fraulein Kapp of the
German Department. Miss Powell described
her as a woman whose largeness of nature always
suggested the grandeur of her own Swiss mountains and her enthusiasm was a stimulant as her
close friendship was a blessing to the young
physical instructor.
Departmentally speaking, Dr. Alida C.
Avery, resident physician at the college, was
Miss Powell's closest associate. Doctor Avery
was a forceful and to the students a rather terrifying personality. She had won her professional place by virtue of hard, sustained work,
and she was intolerant of laziness or finicky




VASSAR AT ITS OPENING    8


Si


whims on the part of the undergraduates. Her
discipline was rigorous, but her service to the
students was honest and wise.
She and Miss Powell consulted weightily in
the task of working out the best athletic schedule
for the young ladies, as the responsibility was
keenly felt to make this department a success in
the experimental college education.  Indeed
they both recognized that to a degree the proper
functioning of the academic machinery was in
their keeping. They must prove that women
students could maintain perfect health in the
pursuit of advanced education, thereby refuting
one of the cavilings against it. They watched
their young people with vigilant eyes, and
encouraged, the girls to take part in many kinds
of outdoor sports. Flat-bottomed boats on the
lake were popular, baseball flourished, and croquet was set up everywhere until, as an alumna
reports, " the campus became a great trap of
wickets for unwary feet " with an almost continuous staccato of mallets and balls in spring
evenings.
All of the early catalogues mention garden6




8:z DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
ing as one form of outdoor recreation advocated,
and in this Doctor Avery and Miss Powell both
took active part. A great circular flower bed
was laid out the first spring under Doctor
Avery's direction, and Miss Powell eagerly
watched the dumping of great loads of top soil
that were to start the bed. Then she was able
to dig and plant to her heart's content and with
the doctor she instructed all the girls who shared
their delight in growing flowers.
On account of the delay in finishing the gymnasium Miss Powell's indoor work was continued all through the first spring in the wide
corridors of the Main Building. This was awkward and of course the equipment was incomplete, but so much publicity had been given to
the Lewis system of calisthenics that it was
necessary to conduct the drills regularly in some
f ashion.
Fortunately by the following autumn the
third important college building was ready. It
was large enough to contain besides the gymnasium a riding school with stable room for
twenty-four horses.  Horsemanship  was in




VASSAR AT ITS OPENING


83


charge of a Prussian cavalry officer, riding was
very popular with the students and the riding
school a matter of pride to the whole college.
Miss Powell's especial domain had the formal title of " Hall of Calisthenics." On its floor
was painted a regular pattern of soles of feet in
right-angled pairs, and at the front of the room
a platform held the piano which supplied the
music for the drills. All of the apparatus and
equipment needed under Doctor Lewis's system
was provided. By this time a uniform gymnasium
dress for the students had been adopted of light
gray flannel, high-necked, long-sleeved, and
ankle-length-skirted, with bloomers under the
skirt. Later the girls were permitted to add
scarlet collars and cuffs or a scarlet sash. In
a day of highly conservative dress these athletic
costumes must have looked quite dashing.
Miss Powell standing on her platform led
her classes with spirit, but also with forbearance.
Quick to praise good work, she also kept her
temper with stupid pupils, and would come
down into the ranks to help an uncomprehending individual. She introduced some dancing




84 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
steps into the manceuvers to add grace to muscular development; she gave the drills all the
variety she could invent. The students liked the
work; they prized the opportunity to take the
widely known Lewis Calisthenics; they had the
incentive of their favorite Anvil Chorus and
the leadership of the slender, attr active- looking
teacher, always personally popular. In return
the instructor gave of her very best to the pupils.
When Miss Powell thought of improvements
that would be beneficial, she did not hesitate
to take her plans and wishes directly to Mr.
Vassar, who received them with interest as he
did everything that pertained to his beloved instituti on. Frequently he passed the suggestions
on to the Board of Trustees with his approval,
as when in 1867 he informs them that "Miss
F. M. Powell, a lady of distinguished merit,
[has charge] of the gymnastic exercises, who,
by a letter I hold in my hand, which I will read
directly, recommends to your consideration some
improvements or arrangements in the apparatus
of the rooms." That he followed up Miss
Powell's work, and was glad to give voice to his




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VASSAR AT ITS OPENING    8


85


cordial approbation is shown in a note to her
written during her third year at Vassar:
Thursday morning.
November 21st, 1867.
My dear Miss Powell:
I intended to have seen you after the Gymnastic Exercises last evening to express the pleasure and sattisfaction the
exerses afforded me & my accompaning friends, and were
much impressed with the improvement the Young Ladies
had made since my first visit, and had my health admitted
intended to have expressed this deserving tribute of praise
to themn ere I left the hall, failing in that opportunity be
pleased dear Miss P. to tender to the young Ladies my
humble salutation, &c.
Yours very truly, &c.,
Matthew Vassar.
The fact that Mr. Vassar approved of Miss
Powell's dancing drills showed his freedom
from current religious prejudice, a breadth of
view which he evidenced in many ways, primarily of course in his determination to give
women as thorough an education as men, but
also in other matters which started the new
college on the road toward progress; such as
his refusal to permit the college to be tied to any
denomination and the freedom granted to the




86 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
trustees and to the faculty. Mr. Vassar was
not a college trained man himself-indeed he
had had few educational advantages, but he was
an intelligent gentleman possessed of keen common sense. Now his whole heart was in the
institution that he had built out of the fortune
accumulated in his earlier years.
Almost every day he drove over from
Poughkeepsie in his carriage and from watching the slow erection of the buildings, his interest went on to the plans for instruction, the
faculty engaged, and then to his " three hundred daughters." His cheerful smile and happy
face shone with affection for everything that
pertained to the college, and its development
was his liveliest pleasure. From the letter he
wrote to Miss Powell, quoted in President
Taylor's Vassar and now in the possession of the
Vassar Library, it is plain that he shared even
the ex-cathedra discussions and ideas that outs ide lecturers brought to the campus and gave
sympathetic ear to the girls' and Miss Powell's
eager espousal of the rights of women.
The reciprocal affection which the whole




VASSAR AT ITS OPENING


87


community rendered its benefactor was given
spontaneous expression on the first Founder's
Day, a day that Miss Powell loved to recall. The
twenty-ninth of April 1866, Mr. Vassar's birthday, was made a holiday by the faculty. The
gods provided weather of shining spring beauty;
the students worked assiduously to arrange the
celebration and by 6 o'clock in the evening were
ready with their surprise.
When Mr. Vassar, Mr. Raymond beside
him, arrived at the porter's gate just before sunset, he was awaited by a double line of maidens
forming an alley of honor. They escorted his
carriage under a great arch of evergreens that
had been erected over the avenue and that was
adorned with a " Welcome to the Founder"
together with his monogram and the dates of his
birth and of this festa. Arriving at the Main
Building which was gaily decked with flags and
wreaths, he saw the porch and entrance filled
with the remaining students and the teachers.
As he alighted from his carriage he was welcomed with a burst of song, " Gladly we meet
thee, Father and honored guest," and taken to




88 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
the chapel for the f ormal program. Music,
essays, an original drama, and a hymn written
for the occasion were followed by a collation
and then a reception, and so the party ended.
This was the first anniversary of what has been
a fete day at the college ever since. Mr. Vassar
himself lived to attend three of them.
With Mr. Vassar and with many of the
faculty, Miss Powell's relationship was partly
official and partly social. She also had one
special unofficial neighbor. There was on the
campus a familiar figure, holding no appointment from the college but venerated by everyone
connected with -it. This was William Mitchell,
the father of the professor of astronomy. He
and his daughter had given Miss Powell an early
welcome when she arrived at Vassar and their
home in the observatory was always open to her.
Her first bond with them was that the Mitchells
were Quakers. Perhaps it was this common
background that gave Miss Powell such good
understanding of the elderly scholar's viewpoint
-certainly they were warm friends.
Mr. Mitchell had in his earlier life been an




VASSAR AT ITS OPENING    8


89


astronomer and his daughter's first teacher.
Now in the years of his retirement he found
happiness not only in his daughter's career, but
also like Mr. Vassar, in the great body of youth
surrounding him. Similarly all the students
loved him. They delighted 'in the small pleasan-.
tries of his conversation with them; they felt
the beauty of his serene spirit, unspoiled by the
well-earned honors that had been tendered him.
When Mr. Mitchell died at the observatory
in April, 1869, the loss of his benign presence
was felt by the whole college. Many of the
girls not in Miss Mitchell's classes nor especially associated with her, had talked with and
loved her father, whose heart was large enough
for all the young people he could find. He
was a memorable figure with the plain dress and
plain speech of his religious denomination, his
real interest in the students, his cultivated mind,
his gracious and rather humorous manner.
As marked as the father's dignified and kindly
bearing was the daughter's enterprising activity.
Undoubtedly the star of first magnitude in the
Vassar heavens of '66 not only from the point of




90 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
view of prominence in the outside world, but
also from that of Miss Powell's own friendships,
was Maria Mitchell. Her standing in the world
of science is well known. She had attained
eminence as an astronomer before she was invited to Vassar, and her vital, energized personality with its delightful humor and intense love
of knowledge has been portrayed by every writer
on the early history of the college.
Cordial intercourse with Miss Mitchell extended throughout Miss Powell's years at Vassar,
and as she learned more intimately the character and qualities of~this interesting woman, her
admiration and enjoyment and affection grew.
She found Miss Mitchell to be 'in every way
the antithesis of Miss Lyman. Miss Lyman
valued and observed the conventions; Miss Mitchell cared for them not at all. Miss Lyman was
conservative; Miss Mitchell wanted to go full
speed ahead. Miss Lyman was on a somewhat
formal footing with. the students; Miss Mitchell
had the freest relations with those who were her
friends. Yet it was Miss Lyman who was cour.
teous and gentle to all the great group of students




MISS MARIA MITCHELL             WILLIAM MITCHELL                 MISS LYMAN




.~...m....U.  *




VASSAR AT ITS OPENING


9'


alike, while Miss Mitchell's downright, positive
manner kept some at a distance. Miss Powell
likened these two to the centripetal and centrifugal forces which kept a fine balance while
working both against and with each other. There
was no friction between them, although Miss
Mitchell used to say of Miss Lyman, "If I don't
take her in my hand and squeeze her, I shall
be pricked by her all the time!I
In the faculty Miss Mitchell stood for increased liberty for the young women and greater
opportunities. She worked to free the college
from boarding school methods, to increase the
independence and responsibility of the undergraduates. Miss Powell was quite sure that a
great measure of Vassar's steady advance to
higher standards was directly due to Miss
Mitchell, partly through Miss Mitchell's own
largeness of view and persistent demands for
improvement, partly through the signal impression she made on the pupils who later succeeded
to her place in the f aculty and upon the Board
of Trustees.
There was a spontaneity about Miss Mitchell




92 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE,
which is the closest bond to youth. Her power
over her pupils seemed unlimited. They exerted all their energy to do well in her difficult
science that they might win her approbation.
She was simple and frank and open. No smallnesses of thought or behavior could live in her
presence, Miss Powell found, for she held her
students in her own free air. She chose her
friends among the undergraduates with some
discrimination, and to find oneself among her
especial companions was an envied distinction.
One of Miss Powell's most delightful recollections of her association with Miss Mitchell
is of the little group that used to meet on Sunday
evenings at the observatory. There in the sitting room that was part of the living quarters
of the building, Mr. Mitchell would -welcome
with his gentle courtesy his daughter's friends,
while she arranged the gathering company. Perhaps only six or eight would come, perhaps more. When all had arrived, Miss Mitchell would settle down to knit new heels into
her father's socks, and one of the guests would
begin to read aloud. The reader was almost




VASSAR AT ITS OPENING


93


always Miss Powell herself. Emerson's essays,
Whittier's poems-" Snow-bound" was particular pleasure-and many of the newer American
works as well as the older classics were enjoyed
and discussed.
The girls invited to these occasions were apt
to be those of liberal religious views. Miss
Mitchell was no more a free-thinker than she
was a Calvinist, but her deep religious feeling
was of a very liberal type. The talks that followed the readings took their direction from the
serene philosophy of the old gentleman, and the
honest, straight thinking of his daughter. The
sincerity and breadth of their viewpoint was
no small influence in the maturing minds of the
students who gathered in the little sitting room.
Miss Powell's own mental outlook was undoubtedly partly molded by these two straightforward
friends of hers. For her as for the students the
memory of those evenings lasted into the years.
The observatory parties were only one group
of contacts among many that Miss Powell made
with the students outside of her gymnasium
work. All of the teachers in Vassar's first faculty




94    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
made real effort to give the young women their
personal care and acquaintance; Miss Powell
found the task easy with her special gift for
making friendships. Miss Woods, about to
leave Vassar and casting about in her mind
among her f ellow pupils at Doctor Lewis's school
for a possible successor, must have recognized in
Elizabeth Powell qualities peculiarly suited to
the problems and opportunities of the newly
organized college. In such a situation the personality of the instructors held an unusual importance. Although Miss Powell was no older
than some of her students, her balance and self -
control helped her authority; more important
still her interest in people, her gentle humor,
her f eeling f or beauty and her youth made a wide
appeal.
Miss Mitchell bears testimony to it in a letter
written to Miss Powell in 1867. In December
of that year Mr. and Mrs. Aaron Powell lost
their only child, a three year old namesake of
Miss Powell's, and the darling of the whole
family. This little niece had been a wonderful
joy to Miss Powell, and now almost as grief



VASSAR AT ITS OPENING


95


stricken as the parents, she went at once to her
brother and his wife. Maria Mitchell closes
her compassionate message with the words " You
will have the sympathy of so many, that it must
cheer you a little, to find how much you are
loved at Vassar."
As a corridor teacher Miss Powell came even
closer to the students than as their physical instructor, and she was generous of herself in every
way to the girls who were her especial charge.
She always felt that reading aloud and discussion
of the best books was valuable training, and for
this she was a gifted and happy leader. Some
groups with congenial tastes she invited to meet
in the gymnasium for readings with her, some
she entertained in her own room. One of her
students wrote to her after forty years, " I always
keep the lines from King Rene's Daughter you
had us learn one night. a. and I hear your
voice and see the movements of your face."
Miss Norris, in The Golden Age of Vassar
gives us a delightful picture of " much beloved "
Miss Powell at the doorway of her own little




96    DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
sanctum, welcoming the students to the intellectual feast she so enjoyed herself.
"She was a lover of growing things from
plants to girls, and her room in winter was a
little paradise. Plants and vines, like the pussy
in the Irish rhyme, seemed to be 'purrin' wid
pleasure to take the commands of her'. The
vines were trained around her one big window;
they crept along the wall and above the pictures,
and made an attractive background to Miss
Powell herself, when she stood at her door
receiving her young friends, coming by invitation to hear her read aloud Ruskin's Sesame
and Lilies."
Miss Powell's gentle dominion over the
hearts of the young people was an enduring one
in many cases, for life-long friendships were
established with several of her students. Some
of them in later years sent their children to follow her in new surroundings that another generation might share the benefits of association
with her.
To Miss Powell herself, the four and a half
years at Vassar were a dearly cherished experi



VASSAR AT ITS OPENING


97


ence. They were years also that strengthened
her belief in the mental abilities and the sound
good sense of well educated women. The bogey
that college " unfitted women for marriage and
the home" then rather prevalent, was one she
particularly   longed   to  exorcise.    She speaks
from personal knowledge when eight years later
she writes from her own home to the Vassar
alumnae words of encouragement and congratulation.
" Vassar Alumnae" stands to me for a company of
brave-hearted, well-equipped women, whose work in the
world, whether as teachers or students or artists or mothers,
must bear immortal fruits. How many times in these years
of our separation, and since I have touched life at new and
deeply vital points, have I rejoiced with you in my heart for
your opportunities of culture and of satisfying work. I
know that it has been a prevailing fear that student life
and any public calling for young women would unfit them
for the retirement of home life and its multiplicity of small
duties. In this very student life and in some chosen work
for young women do I see the security and the best promise
for future homes. When the heart and the hands of a young
woman are happily occupied she will not turn to marriage
as an escape from ennui or from drudgery. Instead she
will find herself surprised some day by life's crowning blessing, and she will bring to a newly founded home as her best
7




98      DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
dowry her generous culture and her large experience. And
I believe that home-work thus entered upon will have no
rival in the heart of the home mistress.
Believe that one of my happiest resources is the memory
of my four years' association with you. Accept this word
of affectionate greeting as freighted with all best hopes
for you.
Always sincerely and affectionately yours,
Elizabeth Powell Bond.
How deeply Vassar was rooted in her affections is proved by the fact of her having written
this letter from the midst of great sorrow; she
had just lost a little child, and her husband had
become an incurable invalid.




CHAPTER IV


MARRIAGE
WHEN the college year closed in June of
1870, Miss Powell was very weary from her
years of active work among the hundreds of
girls who were streaming to Vassar. She had
given herself freely by every avenue at her command to the eager young people, and f or the
time being she was spent. She had declined reappointment, and with regret she bade goodbye
to the f riends, and the campus that had grown
very dear. She went home to Ghent for a long
rest, with no especial plan in view.
But a woman whose powers were steadily
rising was not easily lost sight of by her large
acquaintance. Mr. Seth Hunt of Northampton, Massachusetts, had once heard a paper that
Miss Powell read and had been impressed with
its content and with its author. He was one of
a group of religious liberals who met in Florence, a town near Northampton, and through
him an invitation was sent to Miss Powell in the
99




100 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
summer of 1870 to take charge of their society.
They were too informal an organization to be
called a church or a denomination, but they were
banded together for religious inspiration and
teaching. Now they were asking Miss Powell
to be their leader. Courageously she accepted
this surprising call to a totally untried field.
A great change from the gymnasium classes
at Vassar, at the time it appeared to be a piece of
work entirely unrelated to all Miss Powell's previous occupations. It is only in the latter years of
a long life that the changing figures in its fabric
show their intimate connection in the completed
pattern. Yet some of the threads and colors can
be immediately seen carrying over from the
earlier design.
Miss Powell's years in Cambridge gave her
the social poise and executive experience that
she now needed. Her years at Vassar had further enlarged her acquaintance with intellectual people and ideas. For a long while her
training had been with large groups of people.
Throughout her life, not only in Boston and at
college, but in the years at home she had been




MARRIAGE


IOI


of thoughtful and religious mood with a wide
tolerance and strong inclination for full individual freedom. In her own religious society
she had been accustomed to seeing women take
part equally with men in the meetings for worship. The influence of her home training and
of her associations in Boston had all been of liberal tendencies from the theological standpoint.
She had already at Vassar had some practice in
putting her thoughts on paper for other people,
and both her experience and her gift in teaching were of course invaluable. When at the
end of her summer's vacation, therefore, Miss
Powell arrived at Florence, she brought a wellqualified mind to bear upon her new and rather
experimental task.
Miss Powell did not wish and was not asked
to give up her membership in the Society of
Friends when she entered upon her new duties,
although there were members of her meeting who
were a little disturbed at this undertaking. Yet
to Miss Powell herself there did not seem to be
any great departure. She found her " congregation " to be a loosely organized company who




102 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
were at the time looked upon somewhat askance
on account of their unconventional views and
absence of forms. Their association, called the
Free Congregational Society, was not affiliated
with any church.
Like Friends, they were a people very much
interested in the great social movements of
women's rights and care for the freed slaves,
as they had been formerly in abolition. They
were plain and unworldly, with a sincere desire
to have nothing in their worship that they could
not honestly uphold. Their intellectual horizons were wide, their methods simple and democratic, and they cherished f reedom. of thought
and earnestness of purpose. They might be
called the heirs of the preceding generation
which had started Florence as a community similar to Brook Farm and Hopedale.
Miss Powell was not a minister or pastor in
the ordinary sense. She was not licensed by the
state to per~form marriage. She held a position
like that of a teacher, with moral and spiritual
development as her subjects. Since the Congregational Society held its services on Sunday af ter



MARRIAGE10


103


noon instead of in the morning, and in the second
floor of the school house, a number of people
who belonged to other churches made a practice
of coming to listen to Miss Powell's addresses.
She did not always speak herself; frequently
she secured others to preach or lecture. She was
of course responsible for the Sunday programs.
She supervised a Sunday School of about forty
children, and she was the channel through which
the congregation worked and coo~perated.
Some of the papers that Miss Powell prepared for the Society show both in subject and
method the range and temper of her mind.
" The Ministry of Nature " speaks of the beauty
of f arm-land and woodland, pleasure in flowers,
enjoyment in the study of botany, geology and
astronomy. She lightens up her pages with
phrases like " the energetic daisy," " the aldermanic proportions of the pineapple"; and her
final deduction is that in nature is a " perpetual
message from God that the central motive of all
creation is love, a message-that in hours of sorrow may help us to be patient, and at last tri



104 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
umphant." She knew well her heart; she foresaw
one of her own surest consolations.
There are pleas for the children: to give
them the most worth while reading, to teach them
the eternal verities, to help them to grow into
more than conquerors on their several roads,
building a sure integrity into their characters
as the greatest work that their elders can
undertake.
Worship she finds to be no matter of belief
or form of service, but the beauty of a holy life.
" What incense to the Lord could be so sweet as
the daily obedience to his law written in our
hearts?  It is good to 'sing praises unto the
Lord'; it is better to fit our lives to the requirements of his law. It is good to' magnify his holy
name'; it is better to show in our daily lives
that his name stands to us for truthfulness and
purity, and sweetness and faithfulness. It may
be only after long service, after many failures,
after many tears and discouragements, but the
day waits for us all, in Which we may attain to
the beauty of holiness-a day in which this




MARRIAGE


105


human life of ours will be in harmony with the
divine."
One of her addresses is entitled " Spiritual
Growth " and its whole argument is a plea for
the more excellent things that the material world
does not furnish and that even the intellectual
world cannot fully supply. " Not alone," she
says, " to the spiritually annointed belongs this
divine gift [of discovering new spiritual truth].
It is the common inheritance of humanity. In
that it discovers heights that our limitations
make us slow to reach, it is the germ and the
pledge of immortality." And she concludes her
discourse, " I believe it possible, with truth and
love in the soul, to so spiritualize this earthly
life and all its cares and interests, that they shall
all minister immediately to the growth of the
spirit... that we may so walk our earthly
ways that they shall be heavenly ways, and that
death shall but take us to the immediate presence
of our own."
In all her papers there is more than finesounding generality, there is genuineness and
simplicity of faith together with advocacy of




4


io6 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
straightforward plain living as the expression
of that faith. Religious penetration surprising
in a young woman of scarcely thirty and an
understanding of the needs of the human heart
hardly to be expected from one who had not yet
experienced the deepest emotional content of
life often shine through them. The height that
she reaches in some of her addresses can only
be explained by her wealth of sympathy with
others, her very real sharing of the sorrows and
joys of those about her, and by a spiritual insight that in later years was increasingly developed in her. She felt that it was largely her
training as a Friend that enabled her to serve
the groups in Florence satisfactorily, and perhaps it was. But it was something more vital
than their similarity of views on simplicity and
social reform; it was Miss Powell's consciousness of the life of the spirit and her eye kept
single to that greatest reality. In addition it was
a warm and generous heart, an intelligent mind,
and an uncommon gift for making human
contacts.
The training in religious expression that




MARRIAGE17


107


Miss Powell underwent with the Free Congregational Society was experience that grew
later into a ministry dearly valued by large
numbers of people. Years after she had left
Florence, she was on several occasions asked
to return to take part in funeral services for
persons whom she had known there, and her
words of comfort seemed to the mourners to
come with heavenly inspiration.
During the two years that Miss Powell
presided over her flock she lived with one of
the families of her congregation, that of Daniel
W. Bond and his wife. On the second floor of
this house two of Mr. Bond's sisters, Mary and
Elizabeth, made a home for their father Daniel
Herrick Bond, and also for their younger
brother, Henry Herrick Bond. Another sister,
Maria, was already married to Dr. John Learned.
Miss Mary W. Bond, the oldest daughter
and the active head of her father's household
was a remarkable woman. She had long since
assumed her mother's empty place with her
younger brothers and sisters. At this time she
not only conducted the home but she was a suc



io8 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
cessf ul teacher. In 1872 when her brother Henry
was made Treasurer at the Florence Savings
Bank, she went to the bank as his assistant and
did practically all his work, as he was in active
law practice. After his death she was appointed
Treasurer, the first woman in the United States
to hold such a position. The men of the town
consulted her as freely and with as much respect
for her judgment as though she were of their
own superior sex. Her position and her influence were most unusual for the 70's although
Victorianism is sometimes considered more extensive than it actually was.
Daniel W. Bond, later a judge in the Superior Court of Massachusetts, was now a rising
lawyer in the leading legal firm in Northampton. Into the same office had recently come his
promising younger brother.
This brother, Henry Herrick Bond, had been
graduated from Columbia University Law
School in 1869 with honor, taking the Lieber
prize of $200 in political science. Admitted to
the Bar the same year, he brought to his profession high standards and a capability for per,%




MARRIAGE


Iog


sistent, hard work.  He was handsome of
feature, enthusiastic for baseball and sport,
rather retiring in disposition, gentle and considerate in manner. In the course of 1870-71
he found that he shared many intellectual tastes
and many ideals with the young leader of the
Free Congregational Society. By the end of
the second winter he had won her heart, and
she resigned her charge.
Miss Powell's home would now be for the
indefinite future in Florence, but she went back
to Ghent for her wedding. The old home of
so many associations should witness her greatest happiness.
On the 23rd of May in 1872 dawned a day
of springtime glory such as every bride dreams
of. The earth was bursting into the first full
panoply of summer, and the hills were full of
wild flowers. Basketfuls of these were gathered
early in the day by Miss Nowell, come from
Boston to see her friend married.  Garden
blossoms were also brought and loving hands
arranged the simple setting, made radiant by
a glowing sunshine.




11o DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
The sixty or more guests gathered on the
lawn beside the house. Quietly the bride and
bridegroom took their places beneath a great
cherry tree. A marriage after the manner of
Friends, although not under the direct care of
the Meeting, made Henry H. Bond and Elizabeth M. Powell man and wife.
The years of domestic life in Florence that
followed were extremely happy in the richness
of shared work, shared pleasures, shared ideals,
shared love. Between husband and wife there
was an equal partnership in all the interests of
life," to use Mr. Bond's own phrase. A depth
of understanding existed that lightened all burdens, even the grievous loss of their second little
son, who died bef ore he was a year old.
At the same time Mr. Bond was winning
recognition in his profession. He had a real
love f or the science of law, and he brought to
bear upon his cases not only patient research,
accuracy, and painstaking study, but also a
power of analysis and clear presentation that
evidenced an unusually good mind. Besides
these qualities Mr. Bond showed an always per



N1RS BONI) W ITH H ER HUSBAND AND SON'








MARRIAGE


III


fect self-control, a tolerance for others, and a
reverence for the truth, that gave him honorable
standing among his colleagues. He helped to
found the Florence Savings Bank; he established and for two years directed, in conjunction with Aaron M. Powell, the Northampton
Journal, which gave him an outlet for his literary tastes.
His career held the promise of a rich maturity when in the autumn of 1878 his health suffered a serious break. In December, after the
death of his infant son Herrick, came another
prostrating attack of illness, and recognition of
tuberculosis was forced upon him. In a time
when sanitary precautions were not understood
nor incipient disease recognized, New England
was ravaged with this plague, and scores of
promising young men working in offices became
victims to it.
Mr. Bond faced the inevitable ordeal with
calm courage and with loving thoughtfulness
for his wife; but for Mrs. Bond the burden of
anxiety and dread was very heavy. For two
winters they went South with their little boy




112 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
Edwin to Virginia, Georgia, and Florida. In
friendly and picturesque St. Augustine there
were less trying days; much to interest Mr. Bond,
delights for a venturesome child who was just
able to get about by himself and alarm his
mother when she missed him lest he had
dropped off the sea wall into the water. And
for Mrs. Bond there was a great comfort in some
Philadelphia Friends who stayed at the same
house and who became a sort of buttress for her
courage.
The summers of these years were spent on
the farm at Ghent. But in spite of mild climates
and outdoor life the disease was not checked.
A third autumn the f ami*ly started South. They
were only midway of their journey when Mr.
Bond's condition became alarming. Mr. Daniel
W. Bond joined them and remained with them
until his brother's death on the 22nd of October,
1881. Then he brought his sister-in-law and her
son back to Florence, where she f ound some
balm in the close and loving ties with her husband's f amily.




MARRIAGE''


113


Soon her bravery and f aith asserted themselves. She could look back upon what was to
her a " perfect " married life. There had been
never a word that either of them had to regret.
She thought of her husband's strong character
and decided opinions that were coupled with
refinement and gentleness. She thought of his
love of work. She found herself rejoicing that
such an active man was no longer hampered by
the chafing fetters of illness, no matter how uncomplainingly borne, but free in the fulness of
spiritual life. And she had that greatest solace
of all, the conviction that their separation was
not complete, but that her dear one was still near
her, upholding her, raising her out of despair.
In her inevitable longing for some tangible
likeness of her husband's physical presence,
Mrs. Bond's mind went back to one of their visits
at Jacksonville where she and Mr. Bond had
watched with great interest the work of a cameocutter. They had both admired his skill, and
now Mrs. Bond wondered whether he could
possibly make a satisfactory representation of
her husband.
8




114 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
With some difficulty the artist was traced to
Cincinnati, and photographs were sent him.
Then with great anxiety she awaited the result.
When it came, it actually fulfilled every dream
of Mrs. Bond's heart. It showed Mr. Bond
with the shaven face of his earlier years, a
perfect likeness that seemed to embody his real
spirit. All of his family thought it complete.
Mrs. Bond had it mounted into a brooch, and
it became her dearest possession; through the
rest of her life she was never seen without it.
After her marriage Mrs. Bond had continued
occasionally to write a paper for the Congregational Society; now she gradually undertook
again some part with this group. She also
opened a private school for boys and girls in
her own home. Miss Mary and Miss Elizabeth Bond, now living with their sister-in-law,
helped with the teaching, though Miss Mary
had very little time to give to it.
During the four or five years of its operation the advantages of the Bond School were
highly prized by both pupils and their parents,
for it offered many things unobtainable in the




CAMEO OF HENRY HERRICK BOND








MARRIAGE


I15


public schools of the town. All the children
were taught German and they were made familiar with the fables that enrich German literature.
At luncheon each day only German was spoken
by all at the table. -There were many hours of
reading aloud from English classics, and the
pupils were required to commit to memory a considerable amount of poetry. Nature study, then
scarcely touched upon by public schools, was
given an important place. Botany was popular
because of the picnics held in woods and fields
where flowers were collected and pressed for
later mounting. Both Mrs. Bond and Miss
Mary had such a love for flowers that the children could not help being deeply infected too,
especially when work and play were so delightfully interwoven. A workshop was constructed
and fitted up with lathe and tools, so that the
boys could make for themselves the things they
wanted. Mrs. Bond and her sisters managed so
wisely that the children remembered no drugery
but only enjoyment; an attainment that many
schools strive for, and very few achieve. That




116 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
their success was due to the personality of the
teachers scarcely needs to be said.
Mrs. Bond's great ideal in education was
always the development and enrichment of character. To her it was infinitely worth while to
foster the growth and expanding understanding
of the individual. To her the increase in the
sum of knowledge was precious not for itself
nor for increased ease of living, but for the
broadened vision won.
Something of that ideal she managed to
plant in these children. They grew up to realize
that self-control had been learned along with
lessons, that love of knowledge had been gained
as well as f acts. Above all they never forgot in
all their later years the singular beneficence that
was their teacher's presence.
Elsewhere there were friends who saw great
openings for Mrs. Bond, and urged wider opportunities upon her, but these she refused for
the sake of her son, It was quite clear that
her paramount duty was to make a home for her
boy in his childhood, for she was convinced that




MARRIAGE17
the loss of a real home in early youth is an
irreparable one. And so for five years the quiet
routine of school and home life in Florence pursued its way, giving to Mrs. Bond herself a slowly
regained nervous force, a. rebuilt interest in the
world of ideas, a deeper anchorage in the things
of the spirit.




CHAPTER V


SWARTHMORE
AN INSISTENT demand broke into the quiet
of Mrs. Bond's life in Florence. Several years
before, the Board of Managers of Swarthmore
College had asked her to accept a position as
matron. Mrs. Bond had refused because her boy
was young and had dismissed the matter from
her mind. In 1886, to her surprise, they returned
more urgently with the same request. Her son
was older, she must consider more seriously.
In the end she accepted.
Little did Mrs. Bond dream that now with
her youth behind her, she was entering her
major work. Little did she guess that all the
interests of her early life had been fusing with
her recent domestic years into a singularly appropriate preparation for remarkable service.
Nor did those who invited her to Swarthmore
realize that they were summoning to the college
one of the great figures in its history. Yet so
will she always stand.
ni8




SWARTHMORE


1l9


The first proposal of Mrs. Bond's name had
been made to the managers by a member of the
Swarthmore faculty, Susan J. Cunningham.
Miss Cunningham, one of Maria Mitchell's
early students, had gone to Swarthmore at its
opening in 1869. Because none but the highest
standards satisfied her, her judgment counted
weightily in the general policies of the college.
When the position of matron became vacant,
Miss Cunningham's mind reached back to her
own student days and remembered one of the
young instructors at Vassar whose personality
had that mysterious gift which we call influence,
who had reached far beyond her special field
to meet the students by many other avenues, who
had made them love her by her approachable
human sympathy, who had wisdom as well as
gentleness in her dealings. Such qualifications
were precisely those now needed at Swarthmore.
For the office of matron in the 8o's involved different duties from that which the title suggests
to-day. It did not overlap the housekeeper's
province in any way, and it had largely to do
with the discipline and social relationships




120 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
among the students. In a small compact coeducational college tact and judgment were primary requirements.
Miss Cunningham offered her suggestion to
the Board of Managers, whereupon the board,
adding to Miss Cunningham's recommendation
the fact that the candidate was a Friend, was
known to a small number of them personally and
and to some others by her family connection,
sent their first invitation to Elizabeth Powell
Bond. Although she declined it at that time,
later when the same vacancy occurred and the
managers repeated their call she was ready
to accept.
Probably her acquaintance with some of the
board was a help also to Mrs. Bond as she came
to her decision. She would not feel so strange
at Swarthmore with these friends to help her.
Rachel W. Ujllborn she had known years before
at Dr. Dio Lewis's school, some others she had
met since. She realized that she would be in
close touch with them all. For in the early days
of Swarthmore's history the board took a very
personal interest in all the affairs of the collecge.




SWARTHMORE


I21


Different ones of them often came to spend
the whole day on the campus, and those who
lived some distance away spent one or more
nights, making a visit long enough to become
thoroughly conversant with all the current matters of interest from the kitchen department to
the president's office. To persons accustomed to
local regulation of detail and only a general
supervision from the board the old type of management may seem officious. But it did mean
an intimate contact and an active co6peration
that were to be most valuable to the new matron.
In point of fact as the years went on, many of the
managers became her warm personal friends.
Among others closely associated with her there
might be mentioned, besides Mrs. Hillborn,
Lydia H. Hall, Eli M. Lamb, Susan W. Lippincott, Mary Willets, Daniel and Catherine
Underhill, and Isaac H. Clothier.
In September of 1886 Mrs. Bond moved to
Swarthmore. Her arrival a few days earlier
than the students gave her an opportunity to
begin acquaintance with her surroundings and
with the faculty.




122 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
In its appearance she found the college
somewhat similar to Vassar. Its most prominent
feature was the four-story, dome-topped, gray
stone Main Building afterwards called Parrish
Hall. Parrish had been built in 1869, under the
same vogue of institutional construction as Vassar: to house the entire college under one roof,
students, teachers, class rooms, library. This it
was still doing in 1886, though the misfortuneor blessing-of a fire a few years before had improved both interior and exterior. Immediately Mrs. Bond noticed with pleasure the soft
color of the gray stone, and the fact that Parrish
was after all not so large a building as Mr. Vassar's production. She saw that it had happily
the same setting of open, rolling country;
Swarthmore was eleven miles from Philadelphia in a purely agricultural neighborhood. If
the campus was still rather bare, at least it was
no longer planted in corn down to the railroad
as it once had been, and one of its boundaries
was a beautifully shaded winding creek.
Besides the Main Building there were a few
smaller structures. An observatory, to which




SWARTHMORE12


123


living quarters for Miss Cunningham were later
attached, was just being completed when Mrs.
Bond came. The science hail, the meeting
house and the Benjamin West house, where the
painter was born and lived during his childhood, were on the same north side of the Main
Building. To the south there was only the President's home. What later became the village was
only starting to grow up around the college, less
than a dozen houses.
Indoors Mrs. Bond found everything in
active preparation for the new term. Two hundred and forty students were to come, though
only about half of these were in full college
work; the rest belonged to the preparatory
classes.
The latter had been necessary at the opening of Swarthmore, as in many colleges of that
day. Dr. Edward H. Magill, now president of
the college, had been first called to Swarthmore
in 1869 to head the preparatory department.
But he felt that this feature should be discontinued as soon as possible. Since his appointment
to the presidency he had been gradually trying




124 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
to reduce the department both in the size of the
classes and in the number of years in the course.
Mrs. Bond soon learned that one of his greatest
ambitions was to eliminate it entirely, so as to use
all of Swarthmore's equipment for full college
work. He was not able to accomplish this during his own administration, but a few years later
the plan succeeded. In 1892 the preparatory
school was brought to an end.
A cultured and far-sighted teacher himself,
Doctor Magill had a number of fine scholars
upon his faculty. Miss Cunningham was one
of these, as Mrs. Bond already knew. At first
appointed to the department of mathematics,
she later took over the chair of astronomy when
that science was added to the curriculum. She
was single-minded and tireless in her devotion
to her subject, spending many vacations studying abroad or in the universities of this country.
She insisted on thorough work from her students; her idea of duty was very exacting. Her
discipline was rigid and her methods autocratic,
but she gave herself unsparingly. She helped
students financi~ally herself, she helped to raise




SWARTHMORE12


125


scholarships, she collected money f or endowment, f or the building of the first observatory,
later also for Somerville Hall. Very generally
the undergraduates respected her and many
were her devoted friends.
That her complete loyalty of heart and mind
was given unreservedly to Swarthmore was admitted even by those who disagreed with her.
Her personality was so strong that Mrs. Bond
found great support and reliance in her during
the early days when a sense of insufficiency was
apt to sweep over the newcomer. And when in
later years their ways differed very widely, it
was but the inevitable result of the difference
in their personalities and methods rather than
in the ideals that each held for the college.
Another notable member of Doctor Magill's
faculty was Dr. William Hyde Appleton. When
Mrs. Bond first met him, Doctor Appleton was
Professor of Greek and German. Later his subjects were Greek and English. He was of New
England family, a graduate of Harvard, a
thorough classicist. Though his attitude was so
dignified as to be somewhat distant, he was a




126 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
rare teacher and a true scholar. Widely known
outside Swarthmore for his scholastic- standing, he had many warm admirers upon its
campus and he might be called the center of the
cultural life of the college.
A practice of Doctor Appleton's that Mrs.
Bond learned was already popular with the
students and that became a delight to her was the
public reading of Shakespeare or of translations
of Greek drama. Through all the years that these
readings continued, Doctor Appleton's splendid
delivery made the evenings memorable to Mrs.
Bond, to the students, and to all the college. Not
only were his classes a keen pleasure to all who
attended them, but his presence everywhere was
stimulating. Always after Mrs. Bond came, Doctor Appleton sat at her table in the dining room.
The undergraduates who shared that table considered themselves especially fortunate because
of the inspiring conversation maintained by the
matron and the professor.
There were altogether about twenty-five men
and women on the corps of instructors in 1886.
All of them welcomed Mrs. Bond cordially,




SWARTHMORE12


127


several succeeded in making her feel at once that
she really belonged among them.
But in her first days at Swarthmore, interested as she was in the faculty and in the counsel
of the managers, the new matron's greatest
eagerness and her slight apprehension was in
meeting the mass of young people trooping back
for another year's work. How should she bring
about the right relationships with them and
among them?
For as she thought over the task bef ore her,
it came to center in her mind on the problem of
right relationships. If she could encourage a
friendly sympathetic relation between students
and teachers; if she could foster a normal, sensible relation between the young men and young
women; if she could develop an atmosphere of
cooperation throughout the college, such results
would justify her appointment.
The position of matron as it was handed over
to Mrs. Bond was not f ocused on any single
idea. On hasty inspection it seemed a rather
trivial employment. There were almost no
administrative functions, very few schedules.




128 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
The matron assigned places at table, gave permission for going out of bounds, received excuses
for absences, had oversight of the conduct of
the students: a rather uninspiring list of duties.
But by her vision of the far greater possibilities of her office she finally enlarged her province
into one of the most important in the college.
Looking now with the advantage of perspective
at the whole twenty years of her residence at
Swarthmore we can see that she successfully
worked out a problem in social psychology. She
dealt with the mental habits and point of view
of the student body, she wrought changes that
made a new Swarthmore.
Her accomplishment was all comprised in
the right relationships that she constantly
thought of and those right relationships were
composed of three features, much like a three
stranded rope. The separate parts are distinguishable but so tightly twisted that they reinforce each other in a complete unity. Mrs.
Bond thought only of the uni~ty; 'it is for us to
unravel it into component strands. Thereby
we shall find Mrs. Bond developing a relation






MRS. BOND IN 1888




I




SWARTHMORE


129


between faculty and students that made discipline not a book of statutes but a community
enterprise; a relation among the students themselves that grew into unusually successful coeducation; a relation between students and
herself that was their mental and spiritual enrichment.
The very impress of her personality might be
designated as one of the most enduring gifts of
their alma mater to the students in the years of
her residence. For she lived among them with
a kind of spiritual grace that was at once highminded and full of human understanding. By
virtue of these qualities she was able to make
her vision real; to create those right relationships
that were built into the spiritual walls of the
college. Her idealism was so persuasive, her
faith in youth so genuine, her simplicity so unaffected that she changed the whole tone of
undergraduate life.
She did not realize that she was accomplishing so much. Her first consideration of her
problems brought no definitely formulated plan
that she pursued with determination. Rather
9




130 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
the solution was slowly felt af ter through the
years. That it was triumphantly found is the
unique and original service that Mrs. Bond performed for Swarthmore. Yet at the start her
vision was of the need of the students and of her
opportunity rather than of any special way to
fulfil the one or seize upon the other. She surveyed the college community of 1886, she longed
to improve, to enrich, to amplify all its social
aspects.
In those days as has been said, Parrish Hall
was practically the whole college. The ground
floor contained in the center the managers' parlor, the reception parlor and the dining room,
in the wings the class rooms and at the east end
the matron's parlor. On the upper floors the
men students occupied the west end, the young
women the east, separated by the central core
of the building which held Collection Hall and
the library and reading room on the second floor,
class rooms on the third and the museum on the
fourth. More than half of the faculty, several
of whom had duties in supervising the halls,
lived in Parrish among the students.




SWARTHMORE13


131


Life for the young people was extremely
simple. Athletics were undeveloped, there were
few intercollegiate games. There was no dancing, no music even. The girls had " spreads "
in their own rooms, feasting on goodies sent from
home, but the only parties were occasional stiff
and highly formal receptions. There was no village to offer diversion. Almost the only extravagance that could be indulged in was to walk
around to the outside door of the pantry and buy
five cents' worth of crackers, or else to patronize
Pedro, the peanut and banana man, when he
came twice a week, or sometimes to walk to the
Oakdale store, or possibly to the neighboring
towns of Morton and Media. The girls cloaked
in double blanket shawls, below which their
starched white aprons showed, found their chief
outdoor entertainment in walking up and down
the " asphaltum "-the broad footway from
Parrish Hall to the railroad, though they might
not go nearer to the station than the ash path,
some fif ty yards back. If a young man in haste
for the train ran past them leaping over each




132 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
of the newly planted bordering oak trees as he
went, that of course was a charming incident.
Social intercourse between the men and
women students aside from their being taught in
the same classes was confined to meal times and
social hour in the evening, or the rare skating in
winter on Crum Creek. There were approximately even numbers of men and women at each
table in the dining room with a teacher at the
head. After dinner all were permitted to go
into the large reception parlor for an hour of
informal talk, presided over by the matron.
No fraternities had been started among either
the boys or girls. There were however three
literary societies, the Somerville for young
women, the Eunomian and the Delphic for the
young men.
Discipline was that of rules and faculty
watchfulness, which occasionally provoked outrageous pranks from the students. Self-government was as yet practically unheard of in most
colleges. How the students could be controlled
reasonably was one of the first questions that
Mrs. Bond asked herself. Discipline was obvi



SWARTHMORE


133


ously her first duty. She thought some changes
desirable, but she was wise enough to be very
slow in making them. She offered no reform
measures until she was very sure of their worth.
Over her first experiment however she had
no doubt whatever. She would make her own
quarters, where the students came to see her, as
inviting as possible. Hitherto the matron's
parlor had had a forbidding formal air of unused red plush. Mrs. Bond put in some of her
own furniture, bookcases, pictures, brought
potted plants, had the fireplace made usable.
As mistress. here she was cordial and unpretentious. If the social life of the students was to
be improved, she must begin by making them
feel at home with her. If discipline must be
maintained, there should be pleasant surroundings in which to discuss such matters.
Mrs. Bond learned that the rules governing
student life had been printed, one hundred in
number, and until a year before her coming had
been presented to each freshman in a small booklet with the formidable title Laws of Swarth



134 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
more College Relating to Students. While these
pamphlets were no longer distributed to the
students the rules were practically all in force
when Mrs. Bond arrived, and a few of them
quoted from the earlier book show the restricted
life still obtaining in 1886.
10. Young men over twenty-one years of age,
who wish to leave the premises, must
leave their cards with the President.
Young women of the Senior and
Junior Classes, and others over twentyone years of age, may receive permission f rom, the Matron to walk off the
premises; and, with the Matron's approval, may be accompanied by
younger girls under their care. Such
groups are not to consist of less than
four nor more than six, and three of
these must be Seniors or juniors, or
over twenty-one. Other students who
are satisfactory in conduct and lessons
may receive permission to leave the
premises; but girls, except in the cases




SWARTHMORE'3


135


above specified, must always be accompanied by a teacher.
11i. No students are permitted to walk off
the grounds on First day mornings,
and only the boys on First day afternoons.
16. The parlor, front hall, and door are open
from supper until evening Collection
for all students, but closed at other
times.
20. Students are not allowed to use the railroad trains except by special permission, and to obtain permission to go
home or to Philadelphia must have
written requests from parents or guardians. Girls and young women must
not return to the College after dark.
24. Students of the two sexes, except brothers
and sisters, shall not walk on the
grounds of the College, nor in the
neighborhood, nor to or from the railroad station' or to the skating grounds.
They shall not coast upon the same
sled,




136 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
84. When any conduct tending to general
disorder occurs "in a class or general
collection, the instructor in charge,
not detecting the offenders, may select
students from those sitting in the part
of the room where it is observed, and
detain them on holidays, or during
delinquent sessions, unless the offenders acknowledge their guilt; or they
may inflict such other penalty as may
be necessary to prevent the disorder.
94. Seniors and Juniors are permitted to use
the f ront door at all times in passing
into and out of the College building,
but other students are not permitted
to accompany them.
The whole idea of these set rules Mrs. Bond
disliked almost as heartily as the students did,
and she began a gradual modification or abandonment of them. She was too forward-looking
to have an array of the law part of her method
of discipline. If at this time there was no
thought of student self-government, at least Mrs.
Bond had no thought of accomplishing her ends




SWARTHMORE'3


137


by force of her authority. She considered that
an outworn system.
Her program, if it may be called one, was to
live in close association with her family of boys
and girls, to be their intimate friend, to counsel
them, to help them to be wise. She respected
the young men and women as mature enough to
understand the necessity for a few rules. She
believed them to be reasonable and fair. Her
plan was to gain their confidence, so that together
they should all want to do the right thing. She
wished to create a will among the young people
to live up to high standards of social behavior;
to make public opinion, that powerful lever,
favor her own ideals of conduct. It was one of
those simple plans almost unrealizable to any
but an extremely gifted person. And she accomplished it largely as she has of ten said " just by
living with the students."
Yet her close personal relationship with
them all and her lessened insistence on rules did
not mean that her discipline was lax. Indeed
it was rather strict. She allowed no advantage
to be taken of her, partly because of her native




138 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
force of character, partly because of her sense
of the dignity of her office. When in i 89o her
title was changed to the newer f orm of dean,
Mrs. Bond was much pleased to have the position given what she believed to be its deserved
prestige.
The designation was also better fitted to her,
for with all her informality, she never lost a
certain distinction of manner. Her bearing toward the students was gracious, sympathetic,
loving, but not for a moment did it become overintimate. Her manner was doubtless patterned
in her own mind somewhat on her memory of
Miss Lyman, the first Lady Principal of Vassar
whom she had much admired. And her own
interpretation of Miss Lyman's presence certainly was no overlo~oking of discipline, but accomplishing it by what might perhaps be called
the consultation method.
Very early Mrs. Bond instituted the custom
of meeting the girls together once a week for
a half hour before lunch. Her friendly method of
conducting the little talks quickly won respect.
She ''gave a word of caution"~ or ''called attention




SWARTHMORE'3


139


to " the matters of carelessness or ill judgment
that kept coming up in a college community.
She generally managed to make her points indirectly, by means of a story or quotation. She
especially warned them about noise, urging that
all the fun and merriment possible need never
degenerate into mere racket. And she made unceasing effort to keep the attention of the girls on
the pitch of their voices, for which her own quiet
modulation and delightful enunciation were
beautiful patterns.
These occasions gave her the opportunity to
speak to the girls of safeguarding their health,
of conserving their strength with sufficient sleep,
of avoiding gestures and actions in public places
that might be in questionable taste and reflect on
the college; all the reminders that were constantly needed in the routine of everyday life.
She used the opportunity to emphasize the grace
of good manners and the social poise of self-control. " Mistress of herself though China fall"
she quoted Pope against sudden surprises such
as outbursts in the dining room or encounters
with June-bugs.




140 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
The little meetings before lunch were also
Mrs. Bond's time to explain to the girls their
proper attitude toward the young men, "ia cordial comradeship in work and recreation, with
the reserve that limits social intercourse to the
appointed times and places." She wished the
young people to enjoy each other's company in a
normal, sensible way; her individual cautions
were tactful and gentle. In all human relationships her counsel to the students was to give
freely, without questioning themselves as to how
much they were receiving in return.
Above all she asked every person to enter
heartily into all the interests of the college, to
become an actively cod~perating member of the
little democracy that all shared. Indeed cooperation was one of Mrs. Bond's special words.
If she could instill that idea thoroughly enough,
discipline would take care of itself. Each fall
when the new class came she congratulated the
f reshmen on the lif e opening bef ore them with
a reminder that in receiving its great benefits
each one must respect the others' similar privileges. The individual privileges of the noise




H
C
C
C
C)
ni
C
C
H
4








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and freedom of home, she said, have now been
exchanged for the privileges of laboratory and
library, and these latter ones involve certain
limitations where large numbers are concerned.
"The consideration of one another's rights is the
first necessity of happy harmonious living, and
a little thought will always bring fair action."
At one time through the colleges of the country there was a craze for sophomoric hectoring
of new students. Everywhere efforts were made
to curb it. Dean Bond's method of dealing with
the situation is replete with her courtesy, her
respect, and her confidence toward her undergraduate friends. She writes thus to the class
directly concerned:
Beloved girls of the Sophomore Class:
I am taking this private way of telling you a thought
that has been in my mind all summer. The " old " girls
are a law unto the " new." Nothing that can be said to the
strangers about our plans and ideals can have half as much
weight with them as the actual example of the students
who have had one, two, or three years of College. And
of the three classes, it is the Sophomores who have the most
to do in establishing the Freshmen in right ways of thinking and doing.
One thing gives me anxiety. In the last few years an




142. DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
effort has been made to establish a new order of things, to
introduce among the girls a form of hazing that each year
is a little more pronounced. You were yourselves the victims of this effort, in the disturbance of your rooms. I
appeal to you to put a check upon this tendency. Be as
witty as you can in your sallies upon inexperience and freshness, but do not lay hands upon Freshman belongings-draw
the line there. Let " class-spirit " be promoted by brains,
not by personal interference that has to be annoying and
disturbing. This is your opportunity.
May I not depend upon you to make a stand against
a wrong tendency of things, and for the support of better
standards of wit and fun?
Yours in love and trust,
Elizabeth Powell Bond.
A certain amount of enforced discipline of
course there had to be, when it was necessary for
Mrs. Bond to uphold firmly the rules of the
college, and occasionally there was active disagreement with her judgment by the impetuous
young people. This is axiomatic for any institution, but not many deans so easily overcome the
disaffection of a rebellious few.
A transgression committed by a few girls
was so serious as to be brought up f or discussion
by Dean Bond in the weekly meeting. Her
rebuke was plain-spoken but it was impersonal.




SWARTHMORE'4


143


One of the girls implicated was finally driven
by her conscience to go to the dean about it one
night just before dinner. After a few stumbling
words from the girl Mrs. Bond saw that a breakdown was impending and interrupted to ask if
she was taking part in the Senior Recital that
evening. The student said she was, and found
herself dismissed with the words ''Then no more,
I understand."
Some cakes provided for a reception in the
dean's parlor proved too great a temptation for
a few healthy young appetites, and when the
party gathered the refreshments were gone.
Mrs. Bond's comment the next day on the occurrence emphasized the point that it is not so much
what the invaders take that matters as what they
leave, in unpleasant associations and a sense of
untrustworthiness. The point went home. And
one evening she wrote in her diary " Met Sophomore and Freshman girls in room J about 9
O'clock, and it was happily agreed that the disorder should cease." How could it be otherwise
when thus dealt with?
Mrs. Bond's sense of humor was equal to




144 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
many slight corrections. A group of freshman
girls making a good deal of noise at the wrong
time of day suddenly heard the dean's approaching footsteps and knock. They dived for any
available shelter before the owner of the room
uttered a frightened " Come."  Mrs. Bond
walked in oblivious to a leg protruding f rom
beneath the bed and to the unsteady closet
door. She said mildly, "Why M!* I am
surprised that thee could make so much noise all
alone," and sat down comfortably to talk. She
talked on and on and on.  She had all manner
of things to say, never noticing her hostess's lack
of ease. The girls three deep in the closet grew
stifled, those under the bed wanted to sneeze.
One by one they were forced to appear. As each
came to view Mrs. Bond without raising her
voice a note remarked, " Oh! Is thee here? "
" Oh! Is thee here too? " until everyone had
emerged. Then she made her graceful and only
slightly smiling departure.
By such means as these Mrs. Bond established
confidence, insisted on reasonableness. There
was little abstract argument, much concrete




SWARTHMORE


i45


friendly discussion. The result was that in the
course of years tempestuous scorn of authority
more and more completely gave way to a willingness for self-discipline. And the outgrowth
of that change was the students' preparation for
self-government.
In the last year of Doctor De Garmo's presidency the women students petitioned the faculty
for this privilege, and all through the spring of
1898 there were long discussions in faculty meetings, conferences with the students, and work on
the plan which was finally approved by the
faculty and adopted by the students. Mrs. Bond
worked very hard over the project. She was
not sure that it was going to be a successful experiment, not sure that this was the wisest way to
deal with student problems. But she was willing to try it, gave a great deal of time to developing the plan, consulted earnestly with students
and alumnae. The constitution in its accepted
form came into full operation in the fall that
President William W. Birdsall began his term
of office (I898), and he with Mrs. Bond saw it
10




146 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
through the experimental years to its secure
establishment.
The men students waited longer. Their
charter was granted in 1909 after Mrs. Bond's
retirement, although since 1903 they had had
self-government in a partial form. With its
development Mrs. Bond was less directly concerned. Affairs that dealt exclusively with the
men had always been in the care of the president,
though of course such questions as this were
passed on by the whole faculty. Nevertheless
the years during which Mrs. Bond was dean
certainly had brought about a different attitude
among the men in regard to discipline, and their
assimilation of her ideals was undoubtedly a
f actor in the change.
It has been too much implied perhaps that
student government was entirely an outgrowth
of Mrs. Bond's plan of discipline. It would be
more accurate to say that the appearance of
student government was influenced by Mrs.
Bond's whole id-ea of right relationships, of
which her discipline was of course the most pertinent feature.




SWARTHMORE


147


But her maintenance of discipline, unquestionably one strand of her work, was so
inextricably bound up with the other two main
lines of her policy that merely to mention them
separately seems to resolve into parts what should
always be a united whole. Mrs. Bond's twenty
years at Swarthmore meant more than a persuasive discipline plus a wise ordering of social life
plus an offering of intellectual and spiritual
abundance; it meant a fusion of the three in
which each played upon and strengthened the
others.
Mrs. Bond herself never thought of discipline in a category by itself. It was part and
parcel of the right relationship of students to
each other and to the faculty in the social life
of the college. But as the more strictly disciplinary side grew into undergraduate self-government, so the more definitely social side
developed into a rather special and very happy
form of coeducation.
Coeducation had of course existed at Swarthmore since the opening of the college. In the
early days it had been a simple problem because




148 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
of the very small number of students. Mrs.
Bond's task was to keep it a normal, not overemphasized part of the whole social fabric of
a growing community.
This whole fabric she thought of in terms of
family life. Just when Mrs. Bond began using
the phrase  a college life in a home setting"
is not known. But she probably originated it,
for it precisely expressed her ideal of interstudent and faculty-student relations. She was
influenced by the experience of her own married
life and of the home whose spirit she longed
to perpetuate. Perhaps because she had her son
with her she seemed at once like a mother to the
students, with a mother's interest in them. Also
it was natural enough in the early days when the
college was very small that there should have
been almost a f amily bond among the students,
and between them and many of the faculty. But
in later years as the numbers increased and departments expanded, the same close intimacy
continued, due in large part to Mrs. Bond's cohesive power.
One example of this was that she always




SWARTHMORE'4


149


spoke to the students by their first names. Use
of the given name had been an early practice
of the Quaker college; Mrs. Bond's long continuation of it was a means of emphasizing the
intimacy and f amily f eeli ng that she did so much
to foster.
Much more important was her ability to interpret people to each other at their best. She
herself saw through the exterior to the real personality and by means of her understanding,
others understood. She found the potentialities
in immature students, she gave confidence to the
shy, she was not carried away by the leadership
of the more fully developed, though she respected it. She was conscious of the real worth
of every individual thereby transmitting to each
one a sense of self-respect and honorable standing. And somehow through all the years she
managed never to criticize. So marked was this
characteristic of hers that her silence and lack
of praise were recognized as severe reproof. It
was these qualities that caused a neighboring
clergyman to call her " dear saint Elizabeth."
Mrs. Bond, too modest to accept sainthood




150 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
for herself, instead found it in others. There was
Johnny Hayman. He picked up the scraps of
debris about the college, mentally unequal to
more than a constant tidying up. He was a
wrinkled, uncouth, stooped, grizzled, leatherskinned, old man, humming a little sing-song,
cheerful, but so simple as almost to invite mocking by careless youth until Mrs. Bond showed
a different point of view. " I believe Johnny
Hayman is a saint," she said. " Every minute
of the day he is doing the very best he knows."
Doubtless Mrs. Bond was all too well aware
that the students generally were not saints. She
was too wise to try to impose halos upon them,
but she did feel 'it entirely possible to teach them
standards of well-bred behavior. This teaching
she began in the dining room over which she
presided. She came to each meal quite unhurried but unfailingly punctual. Never was she
known to be one moment late. She ate her own
meal slowly so that she was among the last to
leave. She ruled the room by her poise and by
her glance. She arranged the seating of the
tables at the beginning of the year giving due




SWARTHMORE


151


consideration to,individual requests, and she
watched the working out of her plan. She did
not openly rebuke too much noise, but quieted it
by concentrating her attention on the erring table
until it took heed. The boys and girls learned
the habit of courtesy and good manners at meal
time that became deeply ingrained in Swarthmore's practice. The special reward for seemliness was for a table to have no teacher sitting with
it. At first this was a rare honor, but as years
went on fewer of the faculty lived in Parrish,
and they were in fact no longer needed as
guardians.
In the evening after dinner Mrs. Bond supervised the social hour. She took her place near
the center of the reception parlor almost always
with some sewing or other hand work, creating
an air of informal hospitality. She succeeded
admirably in being an effective chaperon without imposing undue restraint.
It was here that Mrs. Bond made a special
effort to inculcate a healthy, normal, sensible
attitude between the men and women students.
She spoke quietly to the young man who " took




152. DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
in to Social Hour " the sanme girl too frequently;
she cautioned the couple who gravitated to a
corner; she discouraged a girl's seeking of attention. She showed the young people how to
maintain an open, comradely, well-bred companionship that grew firmly rooted in the spirit
of the college and has persisted ever since.
One year Mrs. Bond gave the Seniors the
privilege of spending social hour together as a
class in her own parlor without a chaperon.
They were pleased with the honor. But as one
of them years later remarked, the experiment
was a quite safe one " for the books and pictures
and open fire were Mrs. Bond almost as distinctly as if she had been present, and established
an ideal of refinement 'which we could never
lose."
On Wednesday evenings for several years
Mrs. Bond introduced the singing of college
songs during social hour, and it was she who
instituted the Sunday evening singing of hymns.
She even taught a sight-singing class for a few
years to improve the quality of these musical
evenings. They were all popular occasions,




SWARTHMORE'5


153


especially Sunday nights. For these the students
met at first in one of the parlors with Mrs. Bond
as the leader and only a tuning fork for help.
Later a piano gave accompaniment; but in the
first years there were no pianos in the college.
The interest grew so that later still it was necessary to use Collection Hall to accommodate the
numbers of students taking part.
Of course Mrs. Bond's influence upon the
social life of the college was by no means confined to the dining room and to social hour. It
grew by everything she did and by everything
that she was. One really important way was
largely unconscious with her: her personal appearance. She adopted a general type of dress
to which she always adhered, a very simple style
of black or gray gown, of ten silk, with a little
white at the neck and wrists. The silk was of
fine quality, the white immaculate, and her one
ornament was the cameo of her husband. Her
dress could never be called a uniform, but its
unvarying type and rich texture gave her dignity
and picturesquesness. Her costume enhanced
the beauty of her keen sympathetic face and her




154 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
finely shaped head adorned with its waving
hair. The most thoughtless of the students gave
recognition to the nobility of her presence and
their conduct reacted to it somewhat as it would
do to an audience with royalty.
Another special reason for Mrs. Bond's
power with the undergraduates was her genuine
interest in the events nearest their hearts; athletic meets, debates, all the contests in which
Swarthmore's prowess was to be tested. The
traditional H averf ord- Swarthmore game which
annually closes their football season she always
attended with keen enjoyment, a welcome member of the gay coaching parties that in alternate
years hilariously journeyed across country to the
field of the Scarlet and Black. When Swarthmore was the biennial host, she entered enthusiastically into the preparations for the day. She
shared the griefs or enthusiasms over the score
in real sympathy with poignant undergraduate
emotions.
Later in the college year oratorical contests
were the means for matching skill either between classes or with outside debaters. On these




ti


k7,


;UtL


0


4












SWARTHMORE


155


occasions the dean was an interested listener,
and at the close the judges, the members of the
team and various other selected persons were
entertained in Mrs. Bond's parlor to congratulate those taking part and add the grace of a
small celebration and light refreshments to the
importance of the evening.
At Christmas time there were always some
students who were unable to go home for the
vacation. Every year Mrs. Bond gave a Christmas party to them, providing for each person a
present which cost almost nothing but which
somehow she made individually appropriate.
Just because she was at heart sympathetic
with all the features of undergraduate life, because she had an understanding of the young
people that made them willing to share their
life with her, her influence spread to the outmost
bounds of the college. Not only was the students'
life in common improved, but it was drawn
closer to the faculty in the atmosphere that she
maintained.
The teachers themselves were knit more
closely to each other. For older persons as well




156


56DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE


as younger f elt the spell of her presence. In
f aculty meetings Mrs. Bond's judgment was
respected, she became a leader on the progressive
side, in all circumstances she was in command
of herself, rising superior to every difficulty.
She enjoyed the mental stimulus of her association with the f aculty as much as she enjoyed in
a very diff erent way their warm friendliness.
She loved their informal, high-spirited parties
which were never complete without her. Once
Miss Coale, head of the boys' infirmary, gave a
surprise birthday party for the dean. Mrs. Bond
arrived to be greeted with a gay jingle by a
professor who included all present in his cheerful announcement that:
We've all been invited
And no one was slighted;
No matter what weather,
We've all come together
To greet our adorable Dean,
Mrs. Bond the sedate and serene,
Our capable Dean and our kind-hearted Queen.
No matter what subjects we teach,
No matter what projects we preach,
Whether Latin or German,
Or speech a la Furman,




SWARTHMORE'5


157


Or whether we talk on Political Economy
On Electro-Dynamics or French or Astronomy;
Whether we talk from the Chemistry chair
Or rhapsodize oft on Hugo or Voltaire;
'Whether the hearts of deceased cats we probe
Or quote Scripture daily from Jacob to Job;
Or drive the gay golf ball across the wide lawn,
Or toot on the trumpet an hour before dawn;
Whether we pay out the college's dollars
Or see to the shine on the cuffs and the collars;
Whether we plan out the suppers and dinners
Or issue excuses for absentee sinners;
Whether we give out the Library books
Or rule o'er the washers, scrubbers, and cooks;
Whether on book-room affairs we keep tally
Or whether we make toast and milk like Miss Sally
(I mean Sarah D. Coale) and Miss Michener too,
Whatever in college we do or don't do,
We've all come to the rally
Of kind Cousin Sally,
For Swarthmore's Queen
Our Adorable Dean!
The personal references in the poem were
enjoyed by the guest of honor as keenly as by
everyone concerned. Mrs. Bond was an integral
part of their good- fellowshi p. Plainly the staff's
admiration of the dean was also affection for
her. She was indeed the dean of the whole
college.




158 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
As the social life of the undergraduates grew
more reasonable, more united, under Mrs. Bond's
guidance, the interpretation of this atmosphere
to the outside world became an important
corollary. Dean Bond of ten represented the
college officially on important academic occa-.
sions; she was also its unofficial but none the less
noteworthy spokesman at many lesser meetings.
Everywhere she went the college was to some
extent measured by her and the " publicity " she
thus gave Swarthmore was as potent as it was in-.
direct. Many a young person was sent to this col-.
lege because the parents wished their child "to be
under Mrs. Bond " and the other good reasons
that confirmed their choice seemed often to them
the less substantial arguments.
One of the questions that both parents and
educators frequently put to Mrs. Bond con-.
cerned the value and the practicability of coedu-.
cation. For while to the students themselves she
had managed to put coeducation into an unself-.
conscious place, she knew that to the outside
world, and especially to educators in the East,
it was still an experiment.




SWARTHMORE'5


159


She heard the criticisms that were constantly
offered: that it removed a rough hardness in
college life that was good for young men; that
girls were too much exposed to the men's less
refined ways; that both of them would find each
other so interesting that academic work would
suff er seriously. As proof of this the critics
quoted the fact that both within and without
its walls Swarthmore was often jokingly called
a " match factory." Mrs. Bond saw nothing
undesirable in whatever truth there was behind
that phrase, for there can be no gainsaying the
beneficial results of the almost universally happy
marriages of Swarthmore graduates.
The argument that Dean Bond offered to the
doubters of coeducation, the'reasons that she
gave for its happy working out at Swarthmore
can best be presented in her own words.
The young men, she said, instead of " barrack
life " have had " home life along with their college training. This might be pronounced a
merely superficial thing-a matter of manner.
But the results to young men of four years of
combined home life and college work are not




i6o DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
superficial; they touch the springs of characters.
Four years of class-room association with young
women, and the social life that the college
affords, result for most young men in deeply
rooted respect for womanhood and the refinement of soul that goes with it. This is what coeducation does for the brother.
" What of the sister?. 0. Maidenhood has
a share in the integrity of human nature, and is
made to weather gales, as well as to bloom in
sunshine. So, while it occasionally happens that
the sister, in entering upon college-work with
her brother, is f or a time unduly excited by the
new situation, it is usually the case that the
maiden goes calmly about her work, for the
most part pursuing her separate way, yet ready
to enter heartily into the varied interests of
college-life, even to sharing the contagious enthusiasm of the athletic field.. *.
" It is a stimulus to young men to be associated in the class-room with girls; and it is good
for girls to have contact with the wholesome,
out-of-door energies of young men.
" It is also accounted a danger of coeduca



SWARTHMOREii


161


tion that social life among the students may be
too absorbing. As in the home, so in the coeducational college, this is a matter to be carefully
directed, and wisely controlled. Rational provision must be made for the gratification of the
natural desire of young people for social enjoyments. This rational provision does not mean
a round of social pleasures such as make studentlife impossible at home, and threaten the health
of young men and women alike. It means stated
times and places for social intercourse, wholly
subordinated to the main purpose of the college.
Young people are rational creatures, ' easy to be
entreated ' by sympathetic leadership, seeing for
themselves that the chief advantage of community-living for students, is the arrangement of
everything to contribute to their success as
students; is their protection from themselves
during the period when inclination and outside
demands combine 'to lead them away from earnest study. As in the home, so in the coeducational
college there must be such presentation of the
noblest relations of men and women, as to check
the growth of unwholesome sentiment, and to
I I




162 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
secure the permanent good of intercourse upon
a plane of f rank sincerity. It is true that marriage is occasionally an ultimate, but never premature result of student life at Swarthmore..*
Class-room association reveals young people to
each other as they are, having power to dispel
illusions, to wither affectations, to uncover insincerities, and to fix standards of judgment that
are of life long value."
Therein did Mrs. Bond answer the questioners of her day. Therein also did she answer in a
strangely far-seeing fashion the very different
question that even yet pursues education as it has
done for generations. She saw the problem that
has disturbed many observers as to the consequences to society of acquiring much learning.
It is the fear recently restated in an Atlantic
Monthly of 1926 by Dr. Loui's I. Dublin, a fear
that the increasing years given to education
especially by women will result in late marriages
and f ew children to what should be the best
parents of the race. Doctor Dublin's solution
might almost have been taken directly from




SWARTHMORE


163


Dean Bond's paper. His is a modern phrasing
of precisely the same advantages of coeducation.
He also gives expression to a growing feeling
that the solution of the problems of how to
combine women's desire for education and professional life with family-rearing, and how to
overcome men's fear of offering marriage until
they have reached some success, lie in coeducation for the reasons that are Mrs. Bond's own.
Wholesome companionship encourages young
people to start early together. It also should
give both men and women a reasonable view of
the whole question of women's professional work.
Certainly at Swarthmore no man who had ever
known Dean Bond could argue that a career
necessarily interfered with the home-making
ability or the charm of a woman, just as no
woman who had ever been influenced by her
could doubt that home-making was more fundamental and more filled with satisfaction than a
career, even though it were the latter that made
the home possible.
Thus by the model of her own personality,




164 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
by her teaching and her guidance Dean Bond
accomplished an almost perfect adjustment of
coeducation at Swarthmore. Between the men
and women whom her spirit touched there
has always remained whole-hearted, straightforward friendship.
The " presentation of the noblest relations"
in all phases of college life was her genius and
her victory,




CHAPTER VI


SWARTHMORE
DOCTOR AYDELOTTE, President of Swarthmore, once remarked, "The most important
quality which a teacher has is the quality of his
mind, not his pedagogical skill. Education is
contagion." He might well have been describing Swarthmore's first dean, for it was precisely
by contagion that she imparted another of her
great contributions to student life, the thing we
call culture. It was the infectiousness of her
love of knowledge that made her a real part of
the instruction given by the college, though she
was a teacher without portfolio. Not by classroom work but by constant incidental opportunity she gave the students the richer furnishing of the mind, the wider horizon of the spirit
that are the essence of education. In their chosen
subjects the young people did intensive work;
from Mrs. Bond they learned the extensive possibilities in other fields. Hers it was to suggest
165




166 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
the breadth of knowledge as class work showed
the depth.
Yet to her mind this was less an aim in itself
than a means of fostering those right relationships which were the core of her deanship. She
was able to create relations throughout the college that made discipline easy and coeducation
successful, in part because of her own intellectual and spiritual gifts which she shared freely
with the whole community. She offered the
students a richer life. They accepted it gladly.
They were drawn more closely to the dean. The
dean dealt more easily with them. It was a
beneficent circle.
Wide intellectual enjoyments Mrs. Bond
opened to her students in many ways. One of
the simplest was her sharing with them her own
abundant joy in everyday things. The visible
beauty of the snow, the stars, the changing seasons always stimulated her mind into a longing
to pursue the sciences and the philosophies that
dealt with them. She pointed out these implications in little things, and at the same time
taught their lovableness.




SWARTHMORE         6


167


When one spring (1898) a pair of robins
built on the window-sill of her parlor their small
home-making became an aff air of intense interest to their landlady, and thus to the students.
The window was kept closed f or weeks so that
the birds should not be disturbed, and all
of Robina's activities in family-rearing were
watched and noted. Almost the fledglings' diet
was charted, so absorbing to the college was
their progress. Finally before they abandoned
the nest, Mrs. Bond had a pen and ink drawing
of them made to preserve the memory of their
coming.
Flowers and plant life were so constantly a
delight to Mrs. Bond that with her in mind one
can scarcely speak of them as common things.
But certainly they were an extra- curriculum
subject that the dean presented to all the students. The very first spring that she was at
Swarthmore saw her establishment of a flower
border f rom the door -of her own parlor to the
observatory. Each girl who wished had a portion of it for her own, and for many years the




168 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
care of this bed was one of the dean's special
concerns. Often the young men helped with the
digging and planting, and in many of them a
love of floriculture and work in the soil was
ingrained. Later when the border was done away
with on account of some changes in the campus,
the old tennis court was made over into rose
beds in Mrs. Bond's honor.
After these beds were established, every June
during their flowering Dean Bond gathered arm
loads of roses before breakfast to pile on the
great sof a in the hail called " the Pet," or else
to lay on the dining tables. Often she cut two
hundred or more blooms. Throughout the year
as she was able, she decorated the dining room
with flowers; almost every autumn she had a
" chrysanthemum dinner," and to celebrate winter holidays she used ivy and holly. It was one
of the ways by which she preserved a home-like
atmosphere in the big building. But more than
that, she invested nearly all the flowers or plants
with a significance beyond their immediate
beauty.




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For Mrs. Bond had a great deal of sentiment
about her plants, and cared especially for those
which had associations with people or places
that were dear. She gathered up treasures in
vacation time and planted them on the campus
as happy reminders. This was especially true
of the ivies on Parrish Hall. Some of these were
brought from Vassar but most of them came
from overseas.
Probably on every trip that Mrs. Bond made
to England she had one special and never-forgotten errand. That was to gather from the
most interesting places visited the clippings of
ivy that were to be brought home for Swarthmore. When a cathedral, a ruin, a college of
famous associations was visited-George Herbert's old church at Bemerton was a favoriteMrs. Bond enjoyed its physical loveliness; considered its history. Then duly she searched out
the caretaker and politely asked if she might
take a clipping from the ivy on the walls. Her
orderly care to ask permission, very different
from the desecration by many tourists, enlisted




170 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
the interest of the sexton and he would come
along while just the proper sort of slip was
selected and cut. After the suitable thanks and
amenities, Mrs. Bond wore back to her lodgings
her newest treasure pinned to her frock. There
it was labeled and put into a bottle of water. So
far its progress was easy.
When the time came to move on to new
scenes, especially in rapid travel and even in a
country where hand luggage is plentiful, bottles
of ivy were more of a problem. The bottle must
be emptied; it and its precious contents carried
by Mrs. Bond -herself, who instantly on arriving at a new destination sought water and a
proper window-sill for her nurslings before even
discovering whether her own pillow would be
comfortable. Plant quarantine was not then in
force so there was no question of the ivies' right
to land in America. And when they reached
their future home at Swarthmore they were
reared with greatest care in the window box in
Mrs. Bond's parlor for one or more winters
before being set out in their permanent quarters.




J1.6


yr




-;AM


SW\ARTHM{\ORE IVIES




a




SWARTHMORE'7


171


After the custom of planting class ivies was
established in 1889, many of Mrs. Bond's importations were set out by various Senior classes,
each of which knew the f ull history of the ivy
that bore its name. Indeed nearly all the ivy
planted while Mrs. Bond was, at Swarthmore
had some special association, for some of the
graduates and some of the faculty also adopted
Mrs. Bond's habit and collected specimens for
the college from the places of interest that they
visited.
It was not only to sentiment and tradition
that Dean Bond directed her students' minds.
Significant present-day happenings of many
kinds were brought to their attention. Political
events, the annual exhibitions at the Academy
of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, concerts by the
Boston Symphony, she discussed with them. She
kept them informed as to what Swarthmore
could most profitably adopt from practices that
she observed in other colleges. Her own unflagging enthusiasm for reform movements she tried
to arouse in her young people as new fields of




172 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
action opened up, such as the advancement of
the Negro race or woman's suffrage, then far
from realization and often a subject for scorn.
She frequently urged Whittier's advice to the
young man, "Ally thyself with some great cause."
More important than any of these matters in
the extent of her influence was her presentation
to the students of literary treasure. All her life
the best literature was one of her own greatest
resources. She never stopped studying it. Students saw her on the train reading college textbooks on the classics. The delights she gained
she longed to share with others.
Consequently it was only natural for her to
continue at Swarthmore the habit she had established at Vassar, and which is perhaps associated
with her over the longest number of years, that
of reading aloud. This practice was one of her
most ingratiating ways of introducing to those
about her the best writing of the present and the
past. She invited the girls to bring their mending to a sewing bee in her parlor and while they
stitched, her musical voice accompanied their




SWARTHMORE


173


work with poetry and prose. In the years that
the preparatory school existed she often entertained its boys and girls by reading to them. On
all sorts of other occasions Mrs. Bond quoted the
poets and the sages, keeping the beautiful form
of their thoughts before her young people.
Special emphasis and special interest was
given to this part of her teaching because of her
own acquaintance with authors and thinkers.
She took the students on mental journeys to the
Concord and Boston of her youth, so that they
also shared the emotions and the inspiration of
those days. She made vivid to them the places
up and down England that are the background
for our older literature, she talked of or introduced them to English writers and scholars
whom she knew.
Indeed one of her greatest contributions
toward expanding the students' imagination came
through her summers of travel and through the
wide-thinking people who were her friends.
Her vacations, especially in the old world, were
filled with incident that she stored up to share
with the college.




174


'4DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE


In 1894. she crossed the sea for the first time,
going to Oxford for summer courses at the
University. Miss Ellen Emerson joined her
there for a week, a companionship that gave
classes and walks and social events double enjoyment. The opportunity to study in this possibly most romantic of English towns was a feast
to Mrs. Bond. She could have had no better
introduction to the land that became very dear
to her, nor any better beginning of pictures to
take home to Swarthmore.
In 1897 she traveled on the Continent and
in England with a lively and merry " Party of
Ten," one of the happiest vacations she ever had.
Five of its members were recent graduates of
Swarthmore; in all Mrs. Bond had congenial
friends. The party found her resourceful in
trying circumstances, keen to appreciate, quick
to enjoy; hers were the most frequent offerings
of historical and literary connotations to the
landmarks visited; her humor was always near
the surface. When they were in Scotland the
group gave Mrs. Bond a present. Not to be out



.SWARTHM ORE


'75


done, Mrs. Bond recalled the incident to them
a few years later thus,
It happened once in Edinboro town
Some maids and matrons gladly set them down
In " Cousin Rachel's" roo-m, to see surprise
Upon the face of one "pour dame " up-rise,
When suddenly there oped before her eye
A beautiful umbrell' to keep her dry!
The beautiful umbrella served its day,
And then began to slowly wear away;
But ere it quite had worn itself to rags
The " pour dame " made it into little bags.
Like bread that's cast in faith upon the main,
The nine have now their kind thought back again,
And brightest colors try in vain to show
The gratitude the " pour dame " still doth owe.
The whole party attended for several days
the Friends' Summer School at Scarborough.
At the closing meeting Dean Bond's impressive
speech drew forth a cordial response from their
hosts which echoed the welcome the group had
had throughout their stay. Mrs. Bond had introduced Swarthmore as favorably to Scarborough
as a few months later she interpreted English
Friends to her own college.
The following summer Mrs. Bond joined




176  DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
Mr. and Mrs. Aaron M. Powell in attending
the International Congress for Social Purity in
London. Mr. Powell after the abolition of
slavery had turned his time and ability to this
reform movement, and traveled extensively in
its behalf. Mrs. Bond herself was deeply interested in the subject. She often brought it before
groups of students, and she stored up the encouragement and significance of this great meeting
to impress upon Swarthmore.
At the close of the convention Dean Bond
and Mr. and Mrs. Powell had almost two
months of leisure together in England and Wales
where they were repeatedly entertained by the
unselfish workers for the " New Abolition "who
were Mr. Powell's friends.
In the course of their journeying Mrs. Bond
found particular pleasure in meeting Canon and
Mrs. Rawnsley in Keswick. This was a literary
interlude. The Canon, Vicar of Crosthwaite,
among whose later friends was Woodrow Wilson, was a delightful gentleman and a fine type
of English divine. Mrs. Bond had enjoyed his
preaching on previous visits to Keswick. She




SWARTHMORE


i77


knew that he had a predilection for writing and
was something of a poet. His book on Literary
Association with the Lakes she was now reading. Meeting her and discovering her interest,
he gave her great happiness by showing her his
own Southey and Wordsworth mementos, including a complete manuscript of Southey's.
His excellent sermons, the hospitality of his wife
and sister at the Vicarage, the opportunity to
increase her knowledge of this part of England,
made the Keswick fortnight a memorable one
to Dean Bond.
Canon Rawnsley in the course of his conversation with her asked a great deal about
coeducation and showed much interest in its
problems and its advantages. The next year
when he was visiting in America he followed up
a desultory correspondence with Mrs. Bond by
coming to Swarthmore to observe the college for
himself. The dean was as proud of the community that she could show him as she was happy
to introduce the distinguished clergyman to her
young people.
12




178 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
Adaptability to many types of mind was one
of Dean Bond's gifts and power to attract them
one of her endowments. On the voyage to England in 1903 the company of Ben Greet players
who were aboard almost at once made friends
with Mrs. Bond. They had been touring the
United States and Canada in Every man: perhaps it was just because she was not every woman
that a number of them found so much, pleasure
in her society. Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy and several others had frequent talks with her as the
ship progressed, and Mrs. Bond found them
charming.
This visit to England held less travel than
usual and more visiting but it was as full as any
other of treasure for Swarthmore. At Woodbrooke there was opening in 1903 a new school
for religious and social teaching. As the yearround successor to several summer schools it was
starting on a career that has since given ample
justification to the hopes of its founders. At the
beginning of its first term Mrs. Bond, who had
already become known to a number of promi



SWARTHMORE'7


179


nent English Friends in previous years, was an
honored and notable American visitor. She gave
a paper on her personal recollections of Mr.
Emerson and other well-known New Englanders, and " her kindly face and beautif ul voice "
were recognized as an appreciable addition to
the address. Her quiet bearing, gracious manner and active mind were by no means lost on
this group of intellectuals,'and the representative
of the American college widened her acquaintance until it included most of the leaders of
English Quakerism. When these Friends came
to America many of them made a point of visiting Swarthmore just because of their friendship
with Mrs. Bond. It was her great pleasure to
be able to entertain them here, where students
could meet and learn to enjoy these accomplished
citizens of another nation.
The summers interspersed between the ones
of foreign travel were largely spent with relatives and in renewing the associations with New
England.
Mrs. Bond's brother, George T. Powell, was




18o DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
living at the old homestead in Ghent, still the
center of interest for all the Powell f amily. Mr.
Powell had conducted significant experiments
with apple raising, had become prominent in
the county and state agricultural societies, and
in the New York State Dairymen's Association.
He organized agricultural courses for farmers
that were later taken over by Cornell University
as part of its extension work, he lectured to
farmers7 institutes and to agricultural colleges
over several states, he arranged two courses of
popular lectures at Columbia, at several of which
he was the speaker. He delivered a course of
several lectures at Swarthmore especially for
the students in chemistry and biology on the
properties of the soil and other agricultural
problems. Mrs. Bond in her visits at Ghent invariably took the keenest interest in all Mr.
Powell's experiments.
Members of the Bond family gradually
moved away f rom Florence or Northampton and
toward the vicinity of Boston, increasing the
ties there. Every summer that Mrs. Bond spent




SWARTHMOREii


181


in America took her to this scene of many associations where visits with her husband's relatives
were mingled with the refreshing of old friendships. Intimates of " abolition " times were
kept in touch with and a f ew days in Concord with Miss Ellen Emerson were almost
always arranged.
In the last failing years of her father's life
Miss Ellen had been his constant companion and
the emissary between his clouding memory and
the world. After his death in 1882 Miss Ellen
for ten years longer took tender care of her
mother. Mrs. Bond was devoted to Mrs. Emerson. She described her as gentle, queenly, ever
more fragile, ever constant to the " plain living
and high thinking " that had always characterized her, the sanctuary of the Emerson house in
these years. Her black gown and her plain illusion cap, its long tabs tied under the chin with
blue ribbons, made a fitting frame to her pale
f ace and dark eyes. She was ninety years old
when she died.
Through all the changes that the years




i8:z DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
brought in the Emerson home, Mrs. Bond continued her visits there. While they were never
longer than a f ew days at a time, they were remarkably rich in satisfaction, no less so when
Miss Ellen lived alone than in the days of her
parents' lifetime.
For Miss Emerson lived on in her parents7
house until nearly the close of her life, becoming
herself a notable figure in Concord. White hair,
a kind and highly intellectual face, a plain dress,
a cheerful manner went to make up the vigorous
presence that all the town called " dear Miss
Ellen." She liked to invite groups of her fellowcitizens to picnics on her lawn in berry season.
Early in the year they would be parties with
strawberries, later blackberries or huckleberries
that she and a few friends, or possibly the whole
number, had picked. These festivities especially
pleased the children of whom Miss Emerson
was very fond. She herself loved gathering the
fruit, and even when no party at home was projected, she often entertained Mrs. Bond with an
excursion to search for berries. She drove her




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guest and any others who might also join them
past the pines that Thoreau planted and Walden
Pond to the field of their harvest, where more
than berries were garnered.
Along with the filled pails they brought
away, Mrs. Bond told Swarthmore, "the memory
of all the charms that cluster about huckleberry
bushes. There was the sweet-fern growing close
by; the fragrant spruces and pines getting a
start; the exquisite cup-mosses putting on their
touches of scarlet; gay butterflies flirting here
and there in the sunshine; the notes of birds in
the more distant trees; the summer sky with its
masses of white and gray cloud against the blue;
the cheerful solitude of the place; the near
neighborhood of Walden so frutiful of thought.
And then the 'best was yet to be.' For when
our kind mentor said we had devoted ourselves
long enough to huckleberries, we were led
'through brake, through brier' a sharp climb
up the ledge, which was her father's very favorite walk with his children. Here was the 'garden' which Emerson celebrated in these verses:




184 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
if I could put my woods in song
And tell what's there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void.
In my plot no tulips blow,-.
Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;
And rank the savage maples grow
From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red.
My garden is a forest ledge,
'Which older forests bound;
The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,
Then plunge to depths profound,
"Huckleberrying may quicken the pulses
with youthful enthusiasm; but a deeper chord
is touched when one stands where Emerson
loved to stand, 'with Walden's haunted wave'
just below and glimmering through the trees;
the tranquil village embowered in elms, and on
the horizon a glimpse of blue Wachusett."
Besides berry parties Mrs. Bond enjoyed
tranquil hours of reading and sewing at Miss
Emerson's or rowing on the leisurely Concord
River; and an always precious privilege indoors
was the quiet library where books, pictures, even
its calendar remained unchanged from the day






MISS ELLEN EMERSON, FROM THE PORTRAIT BY CHARLES W HUDSON








I


SWARTHMORE               185
that its master left it. One year Mrs. Bond's
stay coincided with the painting of Miss Emerson's portrait by Charles W. Hudson. Mrs. Bond
helped with the preparations, read aloud during
the sittings, and otherwise lightened what was a
somewhat tedious performance for Miss Ellen.
Whatever the importance of Mrs. Bond's presence and efforts, the result was uncommonly
successful. The painter seized the character of
his subject and made the likeness a living thing.
A photograph of the portrait sent by Mr. Hudson to Mrs. Bond she always kept before her,
so close to her it brought her friend. Through
that picture many Swarthmore friends of Mrs.
Bond's who had never seen Miss Emerson
learned to feel acquainted with its high-souled
original.
Some of the Swarthmore students did have
opportunity to meet Miss Emerson personally at
the college as well as to enjoy her through the
dean's accounts. In 1898 Miss Ellen attended
Swarthmore commencement and in the few days
of her visit the undergraduates found her as




186 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
simple, approachable, and unaffected as Dean
Bond had always done.
On her last visit to Miss Emerson in September of 1908 Mrs. Bond could not fail to note
the increasing feebleness of her friend, and on
January 14, 1909, "dear Miss Ellen" died at
her sister's home.
A memorial sermon paid tribute to a life that
"combined so beautifully truth with love, inner
rectitude with outward benevolence " and Mrs.
Bond's own acute testimony is, "She has not
written books, nor made pictures nor statues;
but she has lived the best that is in books and
in the artist's achievements, and her goodness
and the grace of her soul have entered into
many souls."
She is buried to the right of her father, her
mother on his lef t. The low marker of green
stone, to Ellen Tucker Emerson, has a cluster
of morning-glory blossoms carved in low relief.
On its reverse is cut: " She loved her town. She
lived the simple and hardy life of old New England but exercised a wide and joyful hospitality,
and she eagerly helped others. Of a fine mind




SWARTHMORE18


187


she cared more f or persons than books and her
f aith drew out the best in those around her."
Any mention of Mrs. Bond's friendships
brings to mind one known to all of her students,
one that held f or the dean herself more than
sixty years of happy intimacy, that with Sarah
March Nowell. Begun in the Nowell home in
Cambridge where in her young womanhood
Mrs. Bond was almost another daughter, the
years of its closest relationship were all but identical with the years of Mrs. Bond's most important work. Not only did these two women enjoy
each other's congenial minds, they shared the
same field of activity, the same interests, the
same problems. Miss Nowell was appointed in
1888 Librarian of Swarthmore College where
she remained until 19o6.
She was a woman of fine mental abilities and
wide horizons; her background gave her an interest in movements for human betterment. She
had the rare quality of an unselfishness as complete perhaps as human nature can attain, giving
her life to her family and friends. Mrs. Bond
has called her one of the loveliest souls that ever




188 DEAN BOND OF SWARTJJMORE
lived, and to Mrs. Bond she was in all but the
tie of blood a sister. They worked together as
one person and Miss Nowell's counsel was a
support to the dean in building up the college
life she strove for, as her friend's sympathy was
a comfort in the perplexities that inevitably
beset her.
While of too retiring a disposition to assume a conspicuous place at Swarthmore, Miss
Nowell's quiet presence was always welcome
and her influence was deeply f elt. She had a
distinct gif t of expression and was able to deck
with beauty the wording of her thoughts. On
Mrs. Bond's fiftieth birthday Miss Nowell sent
a charming message to her dear " Lizzie ":
Dearest L. My heart is thankful tonight as I think of
your birthday, and I long to weave into a new poem all the
fair and fitting thoughts that cluster around the Letter L,
your name, and the number of your years. Love and Light
and Learning belong there-and the heart" at Leisure from
itself ' and the Law of the Lord so sweetly and clearly exemplified that it has been a Lamp unto the feet of many.
Conny and I did not think of it as symbolic when we
chose this little sketch to mark the day and speak our love,
but, dear one, it is true that your daily life is a clear and shining light, a guide past the rocks to the harbor that is peace.




SWARTHMORE


I89


Remembering this, my precious friend, you will be glad
with the many hearts you have made glad since you lighted
on this terrestial ball so many years ago?
Yours with fond love, S.
And for another of Dean Bond's birthdays
came this note:
When I found Luini's " Madonna of the Rose Hedge,"
I knew it belonged to her, My Rose among women! Fragrance attends her-Peace and Beauty spring where her footsteps fall. I wear her in my heart!
A portrait of Miss Nowell painted by her
sister Miss Constance Nowell hangs in the
Swarthmore Library, an accurate and satisfying
likeness to all who remember her.
Even beyond the border of her own friendships Mrs. Bond brought the students into touch
with prominent people. As dean she was the
hostess for the invited guests of the college.
There were of course many distinguished persons who arrived either to give special lectures
or merely to observe the institution. Mrs. Bond's
reception of them was an object lesson to the
students and a pleasure to the strangers, for she
created a remarkably happy impression upon
the visitors. The undergraduates were proud of




190 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
the dean's ability to welcome guests perfectly,
and while they watched her they saw further
into the reaches of social grace.
Moreover Mrs. Bond made opportunity for
the young men and women to meet personally
these prominent people. Often after a visitor
had finished his address, Mrs. Bond gave a small
reception for him, and introduced him to the
faculty and to such chosen students as would
especially profit by the occasion. Sometimes it
was the Senior class, sometimes those taking
courses allied to the subject of the lecture. Whoever they might be the undergraduates who were
thus invited to the dean's parlor had a prized
opportunity to meet eminent guests.
At such times the young people had the advantage of being already at ease with their own
professors. Swarthmore students had then, as
they always have had, an intimate contact with
the heads of departments as well as with junior
instructors, due partly to the small size of the
college, partly to a definite fostering of close
relations. Mrs. Bond's informal receptions
brought together under especially congenial con



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ditions students and faculty with the distinguished outsider who was their particular
interest.
Among the many who, besides Canon Rawnsley and Miss Emerson, saw Swarthmore under
Mrs. Bond's hospitable care were Julia Ward
Howe, Richard G. Moulton, Anna Howard
Shaw, Alice Stone Blackwell, Hudson Shaw,
Jane Addams, Rendall Harris, Carrie Chapman Catt, Hamilton Mabie, Andrew D. White,
David Starr Jordan.
Of two other visitors to the college there
must be special mention. The first is Mrs.
Bond's brother, Aaron M. Powell. As has been
already said, Mr. Powell after the emancipation of the slaves had turned to a yet more difficult reform field, the cause of social purity. In
its behalf he sometimes came to Swarthmore.
For his type of work Mr. Powell had one of the
greatest assests that any reformer can have-a
gentle, well-bred manner combined with perfect social poise, making him always the suave
master of any situation. He was not an orator
but he was a very logical speaker who won the




192 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
confidence of his hearers. He did not ride his
hobby at every opportunity, scarcely mentioning his dearest interests unless directly invited
to, yet he was the acknowledged leader of a cause
that had few open champions. Swarthmore Students found in him a straightforward adviser to
whom they were always willing to listen. His
sudden death in 1899 occurred when he was in
the very midst of his work. For Mrs. Bond this
heavy loss severed a tie of unusual devotion that
had never lessened since her childhood.
The second special guest was Percy Bigland,
a young English painter, who spent several
months in the United States in 1903-04, coming to Swarthmore especially to execute the
portrait of Dean Bond. The visits of the spirited,
enthusiastic artist to Swarthmore were enjoyed
by faculty, students, and townspeople alike.
Mrs. Bond and the painter had many friends
in common in England, so that the hours in the
improvised studio, the dean's own parlor, were
a lively pleasure to both. Mrs. Bond herself
has described her sessions with Mr. Bigland.
" It is most interesting to watch his methods.




pI


PORTRAIT OF MRS. BOND BY PERCY BIGLAND








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Now and then he falls into monologue, 'Now
my boy be quick, be quick! ' ' What a donkey,
P. B.I' 'That's beautiful, my dear boy!' We
have had four or five hours to-day..... I make
tea in the afternoon over my parlor gas when he
likes to stop for it."
During his visit Mr. Bigland gave a lecture
to the college on the art treasures in Madrid, and
several times read and spoke to the students at
Collection. He took undisguised interest in
Swarthmore and its customs, he enjoyed having
an occasional passerby drop in on him at work.
When he finished the painting and went away,
his cheery presence was missed everywhere.
The portrait, which had been arranged for
and contributed by a number of graduates, gave
general satisfaction. It now hangs above the
platform in Collection Hall, where it has joined
the ranks of several fine paintings already there.
By pointing out enduring satisfactions in
everyday things, by sharing her love of literature, by imparting the stimulus of travel and by
introducing many interesting people to the students, Dean Bond widened greatly the mental
13




194 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHIMORE
outlook of her young people. But this was not
yet enough. She wanted also to give them consciousness of spiritual values. She wanted the
knowledge they were gaining to be brought to
its highest worth by impregnating it with living
idealism. For she loved her college sons and
daughters: she must not let them lose the great
balance wheel of life.
This part of her teaching, underlying all the
rest as an expression of right relations, Mrs.
Bond emphasized in two particular opportunities. One was at Collection, one was at Sunday
morning Meeting. Collection corresponded
roughly to chapel exercises in other colleges.
The students gathered before classes on week
day mornings for very simple exercises-a reading from the Bible with usually some comment
by the president or dean, a space of quiet
meditation, the necessary announcements. Mrs.
Bond sometimes chose other than Bible passages,
reading from a poet or essayist, often Emerson.
The remarks that she made afterwards were
slowly spoken so that each word was given
weight. Her sentences had purpose and pene



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tration that made a real impression without the
students' feeling that the dean was " preachy."
Mrs. Bond valued these few minutes very much
for she explained to one of her English friends,
" Every other morning at our assembling for
Scripture reading I am the reader, and this gives
me a very vital connection with the two hundred
and thirty students."
Dean Bond's second and more important contribution to the students' religious life was the
succession of messages at the beginning of meetings for worship.
For many years the students were all required to attend Friends' Meeting on Sunday
morning, and even after the rule was abandoned
a large number went from choice. On frequent
Sundays as she entered the meeting house Mrs.
Bond had in her hand a little white paper. It
was a sign that the students looked for eagerly.
Then a few minutes after the opening quiet, the
dean rose and spoke from her notes in a manner
that took a very real hold on the minds of her
hearers. Her papers were by no means elaborated to the point of being sermons, but they




196 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
were suggestive and thoughtful. She tied a religion of aspiration and spirituality immediately to the everyday life of the undergraduates
by using the symbols and the language of their
regular work and sport and comradeship. Certainly she clearly understood the mind of the
young person of those generations and spoke so
directly to it that many students found in her
short talks the most impressive part of all
her work.
A number of these papers were gathered up
into two small volumes called Words by the Way
which have been valued wherever Mrs. Bond
gave them. Perhaps if any one thing might be
singled out as the most typical expression of
the dean's personality, these Sunday morning
" Words " should be chosen, for her ideals thus
expressed permeated the whole commonwealth
of the college.
There was plenty of variety in them. She
dealt with the small habits of courtesy an'd
thoughtfulness that make so great a part of
Christian living; with steadfastness and with
joy; with keeping clean the heart; with prayer;




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with praise. " How many things there are to
draw our stumbling steps toward God! The
earth is full of his glory. The strength of his
hills, the radiance of his sunshine, the beneficence of his flowers-all these things are daily
ministers to us if only our souls are open to
receive the message. But more than the ministry
of mountains and hills and flowers is the ministry of human souls, the children of God..."
She spoke then from her inmost heart, for deeply
as she loved the face of nature, the young people
around her were her greatest and never-failing
joy. She longed to have them learn to perceive
and love the things that are eternal, and she
taught them the very axis of her own life when
she bade them leave the shallows and obey as
Simon did the command of Jesus to " launch out
into the deep."
That the students responded to the genuineness of the dean's affection for them was inevitable. Perhaps the most human way in which
they showed it was by their all but unanimous
insistence after they left college that she come
to their weddings. A rough record that she kept




198 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
showed near the end of her life approximately
ninety of these summons from her Swarthmore
friends. She was often the most important guest
of all, and it seemed, as if they could scarcely
consider their marriages consummated unless
she witnessed them. Especially those conducted
in the manner of Friends she loved to attend.
For out of the silences that sealed the life-long
vows Mrs. Bond's voice would lift in tender
blessing, and the benediction that she spoke each
bride and groom knew came from an experience
of marriage that had been ideal because its
principals had willed it so.
Within the college also there were pledges
offered to the things that Mrs. Bond did and was
at Swarthmore. When she had been there ten
years, the students of that decade felt that some
recognition of the event was necessary and they
purchased a group of large pictures to be placed
in the corridors of Parrish Hall. With the pictures came the following letter:
Members and ex-members of the graduating classes, '87 -'96, have felt the desire to show in some outward and permanent way their appreciation of the privilege they feel it to have
been to have lived their college lives under the influence of




SWARTHMORE'9


igg


Dean Elizabeth Powell Bond. At this twenty-fif th College
Commencement, and the completion of the eleventh year of
her untiring and loving service at Swarthmore, as a tribute
of their affection to her, they place in the college corrjidors a
series of pictures, copies of the world's masterpieces,
While expressing admiration for the high ideals which
she has taught by her words, and by the atmosphere she
spreads around her, may these works of art also lend to all
Swarthmore students who shall henceforth have them as daily
companions inspiration to beautiful thoughts and noble living, thus furthering the service to which Dean Bond's life
itself is consecrated.
In 1897 Mrs. Bond was given an honorary
A.M. degree by the college, and in 1901 she was
elected an honorary member of the Phi Beta
Kappa Society; tributes to her literary gifts and
tastes in part, but even more a conscious acknowledgment of the role she played in enriching the
intellectual life of the college. Such gifts and
honors were the outward proof of the dean's
success in making real this special element in
her first ideal.
Another and less academic compliment to
the dean was the friendship calendar arranged
by a f ew Swarthmore alumnae in 1897. On its
365 pages scores and scores of her f riends f ar




200 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
and wide inscribed quoted or original messages
filled with loving praise. Many sent appropriate
quotations concerning the things she cared for,
but the larger part could not resist the opportu.nity for some tribute to herself. Two of the
sheets are interesting especially for their associations with years long past. The first is signed
by a son of the famous abolitionist:
An atmosphere of love and light
Surrounds our friend from morn till night;
By her sweet spirit hearts are fed,
Discouraged souls to f aith are led;
Unmindful oft of strength and health
Of others' Joys consists her wealth,
A Bond is she, More felt than seen,
Uniting us to Swarthmore's Dean.
William Lloyd Garrison
Ellen Wright Garrison.
And a valiant crusader in her 77th year
wrote:
Perfect equality of rights for women-civil and political
-is the demand of your sincere friend and co-worker-who
with pleasantest memories of the dear olden days and Lizzie
Powell is still and forever
Susan B. Anthony.




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The last years of Mrs. Bond's term at
Swarthmore showed a college of very different
aspect from the community of 1886. New buildings had been erected: Somerville Hall, a gymnasium for women, in 1893; the William J. Hall
Gymnasium for men in 1898; Wharton Hall, a
dormitory for the men students opened to them
in 1904; and the Chemistry Building, also added
to the college in 1904. The number of departments and the size of the faculty had increased
very considerably. The undergraduates had
come to number above 300, more than two and a
half times the size of the college group when
Mrs. Bond came. The life of the students was
enormously broader and fuller than it had been
twenty years before.
With President Swain's inauguration in 1902
came a number of changes. The endowment of
the college was increased by a fund that reached
$6oo,ooo at its completion in 1905, making the
total endowment funds of the college $ i,ooo,ooo.
Entrance requirements were raised for prospective Freshmen, a retirement rule was imposed on
the faculty. In the subsequent years of Doctor




202 DEAN BOND OF SWARTLIMORE
Swain's administration many large gifts were
added to the college resources, and a period of
expansion was begun.
In all of these new and great advantages for
Swarthmore Mrs. Bond was intensely interested. Her heart was in everything that meant
the welfare and enhancement of the college.
But the pushing of these projects belonged of
course to the president. Her own part continued
to be teaching students the union of alert mind,
gracious behavior, and sane self-control. Even
the somewhat more restive and independent
young people saw the manifestation that she herself made and were conquered. All of them
were molded by the ideals that the dean held
before them-nobility, courtesy, earnestness,
simplicity.
Commencement day of 1906 was the last one
in which Mrs. Bond took part as a member of
the faculty. She had passed her sixty-fif th birthday in January; she had finished twenty active
years of unstinted service to the college. She
had held a high position with the reasonableness
of a finely-tempered mind and with the charm




SWARTHMOR E20


203


of a gracious woman. She retired with the title
of Dean Emeritus, secure in the love of hundreds of men and women who can never forget
what she has meant to them personally and
to Swarthmore.
Almost at once a movement started which
raised the Dean Elizabeth Powell Bond Fund,
the principal sum of which was held in trust,
while the income was paid to Mrs. Bond during
her life and since then has been devoted to the
purchase of works in general literature for the
college library. Those who contributed to the
f und were happy in the opportunity to give expression to the immeasurable worth of the service the fund commemorated. One alumnus
apicturesquely phrased the testimony of many
when he said that his contribution could not be
considered the measure of what he personally
thought of Mrs. Bond and the high esteem in
which he had always held her, " for if my subscription were to be graded by what I thought
of her, I should have to send a check f or a
million dollars."
Professor Cunningham also concluded her




2o4


DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE


long years of work for Swarthmore on this same
June day. For thirty-seven years her energetic
forceful personality had been a power in the
college. Doctor Swain said of her that she had
loved Swarthmore more than her own life, of
which she had unsparingly given, and been
ready in season and out of season to serve the
college. She also took with her the title of
Emeritus Professor. The president paid a real
tribute to the "two gifted women " who were
leaving Swarthmore when he said: "As a geologist does not need to have stood by the sea-coast
during its formation to know by what agencies
and forces it was formed, so the observer of today can see the marks for good that'these two
women have made on Swarthmore's children in
the years that are gone. They have had a noble
and abiding influence on the college." With
neither of them did this influence stop with
the severance of her active appointment. Miss
Cunningham maintained her lively interest in
all Swarthmore's affairs until her death. Mrs.
Bond's heart could never be divorced from the
scene of such happy labor, and many, many




SWARTHMORE20


205


visits continued to keep her in touch with the
friends of former years and to some extent with
new generations of undergraduates.
To them all she has stood always as they saw
her on the thirteenth of June, 1906, a figure of
modest and simple bearing, moving with calm
serenity; a face whose steady gaze indicated the
bright soul within where reality dwelt.
Highly as she was regarded by those from
whose midst she stepped that day, the real value
of her service to Swarthmore can be even better
reckoned now. We, with longer view, see her a
builder for the college in social adjustments and
in mental development; the transition between
a superimposed authority over students and the
freedom of self-government; the guiding hand
in a type of coeducation that may well be the
model of the future; the magnetic apostle of the
wider ranges of mind and spirit. We see how
skilfully she welded all these elements into a
rightly adjusted community.
Alongside that great accomplishment stands
one thing more. What Mrs. Bond was herself
in personality lives in the imagination of the




206 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
college until it has grown into one of Swarthmore's ideals. Never has Swarthmore forgotten
the demonstration 'it witnessed of a character
that seized upon opportunities with enthusiasm,
never with complaceny; that cared deeply about
great human problems and Joined with others to
solve them, yet at the same time had a poet's
sensitiveness to and absorption in beauty; that
brought to bear on each new task all the resources that life had offered her, social, professional, or emotional, yet whose touch remained
light; that had force combined with an equable
disposition; that above all else had the outgoing
power of wide and generous love.
Elizabeth Powell Bond, first dean of Swarthmore, takes her place among its ablest officers.
She also takes her place in the chiefest shrine of
Swarthmore's heart.




CHAPTER VII


MOTHER EMERITUS
"YEARS of retirement "-what a sense of
anti-climax the words suggest. How general is
the feeling that retired people must settle down
to a rather disconsolate existence of unimportant
time-fillers and of longing for the old activities.
No such idea ever occurred to Mrs. Bond.
To her mind old age should be prepared for
by having hobbies and interests necessarily
somewhat repressed in busier years but ready
for cultivation later. In a world full of delights,
certainly there are many suitable for lessened
strength. One of the last times Mrs. Bond spoke
to the students at Swarthmore this was her subject. In 1921 when she asked for a few minutes
at collection, some of the faculty wondered what
a frail old woman could find to say that would
hold the restless youth of a very different generation. She rose and slowly said in her distinct
low voice, " Young men and young women, you
are in college not to learn how to make a living.
207




2.o8 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
You are in college to learn how to live when you
are eighty years old." She began her own eighth
decade in a world to her still rich and fruitful.
Until she left Swarthmore, Mrs. Bond's life
had held a succession of rather sharply divided
activities. Her girlhood had been filled with the
abolition movement. In her twenties she had
made her acquaintance with Concord, shared in
the beginnings of Vassar College, and tried religious teaching at Florence. In her thirties
came her experience of the greatest of human
joys and griefs in the founding and breaking up
of her own home. At forty-five in an entirely
new environment with a new problem she began
her most important and far-reaching contribution to society. At sixty-five, released from the
absorbing work of twenty years, she was able to
turn back to the interests of earlier days, resume
work for them in one form or another, at the
same time maintaining her unceasing devotion
to Swarthmore. The last quarter of her life embraced all the other three.
Actual plans for the future were not immediately plain before her 'in June of 1906; at first




Al~4~.4


IL


7A


MRS. BOND IN A FLOWER GARDEN








MOTHER EMERITUS20


209


she needed time for rest and readjustment. So
she went to her son's home for a year, had enormous pleasure in the intimate acquaintance of
her two young grandsons, visited friends and
relatives, attended conventions and meetings in
which she often took part, and made many trips
back to Swarthmore where she was eagerly welcomed alike to the campus and to many homes
surrounding it.
In midsummer of 1907 she went abroad for
six months. This was her last as well as her
longest trip to Europe. Dr. and Mrs. William
I. Hull of Swarthmore, two of Mrs. Bond's
most devoted friends, had been since the spring
in Holland where Doctor Hull was a news
correspondent at the Hague Conference. He
and his wife had been keeping house at The
Hague with their children and Miss Bertha
Broomell. They had been urging Mrs. Bond to
visit them, knowing how much she would enjoy
the international conferences and the events incidental to them. She arrived the third week
in August.
Then began a very stimulating holiday. For
14




210   DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
ten weeks Mrs. Bond lived with the Hulls, the
days full of interesting persons and events.
Attending the plenary session of the congress
which accepted the report for the establishment
of a permanent tribunal for arbitration was an
important occasion to Mrs. Bond. She was
stirred when at a reception at the American
legation she was introduced to the delegates who
were taking this great international step. She
met delightful Dutch ladies, among them the
daughter of Josef Israels, and again the director
of the National Bureau of Women's Work from
whom she learned much of women's occupations
and interests in Holland.
Mrs. Bond was herself a delegate to the International Conference in Brussels for the protection of girls and women. At its close she
records in her diary, "After the conference nine
of us dined together, Miss Kuhlman of Antwerp,
Mr. Percy W. Bunting of London, Mr. Coote
and Mr. Cohen of London, Mr. Linck of Switzerland, Mr. de Graaf of Utrecht, the Mr.
[Charles] Wagner of Germany and Colonel
Lelyfelk of Denmark. Their conversation was




MOTHER EMERITUS


211


so interesting that when they were questioning
where they should go to smoke, fearing it would
be disagreeable to the ladies, I actually said that
I would rather bear the smoke than lose their
conversation! " This was a real concession from
one whose dislike for tobacco was intense.
On the first of November Mrs. Bond crossed
the Channel for three months in England.
Her first stop was at the home of Mr. and
Mrs. Percy Bigland in Chelsea. The outlook
from their dining and drawing-rooms that although in the city gave upon a garden at once
made her happy. "A miniature Italian garden,"
she says it was, " with low terrace and vases and
walls covered with ivy and white star jessamine."
From this house Mrs. Bond was free to
renew acquaintance with her favorite spots in
London and with old friends. She loved to go
to Westminster Abbey near the end of a service,
at its close continuing to sit by herself in reverie
with the thoughts evoked by the place. She
found a student of Vassar days who had since
become the wife of the illustrious painter, Edwin
A. Abbey. Mr. Abbey was at this time working




212 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
on the decorations for the Pennsylvania State
House at Harrisburg which he did not live to
complete. But his plans as projected and developing were extremely interesting to&Mrs. Bond.
The Biglands also arranged that their guest
should meet and be met by many of their friends
of all types. One evening for instance she was
taken to a working girls' club which Mrs. Bigland had founded. Mrs. Bond spoke as easily
and as entertainingly to these young women as
she did to Swarthmore students. When she had
finished the girls heartily approved Mrs. Bigland's suggestion that they send cordial greetings
to the Swarthmore College women, a witness to
the feeling of unity Mrs. Bond was able to create
in half an hour. Perhaps it was more difficult
for her to give to a gathering of Friends in the
Biglands' own drawing-room a paper on the life
of Elias Hicks, for over this most famous
preacher of the liberal American Friends there
was still some hesitation in England. But the
occasion passed off successfully, for Mrs. Bond's
gentle manner made friends everywhere. Reli



MOTHER EMERITUS


213


gious liberality could have had no more appealing exponent.
When her visit with the Biglands ended she
records "it has been a blessing to be in this
home. And I have enjoyed London as never
before."
Leaving London, Mrs. Bond made a little
pilgrimage among the many families that asked
for part of her time. She stayed at Birmingham
and its outskirts, visiting again the Woodbrooke
school where among the students were half a
dozen American Friends whom she had known
since Swarthmore days. She stopped in Manchester, in York, and in Somerset where one of
her last excursions was to Bemerton. There she
had " a little quiet time in the dear George Herbert Church " and afterwards, as in 1903, called
at the vicarage opposite for a talk with Canon
and Mrs. Warre.
In February of 1908 she returned to America.
Her year of rest from college work, together
with her recent tonic holiday abroad, made her
long for serious activity.
Through the spring and summer that fol



214 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
lowed she came to a decision to make her permanent abode in Philadelphia.* That city had
grown to be the center of the largest number of
Mrs. Bond's friends and interests. There she
would find the constant opportunities for service
that she longed for. Moreover her sister-in-law,
Mrs. Aaron M. Powell, had since her husband's
death been living at the Friends' Home in Germantown. Her presence gave that house a strong
attraction for Mrs. Bond, not only because of
the devoted affection between the two ladies,
but also because of Mrs. Bond's desire now to do
all she could for her widowed sister.
The Friends' Home, Mrs. Bond knew, would
give her a convenient and pleasant habitation.
It had been built, as were several similar ones,
by Miss Anna T. Jeanes, a wealthy Friend who
wished to provide for lonely and elderly people
like herself comfortable,quarters without domestic responsibility. Regular board is paid by all
who live there, and in other ways it differs from
the usual denominational home for the aged.
Miss Jeanes herself lived for a number of years
in the Germantown Home.




MOTHER EMERITUS


215


Mrs. Bond applied for admission requesting
" one of the least desirable rooms; stairs will
not be an obstacle, nor the situation of the room."
It was impossible for her to imagine that she was
a prominent person, deserving special consideration; her only thought was that she was stronger
than some of the others and could more easily
surmount slight inconvenience. In October she
moved in. When she arrived, the Home family
welcomed in Mrs. Bond a member who for the
eighteen years of her residence added more to
its interests and to its spirit than they could possibly have foreseen. For she unfailingly shared
with the Home, many of whose members were
no longer able to get about, her wide experiences
and her broad mental range.
That her activities were varied was to be
expected. Mrs. Bond had come to Philadelphia
ready, anxious, to be at work once more. As to
where her energy should be spent, she had little
definite determination. As all through her life,
her work began with the doing of the nearest
duty, apparently by chance. But if a generous
willingness to serve was her most conscious im



216 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
pulse, unconsciously the objects of her service
were chosen by those great interests which
through the years back to her childhood had
held her loyalty.
Slavery had of course ended, but progress for
the Negroes had been difficult and slow. Their
welfare had remained through all the years close
to Mrs. Bond's heart. Now she was happy to
have time to serve more actively the people who
had been her earliest and her abiding interest.
She attended the meetings of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored
People; she spoke once or twice in colored
churches. It was her great pleasure to take part
in enterprises conducted largely or entirely by
colored people, as a conference of colored teachers, ministers, and social workers where she gave
a paper on Garrison and Phillips; a luncheon
and an* evening meeting at the Berean Manual
Training and. Industrial School in Philadelphia
where she spoke; the opening of the colored
branch of the Y.W.C.A. in Germantown. She
subscribed to the Crisis; she collected all the
newspaper and other accounts she could find




MOTHER EMERITUS27


217


relating to achievements by the Negroes. At
every opportunity she gave public account of the
occasions she attended, of the encouraging progress made by a handicapped people, and pled
for a wider understanding, deeper sympathy,
and increased opportunity for these friends of
hers.
Friends they were, in the real meaning of
the term. There was no condescension in her
attitude toward the colored people, no mere
kindly patronage. She f elt no superiority of her
own blood. To her, difference in the color of
the skin was as nothing beside the common humanity. A sense of the unity of the spirit allowed
her to f eel no bar from external appearance;
and, just as significant, neither did the darker
people feel any slightest bar with her. On both
sides was the recognition of different races to be
sure, but met in mutual respect and full equality.
One young colored man f or whom she had
an especial regard was Leslie Pinckney Hill.
She had first met him as the Harvard classmate
of one of her nephews at the latter's home. Later
Mr. Hill became principal of the Cheyney




218 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
Training School for Teachers, located about
twenty miles from Philadelphia. Several times
Mrs. Bond visited the Cheyney School, where
Mr. Hill and his wife welcomed her as " a benediction." In 1919 she was one of the speakers
at the Commencement exercises, Oswald Garrison Villard the other. Mrs. Bond's message was
exactly what she would have given to any company of graduates: a glimpse of the Vision that
gives meaning to all life, and a plea for the will
to pursue it with steady courage. Mr. Hill
wrote to her afterward that they had never had
a Commencement in a higher key, and that her
address had made a lasting impression.
Several years later at her funeral Mr. Hill
paid a tribute to Mrs. Bond that could not have
come with such force from any other of her
-friends. It is not easy, he said, for an advantaged
people, those who have the kingdom and the
power and the glory of this world, to meet a
disadvantaged and have it a meeting of friends.
But in Mrs. Bond was that spirit-of deep faith,
good. will, patience, belief in the essential good
in all men, acceptance of reciprocal responsi



MOTHER EMERITUS29


2ig


bility-that spirit which reconciles races and
will bring peace to the nations. Mr. Hill succeeded in expressing the very essence of Mrs.
Bond as, she worked through the years for and
with the colored people.
That reconciling spirit and the inner urge
aroused in her youth toward all reform movements also impelled her support to the work for
international peace. In her, as George Fox said
of the early Friends, was the "virtue of that
power that takes away the occasion for all war."
The great conflict of 1914-1918 was to her an
almost incredible outbreak of evil. " What can
I say of the terrible war I-a slaughter of hundred thousands, and broken hearts to match the
slaughter, and all done in the wantonness of ambition for empire-for the aggrandizement of
the military caste! How can it be forgiven to
men!I" And again she writes, " It is bewildering to me that men, made in the' image of God'
it is said, with twenty centuries of Christ's teaching in their blood, can justify the methods of
war for adjusting their relations with one another.. 0. Only an infinite Patience could




220 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
abide the slow development of our race!" She
did her best to create mutual understanding in
her own contacts with people of other nations,
she attended public meetings and conferences,
speaking sometimes and writing often for this
cause of peace.
Indeed the amount of writing that Mrs. Bond
did during these years was very large. Besides
her activity for the colored people and for peace
she wrote extensively in other directions. To her
denominational paper, the Friends' In tel/igencer, she sent editorials, accounts of public
meetings, comments on matters of current interest. Addresses that she gave herself she wrote
out in full beforehand and then read at the
meeting. Her ability to write had been largely
and perhaps originally stimulated by her acquaintance in Concord. Now much of her literary production was reminiscent of her Concord
days, either by quotation from the authors she
knew there, by recollections of them, or by the
general point of view she so often emphasized
of the value of reading the best literature. Most
charmingly of all perhaps she expressed the very




MOTHER EMERITUS22


221


simple pleasures: the courtesy of a passer-by on
the street, or the delight of a vacation spent outof-doors-how she loved it when a microscope
helped her summer botanizing, and a telescope
her star-gazing!I
Because the wisdom garnered of long experience was dressed in uncommonly felicitous form,
her writing was much sought af ter. But it was
almost all done for special occasions which had
momentary rather than permanent importance.
Mrs. Bond could never be persuaded to embark
on literary work of serious proportions. The
two little volumes of Words by the Way written
for Swarthmore students are her only books.
Another of her great gifts, also enlarging
through the years and now offered in a wider
field as more leisure permitted, was even more
obviously the outgrowth of early experience.
This was her gift in religious ministry. Her care
of the congregation at Florence had for a time
centered her attention on the religious life. It
had given her practice in religious expression.
The Society of Friends would probably say that
an equal factor in her preparation for later




222 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
service had been the immediately following experience of her marriage. She had been studying spiritual values. She followed that study
with a great spiritual adventure. From it she
emerged with an understanding of human joy
and pain that was the underlying power in her
ministry.
A full religious ministry in the Society of
Friends consists as in other denominations not
only in public preaching but in offering consolation in trouble and help in perplexity. The
difference between Friends and others lies in the
manner of consecrating and calling the minister.
The Quakers feel that a soul which has been
stirred by deep experience and has thereby
turned to its Lord, is consecrated by and to Him
in a way that makes all ceremony needless.
Everyone may have such consecration, and any
person at one time or another may be called by
the Voice in his own soul to minister to others.
In the meeting for worship preaching is not
arranged in advance, but offered extemporaneously by one or more of the assembly as the
need of those present is felt.




MOTHER EMERITUS


223


Mrs. Bond had travelled far in the way of the
spirit. She sensed the human longing about her;
she spoke to it in wisdom and love. She could
soothe the afflicted and counsel the perplexed.
Her service to her Society increased as she visited
meetings about the country and as she attended
the Germantown meeting and the Sunday evning service in the Home. She never spoke at
great length, nor gave elaborately worked out
discourses; her sermons were simple and brief,
but her quiet voice spoke clear thoughts in a
fashion so charitable that she created the very
atmosphere of worship.
She had an uncommon ability to reach all
types of people. To the older Friends she gave the
words of comfort and peace that those who have
seen much of life often long for. She drew lessons from persons in all walks of life: from
firemen, Negroes, street-sweepers. She begged
for wide charity and an uncritical spirit; she
preached everywhere the simplest religion. She
sometimes told the story of a housemaid who
had "experienced religion." When her mistress asked her how she knew this, she replied,




224 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
"'Because now I always sweep under the rugs.'
We may say the whole day, I believe, I believe,
I believe," commented Mrs. Bond, " without
ever touching the roots of religion; but when
we can say, Now I sweep under the rugs, then
we have reached pure aspiration; we have come
to a sense of the eternal verities! " She loved
the silent worship, to her filled with the Spirit
of God; she was also willing for the sake of
others to give expression to thoughts that the
silence brought.
To little children she spoke just as understandingly as to the older people: it was never
hard for her to recall the childhood of her own
son. Almost to the end of her lif e she was constantly talking to the youngest either in Sunday
School or in meetings for worship, holding their
attention without effort by the stories she told
them. Sometimes she brought flower bulbs to
show them, explained the wonderful processes
of nature, and tied the explanation so skilfully
and so closely to the eternal life-giving power
of God that the children really grasped and remembered the spiritual truth. Then she gave




-4


L


I)


MRS. BOND WXITH AGADIC


ýA-LNA"
A GRANDNIECE








MOTHER EMERITUS


225


the bulbs to the children to raise, and " Mrs.
Bond's flowers " were always specially watched
and watered.
Young mothers asked Mrs. Bond's counsel
for the development of their children's religious
life. Many learned from her how to teach a
child to pray. The plan she offered was so simple
and so logical that even a very young little mind
could grasp it. First she said, let the child repeat
every day at bed time his loves. " I love father,
I love mother, I love sister.. " Then after a
time let him add to these his thankfuls. " I am
thankful for a happy day, I am thankful for all
the fun I've had..." When he has grown used
to the ideas of love and praise he is ready for
the story of the great Love that holds all our
lesser ones, and the Giver of all blessings Who
will hear and help each of His children.
Avoid teaching a child to ask for things in
prayer, cautioned Mrs. Bond. If a very earnest
petition is unanswered, it is hard to explain how
far beyond our wisdom of desire is the Omniscience that sees the beginning and the end. Rather
teach the little one to speak his aspirations. " It
15




226 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
may be that he has to struggle with a quick and
violent temper, and comes to feel deeply the need
f or help to keep this temper under right restraint. And it may be that he would find help
in saying, ' I long to feel so near to my Heavenly
Father that the thought of Him will help me to
keep back the angry words I wish to say.' Or it
may be hard for him to keep to the truth, and he
will be consciously strengthened by saying 'I
know that my Heavenly Father is true, and I
long to be as true as He is 1 '" With these simple
suggestions Mrs. Bond offered broad and firm
foundations for future religious development.
"Very real help," Mrs. Bond says, "in assisting the child's sense of the unseen Power at
work in us and about us, I think can be gained
f rom the growth of flowers. The flowers are so
beautiful and so approachable to the child that
they are easily made to minister to his spiritual
growth. He can take the seed in his own hand
and put it into the earth, and after a little patient
waiting while he gives it water and places it in
the sunshine, he sees the wonderful transformation; not the little brown seed that he planted,




MOTHER EMERITUS27


227


but the beautiful plantlet unfolding leaf after
leaf, then bud and flower before his eyes. He
knows that he did not draw this wonderful and
beautiful thing out of the little brown seed, nor
did his f ather nor mother; and there comes a
right moment in the child's experience to name
the unseen Power-God, by whose law the little
plant is growing, and to associate its beauty with
the love of a f ather. It is a happy memory of
my one experience with a child beyond babyhood, that there came a day in his sixth year
when he said heartily: " I suppose it is God Who
makes the flowers grow.17
On special occasions Mrs. Bond's attendance
was especially sought after in the hope that her
words would be offered. At funerals her consolation was so tender that it always spoke directly
to the hearts in distress, giving even at once a
little ease. At weddings, whither she was bidden
not only by those who had known her in their
student days at Swarthmore, but by other young
couples everywhere, her loving blessing full of
understanding seemed to make the Holy Presence almost visible.




228 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
For none who asked her spiritual help was
it more freely spent nor by any more hungrily
craved than by numbers of her Swarthmore Students. Through all the years they held her in a
very special relationship, close to the very core
of their lives. She might be called a sort of
mother-conf essor. So sure were they of her living
interest and deep understanding that both men
and women brought to her their most vital emotions and ambitions: their awe at the sacredness of
love, their ideals for their work, their shattered,
stricken hearts in grief. Sure of her generous
unmeasured sympathy, they trusted her to lead
them to the promises of God.
Religious service, writing, aid to the Negroes: these were the main lines of Mrs. Bond's
work in the twenty years after her retirement.
Her active work for academic education she
considered finished. Yet of course this field provided a constant source of interest to her: she
attended many meetings having to do with different phases of education, often as a special
guest. She followed Vassar's growth, she kept
somewhat in touch with its later alumnax, espe



MOTHER EMERITUS


229


cially through the Philadelphia Vassar Club,
and she always maintained her warm friendship with many she had known as undergraduates. But naturally Swarthmore's problems and
Swarthmore's development were uppermost in
her mind. She was too big a woman to allow
herself when she left Swarthmore merely to be
laid on one of its reserve shelves for reference.
She had found many other lines of great usefulness. Nevertheless Swarthmore as a growing
college, Swarthmore's graduates both men and
women, held an unrivalled place in her heart.
So also did she in theirs. Women who had
been " her girls " invited her to their reunions
to " speak to them as she used "; she was obviously the most sought after person at alumna!
receptions; at Commencement time she almost
always asked to speak again to the students, at
the last collection.
In June of 1921, fifteen years after she had
left the college, Swarthmore's love for her again
found united expression. The college guest
room was entirely refurnished, altered and reequipped by the women alumnae and ex-students,




230 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
dedicated to Mrs. Bond and presented to her as
her room whenever she came to visit on the
campus. On its manteisheif stood a copy of every
book written by a former student of Swarthmore,
and one of the pictures that had once furnished
Mrs. Bond's "Parlor" was among those on
the walls.
She was very much touched by the ceremony
that accompanied the turning over of the completed room to the college in her name. By way
of expressing her thanks, she proposed planting
a rosebush outside the window in memory of
the day. Everyone thronged outdoors where the
bush was waiting. Disregarding her eighty
years, Mrs. Bond seized the trowel, dug about
in the hole until it was just to her mind, set the
plant, and supervised the whole operation to the
utter delight of the company watching this
wholly characteristic performance.
Now, after her death, Swarthmore is building still more imperishably her name into the
walls of the campus and does new honor to her
memory by naming the new women's student
building for her.




MOTHER EMERITUS


231


Much has been said of Mrs. Bond's graceful
public utterances: she also had one form of
expression that she used f or more personal communication, a habit of putting her thought into
informal verse. Her little poems were one of
the ways in which Mrs. Bond unconsciously gave
that extra touch, that added grace, to everything she did. When some of her friends presented her with a clock, instead of an elaborate
letter of thanks to each giver she sent this:
THE CLOCK
A joy by day, and solace for the night,
Is this bright messenger of love from thee.
The hours it marks, whatever may betide
Are pledged to brightness only love can give;
And in its gentle tones shall sound for me
Dear voices of the daughters of my heart!
A young friend of hers was going abroad.
This was her steamer letter:
Bright skies shine over him,
Gentle winds speed him,
Rainbows touch the wave-crests for him,
Dolphin athletes sport before him,
Kind hearts give cheer to him,
Sweet peace attend him,
God's love return him to his own!




232 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
A policeman who guarded a street corner
near the Home became a great reliance to Mrs.
Bond in crossing the more and more congested
thoroughfare. How many of us would have
thanked him for his protection as she did?
A MEAD OF THANKS
Through wintry blasts and under torrid skies,
He stands at crossing of the crowded ways
A giant strong, quick for sight or sound
Of threatening harm to the glad carefree child
Or timorous age, whose silvered locks
Bring to his lips the gentle word of cheer
"It's all right, mother, now "; then sends her calm
And fearless on her way. May her glad thought
Of filial service prove a winged thought
To find its lodgment in our guardian's heart!
So simple was Mrs. Bond's whole way of
life that she did not encourage expensive outlay
of any kind on her behalf, nor the exchange of
elaborate gifts. The presents that she loved to
send to her friends were slight in themselves
(except perhaps the rosebushes that she often
gave to new babies to grow up with them) but
they were made very personal by the message
that went with them. Sometimes she would
choose a tiny book, interleave it here and there




MOTHER EMERITUS


233


very neatly with a thin sheet of paper on which
was pasted a small kodak picture taken by herself. Then she would underline in ink the lines
on the opposite page that the picture illustrated.
At Christmas time for years she made her own
Christmas cards, pasting a little picture on a
card with an appropriate original verse printed
below it. One of the most charming of these
was a snapshot of tall, bare, arching trees with
the poem,
GOD'S GOTHIC
Doth stately arch of stone-wrought temple turn
Our thought toward high and holy things, toward God?
So do these noble trees, builded of God,
Fringing our garden-skirted hillside, point
With arched boughs, pure Gothic to the skies!
No organ harmonies are heard among
These leafy aisles; but summer's rose-decked morn
And deepening twilight bring the thrush's song,
Tender and sweet, to voice our thankfulness
And bearer be of aspirations pure.
The Architect Divine meets every need!
" God's Gothic " was inspired by, as the illustration was a photograph of, the outlook from
the windows of Mrs. Bond's room, a view across




234


24DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE


the grounds of the Home's domain that she
always loved. The Friends' Home is located on
what is for the city a large tract of land. Behind
the building stretches a formal lawn whose central path is bordered by two splendid beds of
roses, many of them Mrs. Bond's own. Beyond
the lawn a screen of great trees springs f rom a
sharp decline otherwise covered with wild
growth, really a tiny piece of forest, that leads
to the vegetable garden and individual flower
plots below. Each person who wishes it may
have one of these flower beds to grow his or her
favorite plants. Of course Mrs. Bond had one.
The roses above, the wild flowers, the gay mass
of bloom on the lower level made a vairied garden in which it was Mrs. Bond's great pleasure
to work and through which she loved to walk
with her friends.
Within doors she also found great contentment, often speaking of the Home as " the House
of Blessing." Here Mrs. Bond's closest associate among several warm friends was until 1915
Mrs. Aaron M. Powell. Then Mrs. Powell died,




MOTHER EMERITUS


235


leaving a sad emptiness in her sister-in-law's
heart. But by that time the house was so much
home to her that she stayed on, moving into
Mrs. Powell's large corner room, which was hers
for the rest of her life. To those who came to
see her, that room became a sort of sanctuary.
Many there were who' came hungry and went
away filled with peace and contentment, much
as the gray squirrels came expectantly to the
window-sill and found treats of peanuts and
ginger cookies.
As Mrs. Bond grew older, especially after
her one serious illness, in 1916, had reduced her
strength, she withdrew gradually from outside
activities. Even so, she found plenty to occupy
her mind. She says in a letter, " Perhaps I told
you last summer the interest I found in studying
ferns-how I regretted at first that I had allowed
so much of my life to pass without this interest,
but finally was glad that I saved this for an
enthusiasm for old age!" And the same spirit
that was hers from youth is apparent when she
says, " Do you realize that with the New Year




236 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHMORE
I enter the eieghties? That sounds extremely old
to me; but I have but little consciousness of old
age. I have less physical endurance, but mentally and spiritually life has the same zest to me.
This I say with great thankfulness."
If in these later years work outside the Home
had to be curtailed, her service to the members of
the household never closed. Very early she had
assumed the practice that an older Friend laid
down of reading aloud every evening for an
hour. Once during each of many winters when
an all day snow set in, she assembled the family
after the mid-day meal and read " Snow-Bound"
to them while they watched the beauty of the
storm through the great windows.
She was by no means always serious. Her
conversation was full of delicious little turns that
are impossible to quote afterwards and retain
their flavor. Her delicate humor gave her speech
a delightfully unexpected and imaginative quality. When she was nearly eighty-two she could
still turn a rhyme to greet an innovation at
the Home.




MOTHER EMERITUS


237


OUR CHIMES
W#Nhat wakes us when the night is gone,
When darkness fades before the sun,
To greet a glad new day begun?
It is our chimes.
What bids us to our daily bread
With heart of thanks to bow the head
And find in this, our spirit fed?
It is our chimes.
'What tunes our hearts to harmony
With gentle tones of melody,
A hint of heaven's psalmody?
It is our chimes.
Thanks, ever thanks for this sweet peace;
From pressing cares, most kind release;
Our lives may be a book that rhymes
With our glad chimes!
The last years of Mrs. Bond's life showed
increasing fragility of the body. She was not
incapacitated, but she grew somehow more
transparent, more unearthly, with the light of
the spirit shining more brightly through. Uncomplaining, gentle with all about her, she went
her quiet way until a brief illness, so painless
that she scarcely knew she was sick, released her.
She died on the 29th of March, 1926.




238 DEAN BOND OF SWARTHJMORE
So many of her f riends longed to give utterance at the funeral to what her life had meant
that the meeting was crowded for an hour and
a half with thanksgiving and benediction. Before the service started and at its close a group
of men and women f rom. Cheyney sang those tearswept spirituals: Swing Low Sweet Chariot,
Steal Away to Jesus, When I Feel the S'pirit
Movin' in My Heart I Will Pray.
Yet no feeling of grief nor conviction of
death can long be associated with the memory of
Mrs. Bond. For hers was a triumphant life.
Modern women much concerned with the necessity for a definite life-work may well observe
this really distinguished career so unconsciously
entered upon. The consummation was quite unforeseen, but the honest, whole-hearted doing of
each single piece of work built it surely into the
integral structure.
In the mediawal cathedrals of Europe, the
great windows are built up in separate sections.
In glass that gleams like jewels each panel tells
its own part of the story, but the entire window
is glorious with a unified design and colors har



MOTHER EMERITUS              239
monized like organ chords. So was the life of
Elizabeth Powell Bond. Seeming at first like
unrelated experiences, sparkling with the emotions, dyed with the fervors of their day, these
different parts, held in the strong and beautiful
f rame of her personality, now rise in the glory
of their greater pattern, luminous with the sunshine of a heaven-graced spirit.














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