THE HARVARD ANNEX 193 



only source for some of the data that are of consequence in 

 a memoir of Mrs. Agassiz, whose relation to the institution 

 cannot be understood without a clear conception of its 

 unique aims and the gradual process of its growth. 



The history of the beginnings of RadclifiFe College has 

 been told by Mr. Gilman himself in an article on Mrs. 

 Agassiz that appeared in the Harvard Graduates^ Magazine 

 for September, 1907, in a chapter contributed by him to a 

 book of which he was the editor, The Cambridge of Eighteen 

 Hundred and Ninety-Six, in a short paper. The Society for 

 the Collegiate Instruction of Women, published in 1891, and 

 in a pleasant sketch writt^i for the Radcliffe Magazine for 

 June, 1905; an excellent article on the college by Mr. 

 Joseph B. Warner, its first treasurer, may also be found 

 in the Harvard Graduates* Magazine for March, 1894. But 

 although the somewhat unusual story of the institution 

 has not lacked narrators, it acquires a fresh interest when 

 looked at from the angle of Mrs. Agassiz's part in the plot, 

 and when it unfolds itself chapter by chapter as the princi- 

 pal characters in it record the events that they were them- 

 selves shaping. How Mrs. Agassiz entered on the scene we 

 learn from the following items at the beginning of ]Mr. 

 Oilman's Notes. 



1878, November 25. My wife has for two years 

 urged upon me the need that exists in Cambridge 

 for an institution for the higher education of women. 

 Lately we have considered the matter more thoroughly. 

 . . . A plan has occurred to me. Suppose I find a 

 number of ladies wanting to get the same educa- 

 tion that men have and I will tell them, "I w^ill 

 arrange a course exactly the same that Harvard 



