CHAPTER XII 



RADCUFFE COLLEGE 



1895-1904 



T I iHE conditions that Mrs. Agassiz found prevailing at 

 JL Radcliffe on her return from Europe are set forth in 

 the letter from Miss Irwin quoted above, and they were 

 summed up more succinctly by her in her report as Dean 

 to the President of Harvard University for the year 1894- 

 1895. Here she stated that the two great material needs of 

 Radcliffe College were "better academic accommodations 

 and opportunities for physical culture." The same necessi- 

 ties were also emphasized by President Eliot at the Rad- 

 cliffe Commencement exercises in the following year, when 

 he pointed out that Radcliffe would not require a large 

 theatre, an extensive library, a great observatory, or vast 

 collections in natural history, since Harvard had acquired 

 all this equipment for her; "nevertheless," he added, 

 "Radcliffe needs laboratories of the best sort for teaching 

 purposes; it needs departmental libraries; it needs a gym- 

 nasium and lecture halls of its own; it needs houses, not too 

 large, and plenty of them, in which its students may live 

 in a tranquil, wholesome way. Now all these things cost 

 money; therefore Radcliffe needs great endowments, and 

 needs them at once." These words of Miss Irwin and Presi- 

 dent Eliot mark the beginning of a phase in the growth of 

 Radcliffe that directly affected Mrs. Agassiz in two ways. 

 Hitherto she had been the protagonist of the college; it was 

 she who had placed its needs before the public from time to 



