236 ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 
... Here was an institution, to use a neutral term, 
so strong that it could boast with justice of giving an 
education equal to any in the country, and yet so fee- 
ble that it could not give its students the recognition 
which every other collegiate institution, good or bad, 
gave, a degree. 
The solution of the difficulty which it was easiest 
to propose was that Harvard University should give 
the degrees. But this solution, easy to propose, was 
difficult, nay, impossible to carry out.... Many wise 
men, and by no means unfriendly to Radcliffe, felt 
that a great trust had come into the hands of the 
University rulers, that its organization and resources 
were already greatly strained, and that the strain 
ought not to be increased. 
Then came a time of depression and anxiety. Some 
of the sincerest friends of Radcliffe, who in the days 
of small things had not spared time or money thought 
that the College should sit still and wait. But the 
authorities of the College felt that this state of things 
could not continue indefinitely; that the College could 
not drag along in this maimed and humiliating con- 
dition, unable to grant what every other college of 
men or women was granting: it must assert its com- 
petence to confer degrees; yet how to insure that the 
degree should have the weight and character that a 
degree granted to students trained as hers were, ought 
to have? How to be independent of Harvard Univer- 
sity and yet have her degrees as valuable as those of 
the University? That was the problem. 
And now you must pardon me if I give a bit of per- 
