256. ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 
out of this agreement it seems far the best educa- 
tional opportunity ever offered to women in this 
country. But should this new departure, so full of 
hope and promise, be met by a check now, — by a 
refusal or even a postponement of our right to give 
degrees under the authority of Harvard, it would take 
the heart out of our enterprise. We should be thrown 
back upon our old lines, upon the position of insecurity 
and doubt which we have held for so long, and which 
has been the chief hindrance to our progress. 
We therefore hope that our petition for a college 
charter, supported as it is by the governing boards of 
Harvard and approved by her professors and teach- 
ers who have served us so long and so faithfully, will 
not be denied us by the Legislature. 
| The effect of Mrs. Agassiz’s words and above all of her 
presence is described by President Eliot in the address at 
the Commemoration Service published below, and is there- 
fore not dwelt upon here. There was no doubt in the minds 
of those present, as they watched the faces of the Commit- 
tee, that her influence upon them was securing the desired 
legislation, yet Mrs. Agassiz herself with her usual modesty 
attributed the clinching of the arguments not to herself but 
to another. In the note on Professor Goodwin at the time 
of his resignation, which has been quoted above in part, 
she speaks of his influence at the hearing. “One of the 
grounds of the opposition of the remonstrants was our pov- 
erty. They asserted that the right of giving degrees should 
not be conferred upon an institution so poor, the future of 
which was therefore so insecure. To this plea Mr. Goodwin 
replied, ‘The remonstrants are right as to the material 
