324 ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 
The proposal of the Associates that she become Honor- 
ary President was accepted by Mrs. Agassiz, and her resig- 
nation from her active duties, which devolved in large 
measure upon Miss Irwin, made no difference in the regu- 
lar order of affairs at the college. At the Commencement 
exercises of 1900 Professor W. W. Goodwin delivered the 
address. “It closed,” Mrs. Agassiz writes in her diary, 
“with a few words of affectionate remembrance of my per- 
sonal relation to the college which were very touching to 
me as coming from such an old friend.”’ These were the 
“few words”’: 
During our academic life of twenty-one years 
we have had the high privilege of being under the 
leadership of the gracious lady who now lays down 
the active work of the presidency. From the beginning 
Mrs. Agassiz has been at once our chief guide and 
the life and soul of our undertaking. Full of the 
enthusiasm of her earlier years, enthusiasm which 
was inspired from no ordinary source, she has brought 
to us the treasured traditions of the past, and wisely 
taught us how to use them for the inspiration of the 
present and the future. Herself trained as a scholar 
and a teacher, she could always give us the best 
advice as to what we should do for the higher ed- 
ucation of women and what we should not do. It is 
to her influence as much as to anything that our suc- 
cess and our present position in the academic world 
are due. In our private deliberations and also in the 
critical times when we needed a wise and dignified 
representative in public, we have always felt her 
steady hand at the helm. I feel that no words can 
