COMMEMORATION ADDRESSES 409 
power. Such was Mrs. Agassiz, delightful in life and 
in memory to all who enjoyed the blessing of her 
friendship. Whatever tradition may, in the course of 
centuries, gather around her person, she will surely 
stand as a noble figure of ever contemporaneous 
womanhood, modest, sympathetic, wise, sufficient for 
whatever duty. 
PRESIDENT ELIOT 
Ir was fourteen years ago next spring that I saw Mrs. 
Agassiz appear before a singularly hostile audience 
attending a hearing before the Committee on Educa- 
tion of the Massachusetts Legislature on a statute 
establishing and defining Radcliffe College. Now the 
Committee on Education is not one of the most dis- 
tinguished committees of the Legislature. It ought to 
be; but it is not. The ambitious and able members of 
the Legislature prefer service on the Judiciary Com- 
mittee, the Committee on Metropolitan Affairs, or the 
Committee on Railroads. And so it happens almost 
every year that the Committee on Education consists 
of a number of remarkably plain men, or, we may say, 
of good common citizens of Massachusetts. It was so 
fourteen years ago next spring. Radcliffe College, 
successor to the Society for the Collegiate Instruction 
of Women, had come before the Legislature for its 
first charter. 
I have said that the audience which collected in 
that spacious committee room was singularly hostile. 
It was largely composed of women; but the expression 
on their faces, as I looked at them, was not tender. It 
