Cambridge sketches
Estelle M. H. Merrill, Ed.

[193] great is this advantage no one can fully appreciate who has not seen the young woman coming from some remote locality blessed with few social opportunities and passing through four years, at an impressionable age, while she grows in intellectual vigor and in personal graces at once.

When Mrs. Louis Agassiz became a member of

the governing body she entered upon the work with strong sympathy and deep desire to ensure its success, and her influence upon the college has been marked. The enterprise, it may be said, has had three stages. The seven ladies and their Secretary formed at first a body that was governed by no written laws, but was controlled by the living interest which each of them felt in the work. They had been brought together by but a single purpose. They were exponents of no “cause,” and were known only as persons interested in the best instruction of women. No party was able to call one of them its own. This was their strength as they appealed to the community. Those who wished to have women at once admitted to the classes with men favored this movement, because they saw in it possibilities in that direction. Those who held the opposite view favored the new enterprise because it did not attempt to push women into the classes of men. The ladies themselves made no announcement on these points.

When it became necessary to establish the institution in a home of its own, to obtain real estate, and larger funds, a more formal organization was effected, and the voluntary association became a corporation under the general laws of Massachusetts with the name “The Society for the Collegiate Instruction for Women.” This was in August, 1882, and several new members were added at the time