As MY THREE OLDER SISTERS had already attended the *seminary at Rockford, of which my father was trustee, without any
question I entered there at seventeen, with such meager preparation in
Latin and algebra as the village school had afforded. I was very ambitious to go to Smith College, although I well knew that my father's
theory in regard to the education of his daughters implied a school as
near at home as possible, to be followed by travel abroad in lieu of the
wider advantages which an eastern college is supposed to afford. I was
much impressed by the recent return of my sister from a year in Europe, yet I was greatly disappointed at the moment of starting to humdrum Rockford. After the first weeks of homesickness were over,
however, I became very much absorbed in the little world which the
boarding school in any form always offers to its students.
The school at Rockford in 1877 had not changed its name from
seminary to college, although it numbered, on its faculty and among
its alumnae, college women who were most eager that this should be