tion came to us better in the words of Plato, and, as nearly as I can
remember, that was the first time I had ever heard Plato's sonorous argument for the permanence of the excellent.
When Professor Blaisdell returned to his college, he left in my hands
a small copy of "The Crito.'' The Greek was too hard for me, and I was
speedily driven to Jowett's translation. That old-fashioned habit of
presenting favorite books to eager young people, although it degenerated into the absurdity of "friendship's offerings," had much to be
said for it, when it indicated the wellsprings of literature from which
the donor himself had drawn waters of healing and inspiration.
Throughout our school years we were always keenly conscious of the
growing development of Rockford Seminary into a college. The opportunity for our Alma Mater to take her place in the new movement of
full college education for women filled us with enthusiasm, and it became a driving ambition with the undergraduates to share in this new
and glorious undertaking. We gravely decided that it was important
that some of the students should be ready to receive the bachelor's
degree the very first moment that the charter of the school should secure the right to confer it. Two of us, therefore, took a course in mathematics, advanced beyond anything previously given in the school,
from one of those early young women working for a Ph.D. , who was
temporarily teaching in Rockford that she might study more mathematics in Leipsic.
My companion in all these arduous labors has since accomplished *more than any of us in the effort to procure the franchise for women,
for even then we all took for granted the righteousness of that cause
into which I at least had merely followed my father's conviction. In
the old-fashioned spirit of that cause I might cite the career of this
companion as an illustration of the efficacy of higher mathematics for
women, for she possesses singular ability to convince even the densest
legislators of their legal right to define their own electorate, even when
they quote against her the dustiest of State Constitutions or City
Charters.
In line with this policy of placing a woman's college on an equality
with the other colleges of the state, we applied for an opportunity to
compete in the intercollegiate oratorical contest of Illinois, and we
succeeded in having Rockford admitted as the first woman's college.
When I was finally selected as the orator, I was somewhat dismayed to