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In 1894 the Society took the name of Radcliffe College, and got its charter from the legislature, which gave it the right to confer its own degree. This degree is countersigned by the president of Harvard, who warrants it equal to a Harvard degree. We owe Radcliffe not to Harvard, but to the success of those first earnest students who proved that they were able to do university work, and to the large-minded professors who, by unofficial and individual devotion to learning, helped the pilgrim band to found a safe, permanent home where other women could come. That little band has transmitted the torch of learning for women from frontier to frontier, until there is not a State in the Union which does not provide for the higher education of women. Every woman, whether she can go to college or not, owes a great deal to those pioneers who cleared a place in the wilderness of men's prejudice for the lowly walls of the first woman's college.

Radcliffe College was a new and stronger expression of the spirit which had founded several good American colleges for girls. For the first time in America women's educational opportunities were equal to those of men.

Radcliffe College inherits the spirit of the women who, twenty-seven years ago, sought knowledge for its own sake. Radcliffe is still for earnest women who seek knowledge for its own sake. Girls who go there should have some object in view, some standard of excellence, the gift of handling knowledge in a plain, downright way. There is too little teaching at Harvard and Radcliffe, but there is much opportunity to learn. You may take the treasures offered, or leave them. At Radcliffe, I think, the treasures are more highly valued than among the young gentlemen across the street; for young men, I am told, go to college for a variety of reasons, or for no reason at all. A girl who goes to Radcliffe should be filled with the desire to look behind the forms of things into things themselves, and to add to beauty and softness, solidity and accuracy of knowledge. Stucco is no more serviceable to woman than to man. A well-trained mind and the ability to grasp the ideas essential to a purpose and carry them out with perseverance -- this is the ideal Radcliffe places before women. How far this ideal can be realized appeared at a meeting of Radcliffe alumnae last year, where there were nine speakers -- the scholar, the poet, the teacher, the dramatist, the administrative woman, the woman in domestic life. Their success had lain in different directions, and each testified that she owed her success in large part to her training at Radcliffe. Any young woman who acquires the sell-control which Radcliffe teaches, and performs her task resolutely, may stand up before the kings of learning and not be ashamed, whether she be a writer, a teacher, a speaker, an administrative woman, a society woman, or a home-maker. Radcliffe strives to give her students the substance of wisdom, and to promote earnest and independent scholarship. In her, discipline, knowledge, and self-mastery have replaced the narrow rules of conduct and the prudish dogmatism of the old-fashioned women's academies, just as arbitration and statesmanship are replacing the soldier and the priest. If the classes at Radcliffe which sit under Professor Kittredge and Doctor Royce are not learned, they at least carry away with them a sense of the dignity of scholarship, and do not, like Becky Sharp, when they depart through the college gate, hurl Johnson's dictionary at their preceptor's head.

For the first time in the history of the world, women are expected to have an intelligent understanding of business, of politics, of all the practical problems of our modern life. The college woman learns to cooperate with others, and that means she learns how not to have her own way. Experience in college activities teaches her the right of her companions to freedom of thought and action. By throwing herself into college affairs, she acquires the habit of rendering intelligent and efficient service to others; so that when she graduates, she becomes a practical force in the world, and a responsible member of society.

Like all human institutions Radcliffe falls short of her ideals, and her students, who are also human, do not always achieve theirs. I am acquainted with one who did not. Where I failed, the fault was sometimes my own, sometimes attributable to the peculiar circumstances under which I worked. But my successes were made possible by the spirit and the methods of the college and its unique advantages. And there were many advantages I could not avail myself of. The lectures, libraries, theatres, and museums for which Boston and Cambridge are celebrated, and which largely supplement college work, were not of service to me. The advantages o especial value to me were the excellence of the instruction and the liberality of the elective system. The quality of the instruction at Radcliffe is beyond question; for it is given by the best men at Harvard. The elective system offers a broad variety of courses and freedom of choice. Many subjects were impossible for me on account of my limitations, and I could not have planned my course so as to win a degree but for the scope of the Radcliffe curriculum. The ordinary student, who is not so restricted as I was, has wider opportunities, and she must choose wisely. In her very selection of courses there is a chance to "develop her individuality." And in the exercise of judgment as to the amount of time and energy she will devote to her work, she proves her individuality.