Search results

Title: babbott02-579

Title: babbott02-723

Title: babbott02-1166

Title: Forms - Place Viger Ho[tel], "Telegram at Office for You"
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1911-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1911 - August 12, 1912

Title: Notes - from mother
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1911-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1911 - August 12, 1912

Title: "Notes - ""How I spent Easter vacation in Freshman year"""
Description: Included in Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin). Scrapbook, 1893-1897
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1893 - November 27, 1901

Title: Page 42
Description: Included in Wyman, Anne (Southworth). Scrapbook, 1878-1882
"Programs - VC Founder's Day, May 5 1882 -- Notes - from ""A. F. G."" [Lady Principal Abby F. Goodsell] about ""Miss Chubb"" [Grace Chubb, VC 1885], April 24 1882 -- Notes - About VC Founder's Day invitations -- Notes - from [Professor Truman] J. Backus, May 3 -- Notes - from [Professor William] B. Dwight, March 24 1882 -- Invitations - Founder's Day, May 5 1882"
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1878 - June 10, 1932

Title: Page 51
Description: Included in EBabbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1910-1912
"Theater programs - VC Philalethean Society, ""The Road to London,"" March 18 1911 -- Songs - VC Qui Vive -- Place cards - Drawing of woman wearing a hat"
Date: From scrapbook dated August 12, 1910 - June 22, 1912

Title: Page 54
Description: Included in EBabbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1910-1912
"Objects - Dried flowers -- Concert programs - VC Music, ""The Easter Music,"" April 16 1911 -- Telegrams - from mother, father, and grandmother, April 16 1911"
Date: From scrapbook dated August 12, 1910 - June 22, 1912

Title: "Notes - from ""Snooksey"" [Marjory Woods, VC 1914]"
Description: Included in EBabbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1910-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated August 12, 1910 - June 22, 1912

Title: Visiting cards - 'Mr. Frederick L. Gates'
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1912-1913
Date: From scrapbook dated August 23, 1912 - July 10, 1913

Title: "Booklets - 'My Scrap Book' poetry by Louise Stockton Andrews, November 1912"
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1912-1913
Date: From scrapbook dated August 23, 1912 - July 10, 1913

Title: "Theater programs - VC Philalethean Society, ""The Danicheffs,"" January 30 1880"
Description: Included in Wyman, Anne (Southworth). Scrapbook, 1878-1882
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1878 - June 10, 1932

Title: Page 39
Description: Included in Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin). Scrapbook, 1893-1897
"Menus - Birthday party, March 9 1895 -- Theater programs - VC Philalethean Society, ""My Valet and I,"" March 9 1895 -- Theater programs - VC Philalethean Society, ""Pygmalio and Galatea,"" March 23 1895"
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1893 - November 27, 1901

Title: "Booklets - ""Where do we go?"""
Description: Included in Wyman, Anne (Southworth). Scrapbook, 1878-1882
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1878 - June 10, 1932

Title: "Printed materials - Vassar Alumnae Historical Association, membership information"
Description: Included in Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin). Scrapbook, 1893-1897
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1893 - November 27, 1901

Title: May, Deborah -- oral history, July 9, 2015
Description: Field of study: Women's Studies. Current occupation: Retired. Born in Hudson Valley; Graduate School at UMass Amherst; Moved to the Bronx; Moved back to Hudson Valley
Date: July 9, 2015

Title: Eldridge, Muriel (Tilden) -- to Mother, circa 9 October 1913
Creator: Eldridge, Muriel (Tilden)
Description: VC 1914
Date: circa 9 October 1913

Title: Objects - Dried flowers
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1910-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated August 12, 1910 - June 22, 1912

Title: Notes - VC Students' Association, "Meeting of the [Self-Government] Committee" by Elizabeth C. Baldwin [VC 1913], November 22
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1910-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated August 12, 1910 - June 22, 1912

Title: Notes - "White daisies"
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1910-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated August 12, 1910 - June 22, 1912

Title: Envelopes
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1910-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated August 12, 1910 - June 22, 1912

Title: Theater programs - "The Maid of Orleans," May 11 1912
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1911-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1911 - August 12, 1912

Title: babbott02-589

Title: babbott02-603

Title: babbott02-694

Title: babbott02-1103

Title: Objects - Small grey card and pink ribbon labeled "Happy" [Elizabeth B. French, VC 1914]
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1911-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1911 - August 12, 1912

Title: Note - from [Caroline] Congdon [VC 1912]
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1911-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1911 - August 12, 1912

Title: Newspaper clippings - Wedding of Mary Tier Sutphen and Lewis Atwood Knott
Description: Included in Babbott, Elizabeth (French). Scrapbook, 1911-1912
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1911 - August 12, 1912

Title: Page 4
Description: Included in Wyman, Anne (Southworth). Scrapbook, 1878-1882
"Objects - Knot of thread -- Programs - VC Thanksgiving, 1879 -- Programs - VC Trig Ceremonies, ""People vs. Trigg,"" February 14 1879 -- Objects - Dried flowers from Freshman Party, March 16 1879 -- Theater programs - VC Philalethean Society, ""The Cricket on the Hearth,"" May 30 1879 -- Notes - from ""Miss Jones"" [Mary Elizabeth Jones, VC 1882], March 15 1879"
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1878 - June 10, 1932

Title: "Songs - Sang on election night, [1896]"
Description: Included in Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin). Scrapbook, 1893-1897
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1893 - November 27, 1901

Title: Page 81
Description: Included in Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin). Scrapbook, 1893-1897
"Manuscripts - ""The College Rules,"" January 13 1896 "
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1893 - November 27, 1901

Title: Aaron, Fannie -- to Mother, Father, and Pete, n.d. [postmarked November 6, 1922]
Creator: Aaron, Fannie
Date: n.d. [postmarked 1922-11-06]
Text: [Addressed to Hotel Traymore, postmarked 6 Nov 1922] Dear Mother, Father, and Pete: I'm suited. What do you take me for, Father--handing out M. Coue to me. I read quite a bit of his stuff last year--maybe the book you are sending--I shall see what it is anyhow. He belongs to the school that believes that hypnotism is possible to normal people, but the other French school believes that it is possible for abnormal people only. I belong to the latter class--of thinkers, not of people....
Show more[Addressed to Hotel Traymore, postmarked 6 Nov 1922] Dear Mother, Father, and Pete: I'm suited. What do you take me for, Father--handing out M. Coue to me. I read quite a bit of his stuff last year--maybe the book you are sending--I shall see what it is anyhow. He belongs to the school that believes that hypnotism is possible to normal people, but the other French school believes that it is possible for abnormal people only. I belong to the latter class--of thinkers, not of people. However, I'll read it with an open mind, as you say. I shall say, "Day by day, in every way, I am growing more and more conceited". The parlor is not pretty. I did not take cold. A. Kabet answered the note in which I finally informed him that we would do nothing about the debate. He seems to think this is to be a correspondence--I do not think so, and it takes two to make a correspondence! The picture is Caroline Whitney's mother. I guess she comes by her college stump-speaking naturally. Love, FannieA CONNECTICUT YANKEE FOR CONGRESS: MRS. JOSEPHA WHITNEIY, Daughter of Simon Newcomb, the Astronomer, Who Has Won the Nomination to Represent Her State in the House of Representativs (Times Wide World Photos.)
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Title: Macmahon, Edna Cers, 1901-1983 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Griffen, Clyde, Glasse, John, Marshall, Natalie
Description
Date: May 8, 1984
Text: / ,’i y / epRfOgQVg t 5'-0,‘, 9 X‘ \i_ . v48 At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held May ninth, nineteen hundred and eighty—four, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted; Edna Cers Macmahon, Professor Emeritus of Economics was born 9 February 27, 1901 in Riga, Latvia, the daughter of John William and V Alvia Julia Lischmann Cers. Her family emigrated to the United States when she was a child and she grew up on a farm in Massachusetts. Edna began her long career of...
Show more/ ,’i y / epRfOgQVg t 5'-0,‘, 9 X‘ \i_ . v48 At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held May ninth, nineteen hundred and eighty—four, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted; Edna Cers Macmahon, Professor Emeritus of Economics was born 9 February 27, 1901 in Riga, Latvia, the daughter of John William and V Alvia Julia Lischmann Cers. Her family emigrated to the United States when she was a child and she grew up on a farm in Massachusetts. Edna began her long career of community service by sharing with neighboring farmers helpful information from her careful reading of agricultural bulletins. A favorite teacher persuaded her to change her original plan of going to a normal school; instead, she entered Radcliffe at age l6, working her way through college. A seminar with Frederick Jackson Turner inspired her life-long fascination with the influence of the frontier and of geographic mobility upon American history. At age 20 Edna began graduate work at Bryn Mawr On the Susan B. Anthony scholarship. The next summer, in 1922, she met her d d. . future Vassar colleague, Margaret MYBPS» when they b°th le 1S°“SSl°n ' d t Br Mawr. groups at the School for Women Workers in Industry hel a yn ' Ph'l d l hia when they learned that Y°u"8 "°men °n Strlke at a 1 a e P _ - ' 11 they decided Clothing factcry were being arrested illega Y» . - - ‘ themselves arrested at to provide publicity bY getting -2- the strike site. With support from a young male friend from an Old Philadelphia family, they began interviewing the strikers On the picket line. The police hustled them off to the city jail where they briefly sharéd a Qell next ta a young woman who called out cheerfully: "What are you in for? shoplifting?" The venture ended with a double standard in sentencing which left them furious; their male friend was fined, but the future Vassar economists were let off with nothing but an admonition. In 1923 Columbia University appointed Edna as the first woman to hold its Gilder Research Fellowship. At Columbia she studied under Wesley Clark Mitchell, pioneer institutional economist, whose course on economic theory provided the framework for her thinking about economics. From her studies with Mitchell and with two other famous institutionalists, Thorstein Veblen and John R. Commons, she drew the lesson that economists should be critics and shapers of the societies they study. In 1924 she accepted a fellowship from the newly-founded Robert Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government, an experiment in studying at the intersection of theory and public policy. She received her Ph.D. in 1930 with a doctoral thesis on labor injunctions. While working toward her doctorate, she investigated child labor in Maryland and Delaware canneries for the Children's Bureau of the United States Department of Labor. She also worked for the District of Columbia Consumers‘ League in 1926 as it brought pressure for the enforcement of District laws on maximum hours for women. In 1927, while employed by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, she began a study of immigrae tion which continued subsequently for the Council on Foreign Relations. But with teaching her long—term goal, she was glad in 1929 to become an _3_ inst - G ructor of economics at Hunter College. In that Year Edna married Arth P ' ' ur Ihlttler Ma°mah°n» then associate professor and subsequently Eaton pr°feSS°r °f Publi¢ administration a t Columbia University They had two chil ' dreni Gail» now livin ' g in Austria wh h ' ~ ere er husband is a diplomat, and Alan, now a physigigt at the University of Texas. During their childhood, the family lived in Croton where Edna helped run a cooperative school inspired by what remains durable in John Dewey's theories of education. She also ran an annual plant sale for the school notable for the stream of varied advice that accompanied her sales as she visualized each purchaser's plot, its probable disadvantages of soil or shade, and the owner's probable lack of time or knowledge. In later years members of the Vassar community would benefit from Edna's advice on gardening and from the well—developed aesthetic imagination which informed it. That imagination could be seen in the gardens and houses she arranged, and especially in the beloved cottage at Lake Awosting with its wonderful relating of domestic comforts, works of craftsmanship, and the natural beauty of the setting. While still at Croton in the late l93Os, Edna began to travel for research and for consulting assignments. In 1941-42 she served as Director of Research for the Division of Minimum Wage and Women ln h d d Industry of the New York State Department of Labor and also ea 8 . . . O . . . Off‘ f Price the EcQnQmlCS unit in the Consumer Division of the lce 0 Administration. Ed . . d the Vassar fagulty in 19142. At that time the Vassar na ]Oln8 . . - d . t Qf a joint department, economics an economics department was par -u_ sociology, which would shortly become the economics, sociology, and anthropology department-—B.S.A. Edna found the philosophy of the department to her liking. Abstract theory was not for her——she always regarded economic problems in the context of the overall problems facing a society. She described the introductory course in an article for the Alumnae magazine in l9H9: The teaching of economics at Vassar has always been directed, rather deliberately, toward a broad understanding of the economy as a whole, and to analysis and discussion of the major economic issues which confront our society. The introductory course, in particular, frankly aims to equip students to exercise their responsibility as citizens intelligently rather than to provide a mastery of economic principles. This does not mean that theory is neglected, but that it is constantly taught in relation to concrete problems to which it is applicable. The emphasis necessi- tates a continuous search for ways of making theory a more practicable tool in the analysis of current problems. Under Edna's influence the department introduced an introductory interdisciplinary course for the joint department, a course which flouished for a number of years. Economists, sociologists, and anthropologists together prepared the year—long introductory course and a required senior seminar. Students majored in one discipline. _5_ Edna's Special fields -'th' - wi in economics reflected her philosophy- consumer economics ' Amerwo ' ' 0 _ an economic histor ' Y» economic development. Her students were ' - - » ln the Vassar tradition, encoura ged to go to the original sources and th 9 ese sources were often Opepatin ' - - 8 lnstitutions in the community Field tri ‘ - ps to farms and factories were a re gular Part of Economics lO5 and Poughkeepsie residents were surveyed on a variety of topics. In the mid l96Os Edna worked with other faculty in the development of an interdisciplinary course on the river and its impact on those living around it. Her participation in the course was inspired by her long observation of the Hudson and her concern for it before "ecology" became a popular term. A late colleague said he always wanted to follow Edna around with a tape recorder for she was a veritable fountain of ideas. But she was interested primarily in people and in doing. Although she published several journal articles, she never found enough time for her own research, especially for her study of Poughkeepsie shoemakers which was in advance of its time in methodology. Her tracing of craftsmen over time through census and city directories anticipated by more than a decade the historical social mobility studies which became important in the 1960s and 70s. Edna retired from Vassar in 1966, but continued her teaching in the . . . H l d extensive State University of New York for three years er a rea y V _ . . ' sed. She had been activity in the community beyond the College lncrea t t f Dutohess Community College from its founding in 1957, a rus ee o _ _ . - ' d in its formative period. playing 3 ma]OP role in setting policy ur 8 ard for seventeen YEBPS, until 197a‘ She served on the BO ’”!‘\$4'- ~ 161 In government, she served on the Advisory Committee to the Consumer Counsel to the Governor of New York and, in Dutchess County, on its comittees on tax policy and on economic opportunity. Politically, she was an active member of the League of Women Voters and of both the Vassar Democratic Club and the Dutchess County Women's Democratic Club. She delivered countless addresses to community groups, ranging from the Dutchess County Council on World Affairs to the Newcomers’ Home Bueau Club, from the Anti-Defamation League to the YWCA, and from the Poughkeepsie Business and Professional Women's Club to the Dutchess County Grange Tax Comittee. The topics of these talks expressed the range of her concerns: consumer economics, anti-poverty programs, county planning for water and land development, integration and quality in education, and travels with her husband in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Also expressive of her concerns was her membership in the Poughkeepsie Friends Meeting. Bowdoin Park, on Poughkeepsie's bank of the Hudson, is an abiding embodiment of Edna Macmahon's care for the land and for the people of the place where she lived for nearly three decades. There, the Edna Maemahon Trail for the study of nature commemorates her leadership in reclaiming an abandoned waterfront for the use of the community. In 1978 Edna moved to Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, where she died on July 2%, 1983. \hntHal\h¢dlhnl\Qnin,\inIIl1l|\0@ll0II ‘A hnnbllho. muuuuuwuaumn-nmqgquq. luv-¢a\hnrabltl\y\olnbl1lanIpIo¢u\|uqq_|.@§ wwvh. tiwwbvlcw. mvvollwhaumualnauducn Ilnhattawoodtdltlno. !alt\lnba&—0Q\Qqﬂﬂ|p Dhﬂonlqnn QlI.1t1tohlothoIQ0lIUOl|ﬂOIlOd_l»ﬂﬁ onnnltyocvtoonlactlnnltajohugottnruﬂqnnlcilq honnnounoa Inopocthlly Ulﬂtﬂ, cub tum. Quinn <¥~i':- 3%” *5,
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Title: Shipp, Margaret M. -- to Father, 22 March 1905
Creator: Shipp, Margaret M.
Description: VC 1905
Date: 22 March 1905

Title: Photographs - Interior of the Museum [Vogelstein]
Description: Included in Ross, Caroline (Barnes). Scrapbook, 1901-1905
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1901 - July 20, 1906

Title: Griffin, Charles Carroll, 1902-1976 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Olsen, Donald, Campbell, Mildred, Clark, Evalyn, Havelock, Christine, Marquez, Antonio
Description
Date: [After 1976]
Text: dl l Jl»).L»7' ,.Ll' f , 5 '4‘; ’-'Yé§ _‘ V 1.; 7 ' ‘ . ,1,-" 1"‘ fl < i . > V .;!r;_?=¢\- v R ,§§, At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held November seventeenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-six, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Charles Carroll Griffin was born on May 24, 1902, in Tokyo, where his father was Professor of Economics at the Imperial University. His family returned to the United States in 1913, settling in...
Show moredl l Jl»).L»7' ,.Ll' f , 5 '4‘; ’-'Yé§ _‘ V 1.; 7 ' ‘ . ,1,-" 1"‘ fl < i . > V .;!r;_?=¢\- v R ,§§, At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held November seventeenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-six, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Charles Carroll Griffin was born on May 24, 1902, in Tokyo, where his father was Professor of Economics at the Imperial University. His family returned to the United States in 1913, settling in Westboro, Massachusetts. Charles attended Harvard, receiving his B.A. in 1922. Then, seeking horizons beyond the academic, he was off to South America for seven years, two in Argentina and five in Uruguay,'in the employ of the National Cement Company. He returned home with an interest in Hispanic American culture and a knowledge of the Spanish language that were to last him the rest of his life. Beginning graduate work at Columbia, he also served as an instructor in Spanish there in 1930. His next venture the following year was as a Research Associate of the Library of Congress, to go to Madrid, where, enrolling at the Centro de Es- tudios Hist6ricos~~at that time perhaps the most significant concentration of liberal intellectuals in the Republic—-he supervised the transcription of historical documents in the Archives of Seville and Valladolid. The next year he was again at Columbia where in 1933 he was awarded the M.A. Nineteen thirty- four brought two important personal events: marriage to Jessica Frances Jones, a graduate of Reed College, and the acceptance of an instructorship in history at Vassar. The early forties brought a period of great concern in the United States for closer relations with Latin America. Men who knew the field were in demand, and Charles Griffin was ready to supply the need. In 1940 he went as exchange professor to the Universidad Central in Caracas, Venezuela, the first United States citizen to serve under the program set up by the Buenos Aires Convention for International Cultural Relations. A letter written later by the Director of the university to our ambassador pointed out that "Dr. Griffin's lectures W€re the first ever given in a school of higher learning in Venezuela . . . regarding the discovery, the conquest and the colonization of North America.” An article in a Venezuelan magazine in 1941 characterized him not as the typical "fat, red—faced North American", but as an aristocratic Castilian: until one heard his "slight Anglo—Saxon accent", one might have mistaken the tall, slender professor for a resident of Burgos or Segovia in a play by Lope de Vega or Calderbn. It might have added, "or a portrait by El Greco." Charles came back to Vassar in 1941, as associate professor; but was off again in February 1943 to the State Department in Washington, where he served as Assistant Chief of the Division of Liaison and Research in the Office of American Republics Affairs. He returned to Vassar in 1944, this time to a full- professorship. Charles served as visiting professor at many places including Columbia, Oé» _, r. I. C, -2- Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Wisconsin, and at the Universidad de Chile. But happily for Vassar he always returned here where his own course in South American history had entered the curriculum, a break—through in the tradition that most history offerings should deal with our European background and the United States. For years it was traditional that every member of the department should teach the one introductory course offered, a survey of European civilization. Charles later regaled his younger colleagues with accountsci'his struggles to cope with "all those popes and emperors." Although most of his teaching at Vassar was in United States political and diplomatic history, his scholarly work lay entirely in Latin America. At in- tervals he represented the United States as forwarder of pan-American affairs, in Chile in 1950 and in Ecuador in 1959, in l962 at the Salzburg Seminar on American Civilization, and as delegate to the Conference on Contemporary Latin American History at Bordeaux. He published four books on Latin American history (one with a Spanish translation, one written in Spanish and published in Ca- racas), and was contributing author to five others. (A selective bibliography is appended to this Minute.) In addition he contributed articles to practical- ly all the scholarly periodicals in his field, and also to the more general historical journals. His last major scholarly achievement was as editor-in- chief of Latin America: A Guide to Historical Literature (1971), the first inclusive bibliography in that field. His place as leader among Latin American historians was recognized first by appointment to the Board of Editors of the Hispanig American Historical Review, and as Managing Editor from 1950 to 1954. In 1970 the Conference on Latin American History gave Charles its "Distinguished Service Award", in the form of a handsome plaque which, characteristically, he kept trying to hide from view. Few of his colleagues or students at Vassar were aware of the extent of his scholarly activities or of his international reputation. "Charles is such a modest chap," wrote his chairman on one occasion, "that it is only when one digs it out of him that it becomes evident" how extensive his achievements and honors were. Self—doubt, humility, and an awareness of his own frailties made him wonderfully understanding of the anxieties of others, and made him the best of all people to turn to for sympathetic advice. Countless colleagues, friends, and students could say, with Sarah Gibson Blanding, ". . . when things got really tough I could always talk with Charles and knew without any doubt I was getting the best and most unbiased opinion possible. Of all my colleagues I counted on him the most." At Vassar Charles served four terms as chairman of the history department. For the last two years before his retirement in 1967 he was first Acting Dean of Faculty and then Dean of Faculty. He felt a deep commitment to the local community outside the college, and took an active part in politics. Among other activities he served on the Dutchess County Committee of the Democratic Party and as Director of the Dutchess County Council on world Affairs. In 1968 he became the first Executive Director of the Associated Colleges of the Mid-Hudson Area, and from 1968 to 1970 served on the Board of Trustees of the Southeastern New York Library Resources Council. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Marist College, and in 1969 became secretary of the Board. But it was as a member of this faculty that we knew Charles best. For him, loyalty to Vassar was no mere catch—phrase, but involved him in genuine financial, ///“ / /:>8 I3? and perhaps even professional sacrifice. He turned a deaf ear to offers to return to the State Department at a salary far above anything Vassar could give him. He did the same to other attractive offers from the Rockefeller Foundation, Stanford, U.C.L.A., and Cornell because, to quote a letter from his chairman to President Blanding, "of his interest in working at an institu- tion in which he believed as heartily as he does believe in what we try to do at Vassar." In February 1950 Miss Blanding wrote him while he was Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin, enclosing a new contract, saying, "I hope like fury you are going to feel like signing. We have missed you and . . . have kept our fingers crossed wondering if Wisconsin was going to wean you away from us. As you can see, we have jumped your salary . . . which I am sure is not as much as Wisconsin could pay you [in fact, Vassar's new offer was only two-thirds what Wisconsin was paying him], but is all we can stretch at the moment." Charles happily accepted the economic sacrifice and returned to Vassar. He, of course, would not have called it a sacrifice. He had abundant ex- perience of great universities, and none of them gave him the intense intellectual and emotional satisfactions that Vassar did: students who delighted in and responded to his broad-ranging intellect and provocative, questioning teaching; colleagues who could be waylaid for speculative discussion or riotous argument; department, comittee, and faculty meetings in which he could observe the wit and cantankerousness, wisdom and perversity, mental agility and abnormal psy- chology of his colleagues. He took affectionate delight in displays of insti- tutional absurdity and human folly, which Vassar offered in prodigal abundance. Charles never forgot what it had been like to be a young, inexperienced instructor, ”. . . Newer and younger [faculty] members . . . instinctively feel him to be their friend,” his chairman once wrote. One of them later recalled: "I first knew Charles at a crucial time in my life—-at the beginning of my career. He quickly became for me a kind of mentor, such as I had never in graduate school . . . By watching him in action in faculty meetings . . . talking to him at faculty tea, or simply chatting with him on an evening . . . I got some idea of what it meant to be a scholar, a teacher, and a man of integrity. Charles and I had our differences--we really were not very much alike——but his example for me was central to my life." Charles came to Vassar at a time when, as he recalled three decades later, "the college . . . was more self—contained than it is today." The Vassar comunity dominated the social as well as the professional lives of a large proportion of the faculty. Depending on their tastes, they used it as a vast salon in which to hammer out their ideas in friendly yet critical company, as a stage on which to develop and display their eccentricities, or a kind of en- counter group in which to express their inner hostilities and aggressions. Charles did his best to maintain the notion of the faculty as an intellectual community even into the fifties and sixties, when outside at“factions, whether professional or personal, were drawing the attention of both zaculty and student body away from the college. It was a mystery how Charles managed to produce the extraordinary bulk of his publications and pursue his professional activities on top of a heavy teach- ing load. For he always seemed to be found in the back parlor of Swift, in the Retreat, or at faculty tea, engaging in anecdote or argument, covering every -4- subject under the sun. ". . . His intellectual curiosity was insatiable, as his fund of knowledge was almost fathomless," one colleague recalls. ". . . What I think of most in connection with him was not just his helpfulness and companionability," writes another, "but those glorious, continuous, shimmering days and nights we all had at Raymond Avenue. That for me was the Golden Age . . . we all belonged to Charles's extensive, amusing, and beautifully domestic- ated world." Charles played an active role in Vassar politics, serving on most major committees, and as president of the local chapter of the A.A.U.P.; in the 1930's he was much involved with the Teachers‘ Union. He firmly believed in maintain- ing the authority of the faculty as a corporate body, and in seeing that the body exercised its powers wisely and responsibly. when Alan Simpson was inau- gurated as President, Charles spoke in the name of the faculty. "The Faculty of Vassar College has never been a placid, harmonious body," he warned the new president. "Because of our nature as questioners, our training as critics, and our diverse associations and interests we are likely to provide opposition as well as support to your endeavours." Charles spoke often in faculty meetings, and one never could be sure in advance what stand he was going to take on an issue. while his commitment to basic principles—-academic freedom, faculty power, individual liberties--never faltered, he embodied the definition of an intellectual as one who is continual- ly and systematically questioning his own opinions. He belonged to no camp, and voted and acted as his conscience and intellect directed. Impressive as he was in faculty meeting, Charles was at his best in a small group, late at night. He delighted in the varieties of human nature, the in- tricacies of thought, and the techniques of politics. But above all he loved conversation. For him, as for Dr. Johnson, conversation offered the best alle- viation for the pain of existence. It was his chief joy, a means of adding to his stock of knowledge, of encountering new ideas--the more subversive and he- terodox the better--and of savouring the pleasures of articulate sociability. Of colleagues in other disciplines he could ask a simple, sincere, and yet so basic a question that one found oneself rethinking ideas long taken for granted. Charles was a moderate historical relativist, for whom the conviction that absolute certainty was an imposible ideal was.not a depressing, but an ex- hilarating belief. For he enjoyed the process of debate more than he cared about the outcome. But while pragmatic and flexible in his approach both to questions of historical truth and educational policy, he never abandoned his moral convictions for the sake of expediency. Intensely sensitive to personal attaﬁksv he 8¢ted a¢¢0rdin9 to his conscience as chairman, as dean, and as individual, never swerving from what he was convinced was his duty for the sake of popularity or a quiet life. President Simpson has summed up the qualities for which we loved Charles: "A dearer man we never knew--gentleman, scholar, wit. I never saw him without thinking of the motto of New College, Oxford——‘Manners makyth man‘. He was . . . a model of good sense, good-heartedness, and fidelity. when I asked him for help he always replied that he would do anything for Vassar—-and did so." -5- Respectfully submitted, ,\ ..1 . _ Donald Olsen, Chairman Q ’ ), ~c , / _.' / ¢ , ‘ _,, 1',‘ /{/,» . .' / \ , , / I '/’-»»1,‘(-"// ~ ,.“/ ~" rt 4, , j M " .>~'L, ( J‘.-1, Mildred Cani'pbe 11 .'/ I 22,,/;j£, J Evalyn Clark ..-/c’. " - - ‘" ,-‘W. V \ A/~" ' - ~ / Christine Havelock A 1./1. ‘:1/1 4 Antonio Marquez / /0 /// _6_ ¢v'¢~€¥¢z»/>1 C-_C, > Bibliographical Note His publications include The United States and the Disruption of the §panish Empire, 1810-1822 (1937), Latin America T1944); The National Period in the History of the New World (1961, with Spanish translation in 1962), and Los Temaspsociales y Economicos de la Epoca de la Independencia (published in Caracas in 1961). He edited and contributed to Concerning Latin American Cu1tur§_(l940), and contributed chapters to Ensayos sobre la Historia del Nuevo Mundo (Mexico, 1951), a commemorative volume in honor of Emeterio Santovenia (Habana, 1958), Conocimento z_desconocimento en las Americas (1958), to vol. XI of the new edition of the Cambridge Modern History on Latin America, 1870-1900 (1961), and to A.P. Whitaker, ed., Latin America and the Enlightenment (1961). In addition he contri- buted articles to the Hispanic American Historical Review, the Haryland Historical Magazine, the IntereAmerican Quarterly, Revista de Historia de America, Boletin de la Academia de Historia (Caracas), Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale, and the Vene- zuelan RevistafNaciona1 de Cultura. His last major scholarly achievement was to edit the bibliographical volume, commissioned by the Library of Congress, Latin ‘ America: A Guide to Historical Literature (1971). 17 I W ' 7 " 'J—.
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Title: Vance, Gertrude (Pratt) — to [unknown], n.d.
Creator: Vance, Gertrude (Pratt)
Date: n.d.
Text: G. Pratt 22-1 The ^Freshman Serenade Group of girls come walking across the campus and gather in a “hushed” mass in front of Josselyn. The bell rings, the song-leader springs for the steps, and a cheer bursts forth. Then lights go out and heads appear ^with suspicious alacrity at darkened windows The light in the hand of the leader flashes and the eagerly expectant listeners hear the new song [crossed out: which has been written] to them. An organized [cheer?] comes from the serenades ...
Show moreG. Pratt 22-1 The ^Freshman Serenade Group of girls come walking across the campus and gather in a “hushed” mass in front of Josselyn. The bell rings, the song-leader springs for the steps, and a cheer bursts forth. Then lights go out and heads appear ^with suspicious alacrity at darkened windows The light in the hand of the leader flashes and the eagerly expectant listeners hear the new song [crossed out: which has been written] to them. An organized [cheer?] comes from the serenades [crossed out: and] scattered applause and laughter [crossed out] from the windows [crossed out: while several] mingle with conflicting cheers. The crowd below breaks up [crossed out: and the girls] with a rush of scampering footsteps. [crossed out: and dissappears around the corner of the building and H… to ….] .049285 This is .49285 where I helped 49.285 [M?] S. with her math. Gertrude Pratt Vance all 1913-1914
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Title: André Wechel, 1535-1573 -- window photograph:
Creator: Wechel, André
Description: Window currently located at End window -- North wing
Window originally located at End window -- North wing
Date: 1535-1573

Title: John Skot, 1530 -- window photograph:
Creator: Skot, John
Description: Window currently located at First Floor -- Northeast wing
Window originally located at North wing -- Third window
Date: 1530

Title: Aaron, Fannie -- to [family], n.d. [postmarked December 12, 1920]:
Creator: Aaron, Fannie
Description
Date: n.d. [postmarked 1920-12-15]
Text: Love, Fannie. All well. Won't write today

Title: Aaron, Fannie -- to Mother, Father, and Pete, March 22,1921
Creator: Aaron, Fannie
Date: 1921-03-22
Text: March 22, 1921 Dear Mother, Father, and Pete: Before I forget, Thursday is Lucy's twenty-first birthday. I think she would appreciate it very much if you were to congratulate her, Pete. Please don't forget to deposit the money for me, Father. The reason I think of it again is that Lucy promised me to tell me what books she wants for her birthday. I ate lunch with her today and spent a solid hour talking to her. I got a business letter from her Father encolsing a five-dollar bill...
Show moreMarch 22, 1921 Dear Mother, Father, and Pete: Before I forget, Thursday is Lucy's twenty-first birthday. I think she would appreciate it very much if you were to congratulate her, Pete. Please don't forget to deposit the money for me, Father. The reason I think of it again is that Lucy promised me to tell me what books she wants for her birthday. I ate lunch with her today and spent a solid hour talking to her. I got a business letter from her Father encolsing a five-dollar bill and asking me to order a corsage for her. I couldn't spend all his money. I could only spend four. The only other possibility was to suspend one lonely little two dollar orchid in the cneter, and somehow or other, that didn't sound artistic to me. I have gotten more dope about Wellesley. The girls cannot get over the way they were treated. One thing certainly struck me funny, and that was that most of the audience wear evening dress and that they all come out in it every Saturday night! Some dudes' institute. And to think that we are starting a campaign here trying to make people wear decent dresses to dinner Friday nights instead of sloppy sport clothes. It wasn't a question of Wellesley's dropping out of the league of their own volition if they did not win anything this year. It is part of the constitution that any college that does not win one debate in four years must drop out, and they have an unbroken record of three years behind them. So this year, they started out an intensive campaign for debate. No girl who had not been recommended by the faculty could try out, and hence it was a very much coveted honor. No girl could work on committee who had not been so recommended. The committee spread debate literature broadcast and everybody in the place was reading about immigration. The debaters had to read about ten books on the general subject! Their course in immigration was given by Fairchild. Etc. etc. So we can almost be kind-hearted enough to be glad they won. Is it true that you had to pay fifty cents admission? In previous years they could never get an audience, so I hear. What did you think of the delegation when they walked in? Don't you think they were a pretty good-looking bunch. They said they marched in singing, "Down the future's cloudy way". Did you see our time-keeper. She was chairman of our class debate. Really, I don't know what my letter will be like when I haven't any debate news to write. I went to bed at eight-thirty last night, incidentally, slept two hours in the afternoon, and got up at five this morning to study for the chem midsemester. It was "rather worse". No letter from home since Saturday. I am anxious to hear how you are, Mother.
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Title: John Burroughs Journal, 1894 (January - July)
Creator: Burroughs, John, 1837-1921
Date: January 17, 1894 - July 24, 1894
Text: 17 Read of Frank Bolle's death this morning. Was much shocked. Saw him once, Dec. 1892 and liked him Something clean-cut and pleasing about him -- red hair and sandy complexion Some of his out-door sketches interest me, and some do not. He was hardly a poet, or thinker. -- Write what you feel, not merely what you think. One may think anything and everything; he can only feel certain things. What he feels is vital to him. When I think I grope, and do not always know where I stand. What I...
Show more17 Read of Frank Bolle's death this morning. Was much shocked. Saw him once, Dec. 1892 and liked him Something clean-cut and pleasing about him -- red hair and sandy complexion Some of his out-door sketches interest me, and some do not. He was hardly a poet, or thinker. -- Write what you feel, not merely what you think. One may think anything and everything; he can only feel certain things. What he feels is vital to him. When I think I grope, and do not always know where I stand. What I feel I see, and what I see I feel.Clear and sharp this morning, like Nov. Ground bare; grass yet quite green. Mercury down to 24 degrees this morning. 18 Mild with SW wind. Julian and I have our first skate on the river; ice less than 2 inches. 19 Like an April morning, clear, still, mild; raindrops hanging to the limbs and grapevines. Objects steam in the sun like a morning in summer. Sounds very noticeable. Rumbling of wagons, barking of dogs heard from over the river. Very few birds this winter, except crows. Now and then a large flock of goldfinches. Few English sparrows. On anopen winter like this the birds disperse over the open country. A deep snow would drive them about our habitations. 20 A bright and beautiful day. How naked the world seems, no snow, no verdure, no clouds. A fine skate on the river; condition all perfect, a glare of ice, a medium temperature, and a still air. Not a breath of wind. I fly up and down like a bird. At night, Julian and I skate an hour by moonlight, a rare treat. How we dash off into the dimness over the black smooth surface. -- These days I am hacking away at my Whitman matter, cutting, burning, rewriting. My matter mproves under my heroic treatment, but I doubt if I can make it worthy the subject. Health not very good past two weeks. 21 Mild, overcast, with sprinkle of rain in P.M. Signs of fog. The steam from the passing train swells and increases and stretches far behind in a long, tapering window. 22 Cleared off in the night as silently as usual. The weather is in a most gentle and placid frame of mind this winter. The storms sprinkle a little, or spit a little snow and then fold their tents like the Arabs and steal away. Fog this morning. P.M. Clear, warm, still likeIndian summer -- insects dancing in the air -- a day to walk through the fields and stand long by the bars, or lean upon the wall and look long and long over the brown, weedy lifeless fields. Almost brings the bees out of the hive. 24 Another attempt at a rain from the South, with only a slight sprinkle. Mercury up to near 50 degrees. 25 Cold wave last night, clear and lovely today, but sharp. Julian and I go to Black Pond skating; fly like birds over the glassy surface -- a fine time. Not a speck of snow to be seen. 26 Mercury down to 12 degrees this morning. 27 Winter again. The snow came like thief in the night, about 5 or 6 inches, and is still at it, from the North, which means that the storm clouds really came up the coast. 28 Bright and lcear adn sharp. Mercury down to 10 degrees this morning. The large opening on the river in front closed up this morning. -- That Death awaits you and me and all men is of little account. But that the race is to become extinct, that the earth is to grow old and die, and the sun itself wither like a leaf and be blown about the barrens of infinite space -- this strikes one dumb, and paralyzes the soul -- this is the abyss of science into whic e cannot gaze. What bow of promise spans it? That the very soil which hold out dead must become lifeless meteoric dust! Human monuments must perish, but the solar system is to be disrupted. How many times may this have happened in the past eternities! I see no reason to doubt that this game of the gods may not have been played over and over, and that even you and I may, in effect, have lived many times on other worlds, and may live again. The same results, culminations, must go on forever and ever. When great clock runs down, it will wind itself up again and strike the same hours as before.-- Forty years ago was my last winter at the old school-house in West Settlement. Of my schoolmates at that time I recall eleven who are dead, Walter Elliott of Bovina was teacher. In the spring of 1854 I left home to teach school in Olive; taught there fro mApril to middle of Sept. at 10 or 12 dollars a month and boarded around. Went to Ashland to school in Nov.; lefft there in Sprinng and went to Jersey in April in search of school; failed; came home and stayed all summer, working and studying. After haying started for Jersey again; stopped in Olive to visit; was again hired to teach same school at 20 dollars a month; taught till spring. In spring (April 20) went to Cooperstown seminary. Left therein July; worked in haying and went West in Sept. Tom Kniffin with me. Stopped at Dr. Allaben's in Polo. Engaged the school there and taught till spring of 1957. Came back home in April; stayed home till June or July when I engaged to teach at High Falls in Ulster County. Was married that fall September 13. Taught till spring. In July went to Rosendale to teach. Got interested in a patent buckle; threw up the school and went to Newark, N.J. Buckle failed and engaged school in Jan. 1859 at East Orange. Taught there about 2 years. In fall of '60 took the school at Marlboro on Hudson; taught there till spring of '62. Went home in April. Stayed all summer. In fall went to Olive to study medicine with Dr. Hull; heard of a school atButtermilk Falls, secured it, and went there to teach probably in Jan. 1863. Taught there, and began there the study of birds and flowers, stimulated to the latter by Prof. Eddy. Taught there till fall of '63 (made the Adirondack trip in August of that year) when I threw up the school and went to Washington (in October). On Jan. 4, 1864 I was appointed to a clerkship in the office of Comptroller of Currency. Continued a cleark till Jan 1, 1873 when I left W. and came to Middleton, N.Y. as Receiver of the Wallkill Nat. Bank. Wound up the affairs of the bank in 3 or 4 years. In Aug. '73to about '85. Built my house in '73 and '74, moved into it late in Nov. '74. -- Capt. Steven Burroughs was born in Bridgeport, Conn. in 1729. Died in 1817. A man of unusual mental endowments, ship-builer and astronomer: said to have invented the system of Federal Money. He had 4 brothers, Eden, John, Edward, and Ephraim. The latter was my great-grandfather, his son Eden was my grandfather. Ephraim died in Stamford, in April 1818, and nwas buried there in a field which is now under cultivation. He was born near Bridgeport (Conn.) about 1735. He hadsix sons and several daughters. His sons were Eden, Curtis, William, David, Daniel, and Ephraim. Eden, father's great uncle, was the father of Stephen, the notorious. Eden was a Presbyterian minister. 30 More snow, pretty heavy, about 10 inches now on the ground. Weather mild. 31 Bright, mercury 40 degrees. Feb. 1 Showing again this morning. Storm center seems south of us. Ver deliberate, evidently means business. -- Snow turned out only about an inch of hyperborean chaff. 3 Mild, overcast, mercury 42-- How common in literature is the sin of over-writing. It strikes one as vulgar, like over-dressing. The piece has a studied, formal, artificial air. Simple things must be simply said -- all things must be as simply said as possible. A man must work a long time to get out of the ambition of writing of inflating and bedecking what he has to say. I think this was at times or of the sins of Franis Parkman. I judge so from extracts I have seen of a sealed paper, giving an account of his life, which he left with a friend, and which was opened after his death. It is full of the balancing of period and is more like an amateur than like a master. 5 Cold wave; down to 2 degrees above this morning, clear and still. 6 Down to zero this morning. Bright and still all day. Had a skate on the river. -- In saying that Homer and the Bible are not literary, I mean they do not savor of literary or artificial culture, or of conscious literary art. They savor more of the larger culture of life and nature. From this point of view Tennyson is more literary that Wordsworth, Longfellow that Bryant. Milton than Shakespeare, the later novelists than Scott and Fielding. There is a deeper seriousness in Wordsworth than in Tennyson, in Whittier than in Lowell, a More profound humility and religiousness. It is not mrerely the seriousness of the scholar, the poet, it is the seriousness and humility of the man. I would have the unadulterated man, or human, flavor always predominate, as it does in the greates works. The Bible was not written with a view to literary edification as The Princess was, or Maud, or the Fable for Critics were; but for moral and spiritual edification. The literary spirit must always walk behind the spirit of universal love and sympathy, the spirit of man as man and not as a literary expert.8 Milder, a thaw at hand. -- Just finished A Window in Thrums, a delicious piece of work -- would rather have written it than all Mr. Howell's or James have written. How one loves these characters! because the author himself loved them. If Mr. Mowells only had this girft of love! P.M. Thermometer up to near 59 degrees. Bees out of the hive. 9 Snowing, moist and heavy. Mercury up to 36 degrees. 10 Deeply saddened by the death of Archdeacon Ziegenfusz, a man I had come to love. Only a few weeks ago he was here and passed the day in this room with the rest of the "Gang" as he called them -- the picture of health and good nature. His chances of long life seemed vastly better than m own. His wife died only a few weeks ago, and this calamity seemed to have broken him up and killed him. He was a man to love for his genial good-fellowship, as well as for his fine mind and character. I feel a keen sense of personal loss. Going over to the station last night I said to myself, Here have I lived in this place 20 years, and am not yet wonted to it. Twenty years of youth here, and these hills and valleys and river would seem like a part of myself; now I look upon them with alien, reluctant eyes. I seem only a camper for a day and a night. So much more plastic and impressionable are we in youth! As manhood is reached we begin to harden, and by and by our affections will not take on new shapes at all. 13 The boss snow storm of the winter so far, nearly a foot of snow, much drifted. Mercury down to 18 degrees, began yesterday afternoon. -- Attended the funeral of Ziegenfuss yesterday. A great crowd. Saw the body in the morning, looked like life -- never saw Death counterfeit Sleep more perfectly. No emaciation, no pain. His old mother came while I was standing near. Dear old woman! how her heart was wrung! how I wanted to comfort her! How the past must have come like a flood upon her! She remembered him as a babe in her arms, as a child by her side, as a ladwith his books and playthings, as a youth going out into the world, as a young man entering upon his career. How pathetic, how overwhelming! Oh, the inrrevocable past! Bishop Potter spoke well -- a metropolitan man, stamped with the air of a great city. Conventional, precise, dignified, clean-cut. Not a large, homely, original nature, but a fine-trained talent -- an epitome of better New York. Ziegenfusz himself was a true democrat. I loved him much and shall always carry a sweet remembrance of him. How mysterious, I heard several say, that such a man should be taken; the bishop said so, too. It is mysterious when weLucky if here and there on a writer's page we catch the scent of fresh new soil. Once in a while Carlyle, Goethe, Arnold, go in to the and we are exilarated, dilated; and then, again it is scratch, scratch. Rocks and stones with Carlyle and hard-pan with Goethe, or roots and weeds with Arnold. 15 More snow, 5 or 6 inches, this morning; half leg deep now. The cloud cows have had good grazing lately; they pour down their milk like cows in June. Well, they went dry early in the fall, and it is time. As the sun comes North he drives the hot moist air of the tropics before him, and we get the benefit. -- I never read a newspaper but I way, What a poor editor I shold make, according topresent standards. Nine-tenths of this stuff I should leave out. It is useless for a newspaper to try to be a private correspondent of every man woman and child trying to tell them the news about the people they know, and the matters they are concerned in. It should aim only at real news, important news for all, and when there is no news, it shold print a smaller sheet, just as it prints a larger sheet when there is extra news. Printing the same number of columns daily shows the absurdity of the whole business. If there is real news one day, and noe the next, then chaf must take its place, and readersbe robbed of their time. Does any same man more than glance at the editorial page? He knows before hand that he will find no honest, disinterested discussion there, but only lis and make-believe. 17 Cold, cold 8 degrees or 10 degrees below this morning, yet the air looks as innocent and genial as in summer; a soft, bluish haze veils everyting. Sun bright, sky blue, the steam whistles have that split shrill minor character of every cold weather. 18 Rain this morning from the south, mercury 40 degrees. Truly a weather spasm. The grip of Winter is not sure when these happn. P.M. cleared off; mercury 5024 Very cold. 10 degrees below this morning. Bright sunshine all day. Mercury only 2 degrees above at noon. Ice-men on the river suffer much. 25 Still colder, 14 degrees below this morning. But now at 10 A.M. temperature recovering rapidly. A storm evidently approaching. The past week has been free from storm. Cold wave began on Wednesday, the 21st. 26 A driving snow storm from the North -- that is from the South -- mercury about 15 degrees. Winter grown robust and desperate in his last days. -- Took down Carlye's Past and Present last night and leafed it over for half an tasting it here and there. I was glad I did not feel abliged to read it again. It is hard reading. I confess I did not want to be bruised and bumped about by a ride over this rough road. Run the eye over the page and bumped about by a ride over this rought road. Run the eye over the page and see how rought and thorn it looks, and it feels no less so to the mind. The great classical turnpikes, how different! In Carlyle's prose, at its worst, as in Browning's poetry, the difficulties are mechanical; it is not in the thought; it is in the expression. There is fire and intensity about it, but a blow with a club will make you see stars, or a sudden jolt give you a vivid sense of real things. Oh, do level and roll your road a little, Mr. Cor I fear travellers upon it in the future will be few. we do not want it made easier, but simply do not want to be bruised. Carlyle will never be forgotten; he is one of the few monumental writers but probably he will be named and referred to oftener than he is read. A book that one cannot read a second or third time -- A man's private storms and whirlpools and despairs and indigestino ought to appear in his work only as power, or light, or richness of tone. It is near 50 years since Past and Present was written, and none of its dire prophecies have yet come true. Yet I love this Scotch Jeremiah as I love few men. 29 Four or five inches of snow yesterday. Mercury down to 8 degrees this morning. -- Milton's poetry, for the most part, is to me a kind of London Tower filled with old armor, stuffed knights, wooden chargers, and the emblems and bedizzlements of the past. Interesting for a moment, but dead, hollow, moth-eaten. Not a live thing in one of his poems that I can find. Yes, there is a nightingale and a few flowers, and a human touch, here and there. But half a dozen pages would hold all that any man need read. The "Sampson" is said to be in the Greek spirit, but what business find he, a Puritan of Cromwell's time, writing in the Greek spirit?Why did he not write in his own spirit, or in the Puritan spirit? the 17th Century spirit? What business had he masquerading in this old armor? He put no real life under these ribs of death. His "Paradise Lost" is a huge puppet show, so grotesque and preposterous that it is quite insufferable. Milton seems to have been a real man, but he stands there in English literature like a great museum of literary archeology. He seems to have had no experiences of his own, and rarely to have seen the earth and sky, or men and women with his own natural eyes. He saw everything through the classic eyes of the dead past. Who reads him? Professors of literature, I suppose. He was a great craftsman no doubt, but he has been of no service to mankind, except a literary service; he has helped us to realize the classic spirit of letters, and the absurdity of the old theological dramaturgy. He spoke no word to any man's real moral or spiritual wants. March 1 Welcome, thrice welcome the first day of the almanac's spring! Bright and warm, a sap-day. May tempt the bees out by and by. Mercury down to 25 degrees last night. Snow a foot or more on the ground. Ice-men at work on the river, with 10 or 11 inch ice, half of it snow-ice. 2 Warm with signs of rain. Light shower in P.M. Wind shifting to N.W. and cooler. 3 Warm and clear, a day without a cloud, a real blue day. Stiffened up a little last night. but hardly touched freezing-point. Gentle breeze from the North. No spring birds yet. River opened last ight. 4 Sunday, Still bright and sprin-like. The spring birds this morning; bluebirds before sunrise, and robins and purple finches a little later the latter singing in chorus. The perfection of sap-weather. Snow running very fast. 5 Clear and warm, snow runs rapidly. 6 The bright spring days continue. Mud and slush very bad. But little frost at night. 9 Fine spring days, without a break till today. Snow nearly all gone. Excellent sap-weather. Sparrows in song. Turtle-dove on the 6th. Clouds today and sprinkles of rain in P.M. Gilchrist came last night on his way to Vassar. Rather too good an opinion of himself and work. 10 Still warm with sunshine. never remember ten days of March in succession so spring-like. Down to freezing only two or three nights. Near 60 degres some days. G's lecture at Vassar not a success, and I told him so. 11 Sunday. Cloud and fog this morning, but no frost. Sunshine in P.M. River opened night of the second.12 A little frost last night, calm and cool this morning. No wind yet this spring. Only a little floating ice on the river. Can the spark be said to sleep in the flint or the steel? No, only the condition of the spark sleeps there. The spark, the fire, sleeps in the arm, or inthe power that brings the flint and steel in collision. The motion, the force is converted into heat. 18 Sunday. The end of another week of remarkable March weather, April weather, in fact. In the past twenty years I remember nothing equal to it. Sunshine most of the time, and only a little frost. Showed on Thursday about 1 1/2 inch; all gone by 3 on Friday and mercury up to 55. On Friday my four friends from Poughkeepsie came up and spent the day. A pleasant time again. Yesterday Julian and I spent the day over by Black Creek after ducks. Killed no ducks but had a delightful day. Many signs of life in the air and water -- two or three kinds of butterflies, weveral moths, and occasional piping frog, insects in the air, newts and water bugs in and on the water, nuthatches calling, sparrows and robins and bluebirds everywhere. Not a breee stirring. Black Creek like glass as we floated or paddled up and down its length. Only a few ducks here and there. Only a few patches of old snow in the woods. Roads getting dry and vineyard calls us to work.My new man, Auchmoody, moved in yesterday. Buds of the soft maples swelling perceptibly. Saw my first snake and did not harm him. P.M Mercury up to 64 degrees, too warm. Hazel in bloom. Bees carry in pollen. Crocuses piercing the turf. Julian and I walk along the creek and back on RR. Arbutus buds swelling. Phoebe bird today. Standing after night fall now anywhere on the lawn one hears a slow stirring or rustling in the leaves and dry grass. It is made by large earth worms coming up out of their burrows and ruching out over the ground, whetlere for feeding or breedingI know not. My boy calls them "night walkers". In summer he hunts them at night to make bobs of. They are very sly and jerk swiftly back in their holes on the slightest sound. I suppose they feed your footsteps on the ground. 19 Warmer and warmer, up to 69 degrees. A sprinkle of rain in P.M; the fairest April weather. The little piping frongs in full chorus tonight; the whole tribe in full cry, also clucking frogs and the long-drawn Tr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r of the toad. 20 Cooler this morning, north wind. 22 Another big storm flashed in the pan. The fourth or fifith storm that had started from the West failed to reachus. Only a little dash of rain and mist and fog. Warm this morning, like lat April; grass greening and the plow at work. A cold wave said to be coming. No rain to speak of in over a month. -- A passage omiited on second thought from my essay in last Critic on the Sapphic Secret. "Discursive and experimental writers like Mr. Thompson and myself - the mere nibbling mice of Criticism, shoud temper their wrath when they sit in judgement upon the great ones -- the lions who make the paths through the jungles of the world. It is no fault of theirs that they are not micebut is it not a fault of ours that we do not see them to be lions?" 23 Rain set in P.M. and continued all night. Julian and I spend the day at Black Pond and Creek after ducks. See a few but no shot. Cook and eat our dinner on the miniature island, 8 x 10, near outlet of lake. Very pleasant time. The first warbler singing in the trees near us. J. has his new canvas canoe. 25 Overcast, storm threatened. 26 A white-was of snow this morning. All gone at night but getting colder. 27 A cold wave, down to 20 degrees this morning. Begin foundation of fruit house. A typical March day fo the chilly sort. 28 Like yesterday, with wind shifting to southerly in P.M. A storm approaching. How true it is that we want something untamed and untamable in a poet -- a strain of the original savage man. It is this salt that gives the tang to his poetry and that keeps it. No matter how great his culture and refinement if he only strikes back through it to his original uneducated nature and draws from that. He must be a poet before he has ever seen or heard of poetry. No doubt we strike here on one source of weakness of much modern poetry -- it does not smack at all of the soil, or simple, unlettered, human nature. The singers are poets mainly after what books and art ahve done for them. Their works are an intellectual and not an emotional product. Even in such a poet at Lowell, the original man is deeply overlaid iwth the scholar, and with literature. Which shall lead -- the emotional and intuitive nature, or the reasoning, intellectual nature? 31 Wonderful Aurora last night, beyond any I have ever before seen. Once while a boy I saw someting approaching it. The wonder of this display was that it made a complete circle all around the horizon. We stood in the midst of a greattent of streaming aurora. The ghostly flame shot up from north, east, south, west, and came to a focus just a few degrees south of our meridiam never before have I seen it rise up from the south. The apex of this tent was the scene of constantly shifting and vanishing forms of light. It was fairly apochryphal. At times it seemed as if the heavens opened at this point and troops of angels and winged horses came straight toward us. A pencil like Dore's would have caught many suggestions. Sometimes the electric clouds would gather at this point liek foam over the point of escaping fluid and whirl about. Sometimesthere would be curious openings through it where the black sky and the stars would appear. A deep crimson flush would appear here and there near the horizon and spread upward to the zenith. at 8:30 the motion of the streamers was hardly perceptible, but at 8:45 they were leaping up and very rapidly, the sublty impulses traveling up precisely like flame; and such ghostly flame! Never was anything more spectral and unearthly then the whole display. It was a wild dance of many-colored sheeted ghostly forms! What an impression such a phenomenon must have made upon rude primitive man. I myself could hardly keep down an emotion of superstitous fear.A warm fine day with summer clouds and wind. Work all day on the new foundation walls of barn. April 1 Warm and breezy; mercury about 50 degrees in morning. Grass quite green and all buds swelling. The spring three weeks ahead of time. Hepatica today out probably a day or two. 2 Bright, dry, cold. A day to burn brush and rubbish. 3 My 57th birthday. Clear, sharp, dry; mercury down to 20 degrees this morning. The sky so clear and dry that the cold air falls down upon us. House painters here this morning. Julian resumes scool. Settle up P.O matters with S. Health good, spirits ditto.8 Sunday. Ground white with snow this morning. We had an April March now we are having a March April. The week has been rather cold, quite a freeze two or three nights. -- What a difference between the artist's interest in a picture, and the public's interest! The people are interested in the picture, in what it tells them, in the subject, in what they see in it that agrees with their experience, or their ideals. The artist is interested in the art of the picture, the drawing, the coloring, the handling -- in the form and not in the substance. Which is right? The artists do not much respect the popular verdict. An artist will greatly admire a portrait that is not a good likeness, while the first thing that the layman demands is that it be like the original. If it is not like, he has no further interest in it. It is the old story of art for art's sake, and not for what it tells. The professional view of a doctor whom he met rubbing his hands with delight because he had just been called to a chase of some kind or other that was "beautiful" -- just according to the books, every feature was perfect. The book or the picture that has not something besides its art to recommend it, will not carry very far. -- Prof. Huxley says the ethical process and the cosmic process are at war -- the former combats the latter. And yet if your ethical process is not in keeping with the laws of nature, if it be not really founded upon the cosmic order, will it last? will it carry? Can the settled order of the Whole be combatted? Do we combat it in setting up the moral order? Certainly not. The conflict is not fully cleared up by Husley. Our benevolence, our humanity prompts us to interfere with the law of natural selection, the survival of the fittest in seeking to prolong the lives of the unfit. We do prolong them, but evidently to the detriment of the stock. Moral value, moral goodness -- what are they? Are they founded in the constitution of things? Self-denial, self-sacrifice, heroism, mercy, forgiveness, etc. are these things contrary to the eternal verities? Man confronts Nature and puts her under his feet, but only within certain narrow limits. He does not make the tide rollback, but he utilizes it, rides it. He cannot change the nature of lightning, but he can use it, control it, (not tame it.) We say Man tames the lightning, or tames the elements, but that is only a figure of speech. They are untabalbe. He measured them and adjusts his wants to them. He tames the animals; he subdues them. He tames them his own animal nature; he lets the ape and tiger ide. The cosmic process of course includes man and lass his doings, since he is part of the cosmos, and the ethical process is at war with the cosmic process only as the lever is at war with gravitation. A new element is introduced, the will of man, which sorks upon and uses the old order. Man uses Nature and is part ofher unconsciously, while the animals do not. He is an animal plus a developed (more or less) moral consciousness. By reason he uses Nature. (The lamper-eels use Nature also when they go up stream for the stones which the current helps them float down to their nest.) The moral order is opposed to the animal order -- is not that about all? Must think further on this matter. Is the ethical process analogous to the cultivating and improving of the surface of the earth -- draining, clearing, shaping, fertilizing? Is the farmer at war with Nature? In one sense; but unless Nature favors him, where is he? 9 Windy, chilly. Froze some last night. Sheets of snow all day yesterday and a very chilly air. -- Dick Martin just dropped in to show me a handful of young 'possums, very young -- 16 of them -- likely newly-born mice. The mother was picked up dead on the RR, head and one leg cut off and these young were in her pouch each clinging to its teat dead. The connection seems almost as vital as when they-- When I am flollowing my plow over a refractory piece of ground, and see it dip in here and come to the surface there, now and then the turning of the soil fairly, but as often only making a mark, I say that while that is not good plowing it is about as good as the best writing, so rarely do even the best authors more than turn up fresh soil here and there -- a steady uniform furrow, opening up virgin soil -- who turns it? We arewere in the mother's womb. They are born in about two weeks after gestation begins, and placed by the mother in her pouchm where they fasten upon the teats. The teats, Dick says, are long and slender like a little skunks, 'possums, muskrats, woodchucks, and foxes. The red foxes seem to be run down by the fast night trains. 11 Forty years ago to-day -- how appalling that sounds! -- I began my first school, Tongore, Ulster County. A driving snow storm from the North. Winter again in earnest. Moved the wagon-house today, and now call it the fruit house.12 Five or six inches of wet snow yesterday. Flurries of snow in the air this morning, with north wind still blowing very chilly. Mercyry a little above freezing. -- Some natures are essentially moral, the categories to which they refer all things are those of good and evil; others are intellectual; their categories of reference are those of the true and the false; still others are esthetic; they see only the beautiful and ugly, only poetry or prose. 15 Lovely day, the world flooded with light; warm, dry, north wind. A luxury to be out doors. Fine yesterday also, with some cloud. drive to Sherwood's in PM.-- How curious, almost startling, the thought or discovery that there is such a thing as light or sound -- these two universal phenomena that play such a part in our lives. That they are sensations -- merely, physiological effects of vibrations in the ether. But what causes the vibratons in the ether that causes our sensations of light? some material force certainly. The same with sound; the waves are there, if the ear is not. Light effects even the rocks. So there is an influence, an emanation from the sun or the lamp which is real, and which makes the conditions for the sensation we call light. There is such thing as sweet or sour, hot or cold; these are sensations. The universe is an illusion, a creation of our own after all. 17 The fourth of the charmed days. Bright, dry and warm. The yellow redpoll warbler today. Walk up to the creek for suckeys but get none, but how beautiful the full, clear, cold stream rushing along in the sunlight! Began plowing vineyard to-day. 20 Two days of cloud and blue vapor -- veiled, soft, quiet, moist orodous April days. 21 Shower with thunder last night, and light rains during forenoon. Bright and warm in PM, and rain again at sundown. 22 Rain with thunder in morning and cooler. Misty all forenoon. The April drought fairly broken.Notes for an April poem: The soft maples are crimson and the buds of the elm swarm like bees in the branches, The bee comes home with golden thighs from the willows, and honey in her bag from the arbutus. School children pass with their hand full of hepaticas and arbutus. The newly-lpoughed fields glow like the breasts of robins. I walk in the new furrow in the stron sunlight till it is photographed upon my spirit. The farmer strides across the brown field scattering the seed oats at steps alternate. The sparrow, the robin, the jay, have nest-material in their beaks. The kinglet pipes his fine lyrical strain in the evergreens -- he flashes his ruby crown to his mate. The white-throat sings on his way northward. Long and long the highhole calls fro mthe distand field. The first swallow laughs down to me from the sky. From the marshes rise the shill, infantile chorus of the little piping frogs. From the trees above them comse the o-ka-lee of the red-wing. The song of the toad tr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r is heard in the land. The first dandelion lies like a gold coin upon the greening turf.Something delicate, prophetic, spiritual is in the air. The bud-scales are falling from the buds -- some are fragrant and gummy. The light shower fills the air with wild perfume, The bluebird lifts and flickers to his mate his cerulean wing, In the twilight the robin-racket is prolonged and intense, The cow bird sits beside his dusky mate on the top of the tree and pumps up his liquid, glassy notes. In the leafless woods the pedestrian partridge beats his drum -- his own inflated breast. Amid the alders in the moist bottoms, the marsh marigold have the effect of coined sunshine. Here and there is the moist bottoms, the marsh marigolds have the effect of coined sunshine. Here and there is the tree-dotted landscape, the greening rye fields delight the eye. Ere the month is ended the shad-blow makes a white mist, here and there along the forest borders.27 A week of fine April weather, slowly warming up till to-day it is nearly summer heat. Again the maples have shaken out their fringelike blossoms, again the cherry trees are white. Season much earlier than last. A few days ago the air was filled with a dleicious wild perfume, a pungent, stimulating, bitter-sweet odor. I could not trace it to its source. It seemed to be general and to fill all the air. Was it from the just-bursting buds of the sugar maples? I know of no toher likely source. Tops of the trees over in Langdon's woods just faintly etched in opening leaf-buds. Currants blooming. On the night of the 24th went to Kingston to hear and see Ingersoll Much stouter and redder than when I saw him last May; much too much belly. Can drink whiskey, he says, but not wine. Wine makes him throb and throb. He ate his supper in his room after the lecture; drank iced-milk and iced-water freely. Lecture full of telling points, much sound argument, and many eloquent passages. He said, in talking with me in his room, that he was by no means sure that immortality was desirable; he would name conditions before accepting it -- unconditional immortality he would refuse.28 A lovely day, feminine day, veiled, tranquil, almost voluptuous. Mercury at 78. A little rain in afternoon. -- Had a glimpse of father the other night in my dream; we were at the table and a plate of trout was passed around, and I was father pick out the big one, as I have so often seen him do. I smiled in my sleep. 29 Clear and cooler, with North wind. 30 The last of the April days, clear, warm, still, with just a tinge of vapor in the air -- the beginning of brided veil ofSummer. Cherry and plum trees in bloom; pear trees spring and apple trees showing the pink. Carpenders began the new barn t0-day. May 1st May day shads in warm soft, wind southerly, wide hazy clouds in the sky. Wood thrush to-day in my grounds. The first big run of shad yesterday. 2. Hot and dry -- 88 degrees in shade to-day. Apple trees leaping into bloom. 3d Cooler this morning; North wind. Leaves half out; a tender mist of green over Langdens woods. Grass and grain need rain.-- In P. library I glance over Mr Grosses "Note on Walt Whitman" in the New Review for April. Must read it at my leisure some time. Gross is a very clever, but a very small critic and man -- has spent his days in overlading and sorting and inspecting the small potatoes of Enlish literature (and no literature has more small potatoes) How much he knows about [crossed out: English lit] said literature that is not worth knowing that it would be a mere weariness to know. He is a man of details and of deft careful workmanship, but entirely superficial. You never strike a great thought or a fresh thought in his workand his criticisms compare with Arnold's, or Scherer's as a vine compares with a tree. The professional critic, if he be not a large nature, can make nothing of Whitman. A man like Gosse, trained in the schools and overtrained is in literature, much like the orthodox theologian in religion. How the latter snorts at the idea that there can be any religion outside the church, the dogmas, the forms, the Bible etc. The former in the same way snorts at the idea that there can be any poetry outside of or in opposition to the rules and models and schools. He sees nothing but a barbarous, unregenerated poetic nature in W.W. Mr G. thinks the secret of W's attraction for certain minds is that they see themselves in him etc. Well, a poet in which such men as Stevenson Symonds, Emerson, Thoreau and others see themselves, must be something and somebody to be sure. In Mr Gosse's poems we see only little Mr Gosse. When we can all see ourselves in him [crossed out: we] he will have increased immeasurably in size and importance. 10 Lovely May days without a break, nearly summer tem-perature. A brief shower on Sunday the 6th getting pretty dry. Showy orchis in bloom and fringed polygala. Leaves all out. Trees clad in their under garments, tho' some of the maples look fully clad. Go to N.Y. to-day to attend Authors Club dinner at night. 12. Back home to-day from N.Y. Still dry and warm. Apple bloom all gone. The last run of shad (apparently) in the river. Was greatly shocked on my arrival home to learn of the sudden death of my neighbor Mr Hathaway yesterday morning. While I was at the authors club, speaking or eating and making merry, he was struggling with death. He has been my neighbor there under the hill for 10 years and I shall miss him much. I could almost look down into his chimney and I shall greatly miss the smoke from his fire going up into the air on winter mornings, and his friendly voice and manner. A blameless, good natured, rather intelligent man, without childrenwith a wife fearfully neat. A deacon in the church, a cooper by trade, and in all ways a kind and brotherly man. My last word with him or vision of him was last Friday the 4th of May. He had lived many years in Brooklyn working at his trade. Came here 10 years ago to look after the big ice house. Age, 67. To-day is his funeral day (Sunday 13th) -- The [crossed out: onl] main difference between a precious stone and a common stone is not in the substance, but in the arrangement -- the crystalization. In substance the charcoal and the diamond are one, but in form how widely they differ. This crystalization is not an easy thing. It requires almost an eternity of time. 19 Weather the last week warm and dry till last night, when a fine shower fell, nearly one inch of water. 19 Go home on morning train take up some shad; reach home at noon. How green and fresh the old spot looks, how the bobolinks sing. all are well. Stay home till Wednesday, the 23d Wind and light rain till last day, the bright and warm. I go fishing over in Meeker's Hollow; take 33 trout to the song of bobolinks. A hot pull home at 12. Take a few trout from West Settlement stream on Monday. Return home in afternoon. 24. Began raining last night from a depression in Va, yesterday, and has rained steadily all day. No let-up for a moment. Easily an inch of water has fallen. Grape arms 2 feet long and begin-ning to break some. 25 Rain continued all day and all last night, and is still at it; threatening to be a regular debauch of the rain godsStill my drains are not running. The earth was very thirsty. Grape arms dropping off this morning. -- Slow rain nearly all day. -- I do not seem to have made any proper record of my visit home from the 19th to the 23rd. Heavy East wind with light rain most of the time. I strolled about in the usual way, listening, looking for something I could not find. I sat for an hour or more on two occasions on the top of the hill above the house looking over in West Settlement and listening to the shore larks singing far above me. Twice after supper I walked out on the hill and looked long and long off east into Montgomery Hollow and trying to conjure up the old days I poked about the grave yard on the hill and found the grave of Obadiah Scudder, 1804, the oldest date I could find. I watched the boys draw dung and tried to get up courage to takea hand in, but could not. One afternoon I went down into the hemlocks and wandered along the little stream, all much changed since my boy hood. How green and fresh the country looked, with a sort of pathos over all, the pathos of my vanished youth. 29. The big rain of the season thus far yesterday; began about 2 P.M. and rained nearly all night, nearly 2 inches of water in 10 hours, drains all running this morning; broke the grape arms badly. I find they break less in stony, gravelly soil; the worst breakage is in the soft sandy soil. Bright and cool to-day. 31. Another rain set in last night from the N.E. a hell of rain seems imminent. The locusts have dropped their bloom. Daisy has come again and clover. June 1st June comes in like a huzzy, cold and sour-- clouds with spurts of rain. 3d A fine day at last but very cool. Dr Bucke and wife here. The 17 year locusts are coming out think in places. 4 Rain again last night and this morning. Clearing off is no good any more. Before you can turn around the rain is upon us again. It is "water affirmative" as Goethe says. No matter where the wind is it rains. Where two or three clouds are gathered together it rains. This is the third week of rain every day but one. 5th Threatens rain again. Coldand sour. We go to West Point. Actually clears off in P.M. and we have a fine day. 6 Cold and sour again threatening rain. Hellish weather, worse than in England. Barn not yet finished. Straw-berries just ripening a little. A cold wave coming from the N.W. with frosts in its course. In P.M. walk over to the weasel swamp. Find three interesting things -- The 17 year locusts coming out all along the borders of the woods; some little bushes loaded with them. Under certain trees find their little earth mounds [crossed out: thick] many of them yet sealed up, or with only a peep hole in them. Saw a little moth that evidently imitates bird droppings on the leaves. When disturbed it would fly a few rods and alight on [crossed out: the]a broad green leaf, spreading itself out perfectly flat, simulating the droppings of a bird. It was yellowish with a faint dark brown etched upon its wings. It would not move till touched. I have read of a moth or butterfly found on some island of Oceanica that exactly mimmicks the excrement of a bird upon a leaf -- this of course for protection. Found the nest of the worm-eating warbler beside the path in the edge of the woods. As I came along down the path on my return a small brown bird started up from the ground a few feet from me. From the glimpse of it I had, I took it to be the oven bird. Looking to the spot [crossed out: from] whence it started I saw another bird with a striped head standing on the edge of a nest in the side of the bank with the droppings of one of the young birds, whose heads I saw beneath her, in her beak. My appearance upon the scene was sudden and the mother bird was surprised while waiting upon her young. She stood motion-less, half turned toward me and kept the white mass in her beak, neither of us stirred for a minute or two, when I withdrew and sat down a few paces away. The male bird now became quite uneasy and flitted from bush to bush and uttered his alarm chip. The mother bird never stirred. I could see her loaded beak from where I sat. In two or three minutes she dropped or otherwise disposed of her unsavory morsel, but kept her place above her young. Then the male bird, seeing that was the game, quieted down also and dis-appeared from view. After long waiting I approached the nest and pausing 10 feet away, regarded it some moments. The bird never stirred. Then came nearer, and when I sat down within 4 or 5 feet of the nest the parent bird flew out upon the ground 3 or 4 paces from me and began trying that old confidence game of the birds upon me. She was seized with incipient paralysis, she dragged herself about in the ground, she grieved and tottered and seemed about ready to go all to pieces. [crossed out: The male now sudden] seeing this game did not work she began to use her wings and to scold sharply. The male now suddenly appeared upon the scene, and, ture to his name had a worm in his beak. Their scolding brought avireo upon the scene, which they seemed to regard as an intrusion. The nest was composed mainly of dry leaves. The young were probably a week old. I shall visit them again. 7. Cold and sour; almost a frost last night. No heat since April. We greatly overdrew our a/c in that long succession of bright mild days in March and April. 9 Weather still fair and beginning to warm up. Nearly 80 to-day. Grape arms have broken very badly this year. Met poor old Mrs Green last night trudging down from Esopus to take train here to go to Newburgh to see her son fatally hurt on the R.R. Poor old mother, I could have wept with her. Son a worth-less fellow, hard drinker, better dead than alive, but his mothersheart could not give him up easily. There were tears on her brown wrinkled face as we talked. It was very hard for her she said, so old, so much trouble, so much hard work as she had seen. [???] children, a drinking husband and sons, poverty and yet the old woman tries to keep up a cheerful front, and has preserved a certain innocence and sweetness. The methodist dominie went down and prayed beside her son; went on purpose, she said. "It was showing him a good deal of respect" said she, and she was touched by it. Probably the first mark of respect the poor devil had ever seen. I have known her for 20 years and yet she cant get my name right; calls me Mr Burrell generally. As she stepped along alertly to get on the train I saw how pinched and crooked her old back looked, bet. 70 and 80 10 No clouds to-day. Summer heat over 80. A lovely June day. Walked to the woods. Found nest of water thrush, and came near another, the brood had flown. Locusts in full chorus to-day. How warm and fragrant the breath of the meadow I passed through. A very little grape bloom to-day under the hill. 11. A still dim day of great heat, 90 in shade. 12 Still very hot; sky veiled with vapor or smoke till noon. Go to Vassar. A heavy shower at 6 1/2 P.M. 13. Hot, with streaks of sunshine cooler in evening. 14. Bright, cooler; grapes blooming. 21. Very warm the past ten days, from 80 to 90. Light thunder showers. Grapes done blooming yesterday, except a few stragglers, about the same as last year. Currants earlier. The 17-year cicadas humming and flying everywhere. Buildings at last finished and painted. 23. Heat continues, 92 to-day on north end of house. Began the currants. I do not remember such a hot June. July 1st No let-up in the heat, from 86 degrees to 91 degrees every day. Only light dashes of rain; getting dry. Finished currants yesterday, about 4 tons. Prices low.2d Mercury 90 degrees to-day. Start for Snyder Hollow, Julian and I. Reach Larkins about 10 A.M. Stay there in the camp till Friday the 6th A delicious time -- never had better, Julian a good camper out. Great pleasure in being with him in the woods and teaching him wood craft. Took [crossed out: ???] and ate about 90 trout from 5 to 10 inches. Began to get cooler on the 4th. Stopped at Phoececia and caught 2 fine rainbow trout. In the ice-cream saloon the boy asked us, "Will you have it in brick or in bulk?" "If the bricks are bulky," I said "We will have it in 'brick'"? "But what is the difference?" "In the brick it is all in a cake, and in bulk it is shovelled out.""'Shovelled out sounds good", we replied, "we are very hungry for cream;" we will try it both ways" which we did, and liked the shovelled out plates the best. Reached home Friday night. 10. Very cool for past few days and very dry; things begin to suffer much for want of water. 12 Start for Adirondacks to-day on invitation of Mr Chubb. Very hot. Stay at White Hall over night. Reach the Willey House in Keene Friday P.M. Stay one week. Very cool and delightful. The grandest mountain view I ever saw.Like the Chubbs much. Give a talk on Nature in Parlors on Saturday night, and one on Whitman on Sunday night. On Monday we climb Hurricane Mt. The view amazing for extent and sublimity. Meet Prof Davison and some of his philosophers; the Prof. an old time student and thinker -- lives on the past. Nothing new or vital in him. (The new is always vital, and the vital is always new). Return home Friday the 20th; heat terrible -- 94 in the cars all day, 96 in Albany and Troy stations. Very dry, -- a light rain last Sunday the 15th. 22d Cool and cloudy, about 1/2 ich of rain last night.Strays the drouth, but does not cure it. Grapes and all things suffering. A summer of great heat and dryness so far. -- I can well understand the feelings of the old Romans that prompted them to thrash and flog their gods when things went wrong with them. I never knew of a god that did not deserve flogging every day in the year. Take the god of rain, for instance. What a mess he makes of it, always drowning some part of the country and burning up some other part. 24. Cloudy, misty, getting hot. A hot wave near by no rain to speak of. Getting ready to go out to old home, Julian and I.
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Title: from Olive L. Huntley, 5 Dec 1862
Creator: Huntley, Olive L.
Description: Letter of application
Date: December 5, 1862
Text: New Woodstock Dec. 15th Mr Matthew Vassar Dear Sir It is not often that I venture unintroduced, into the presence of an entire stranger; but in consideration of the magnificent gift you have recently bestowed upon the women of our land, I am encouraged to address you upon a subject which, for years, has been to me, one of absorbing interest. I am the third of four sisters, between the ages of twenty two and thirty, in a family of twelve children- ten of whom are still living- who from our...
Show moreNew Woodstock Dec. 15th Mr Matthew Vassar Dear Sir It is not often that I venture unintroduced, into the presence of an entire stranger; but in consideration of the magnificent gift you have recently bestowed upon the women of our land, I am encouraged to address you upon a subject which, for years, has been to me, one of absorbing interest. I am the third of four sisters, between the ages of twenty two and thirty, in a family of twelve children- ten of whom are still living- who from our childhood have for (…)writing to you is to ascertain upon what terms we may become members of this Institution. It has ever been our intention to devote ourselves to teaching, if we can secure a thorough education to prepare us for that important work, and we feel that no place could be found more desirable for obtaining that preparation, than the Vassar Collegiate Institute. Pardon me for taking so much of your time; my earnest desire to secure this object is my apology. Will it be too much to ask you to answer the question I have proposed? Whether we can enjoy the advantages of this noble Institution or not, permit me with all fine women of our land, to thank you warmly for the kindly interest you have manifested in the intellectual and (…) training of our sex; assuring you that thousands of the sons and daughter of our land will yet bless the memory of him whose Christian kindness has prompted this noble enterprise. On behalf of my sister and myself Yours very respectfully Olive L. Humtleyhoped at some future day to enjoy the educational advantages, we so highly prized: but although poverty has never been our portion, yet our parents have never felt able to incur the necessary expense. The advertisements of the different institutions of learning, which have roughly met our eye, have been perused with a longing to share their benefits, which only those, similarly situated can fully understand. Some time since, a matter of the Vassar Collegiate Institute, when in process of erection, attracted our attention, and (…) new hopes; but, ignorant of the plans upon which it was founded, we supposed its advantages were far beyond our reach, and relinquished it with a sigh: hoping a way might yet be opened for the accomplishment of our long-cherished desire. Last evening an Article in the Female Advocate and Guardian caught our eye, which led us to hope that here might be found that which we had so long sought in vain. My object in1862 Olive L Humtley New Woodstock Madison Co. NY Decb 5th Answered 21 Decb wishes to enter as pupil
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Title: Anthony, Susan B. -- to My Dear Friend, Feb 6, 1899
Creator: Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell), 1820-1906
Date: 1899-02-06
Text: Honorary President, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, 25 West 61st Street, New York. President, SUSAN B. ANTHONY, 17 Madison Street, Rochester, New York. Vice-President-at-Large, REV. ANNA H. SHAW, 1341 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa. Corresponding Secretary, RACHEL PORTER AVERY, 1341 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa. Recording Secretary, ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, 3 Park Street, Boston, Mass. Treasurer, HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, Warren, Ohio. Auditors: LAURA CLAY, Lexington, Ky. SARAH B. COOPER, San Francisco,...
Show moreHonorary President, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, 25 West 61st Street, New York. President, SUSAN B. ANTHONY, 17 Madison Street, Rochester, New York. Vice-President-at-Large, REV. ANNA H. SHAW, 1341 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa. Corresponding Secretary, RACHEL PORTER AVERY, 1341 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa. Recording Secretary, ALICE STONE BLACKWELL, 3 Park Street, Boston, Mass. Treasurer, HARRIET TAYLOR UPTON, Warren, Ohio. Auditors: LAURA CLAY, Lexington, Ky. SARAH B. COOPER, San Francisco, Cal. Chairman Committee on Organization, CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT, 107 World Building, New York. Office of the President, ROCHESTER, N. Y. Feb. 6, 1899 My Dear Friend Dear Ellen wrote me of the sad bereavement that has come to you and your dear wife- it is too cruel- but there is no escape from the inevitable- Your hearts must ache to the breaking- nevertheless- you were so happy telling me of your blessings in your precious wife & darling babies- last fall when you so lovingly escorted me to the R. R. Station- You have drank of the cup of sorrow before- and proved you had philosophy & strength to endure it- and so both you & your dear one will be equal to this added grief!! With best love & deepest sympathy Susan B. AnthonyCopy Alma Lutz Collection National-American Woman Suffrage Association Office of the President, Rochester N.Y., Feb. 6, 1899 My Dear Friend Dear Ellen wrote me of the sad bereavement that has come to you and your dear wife- it is too cruel- but there is no escape from the inevitable- Your hearts must ache to the breaking- nevertheless- you were so happy telling me of your blessings in your precious wife & darling babies- last fall when you so lovingly escorted me to the R. R. Station- You have drank of the cup of sorrow before- and proved you had philosophy & strength to endure it- and so both you & your dear one will be equal to this added grief!! With best love & deepest sympathy Susan B. Anthony
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Title: Aaron, Fannie -- to Father and Mother, May 10,1920
Creator: Aaron, Fannie
Date: 5/10/20
Text: May 10. Dear Father + Mother, I moved home today. I'll try it and see how it works. I found a note on my door from Eleanor Wolfe - sorry to have missed me. It took a while for it to down who she was - but the address Park Ave., helped. Nothing new in classes, except that I got a C+ on that math makeup quiz. It's time for me to wake up. Mlle. C. says she will certify that I don't need [a2nd] year foreign language. Hurrah! I don't think those were the glasses, Mother. There...
Show moreMay 10. Dear Father + Mother, I moved home today. I'll try it and see how it works. I found a note on my door from Eleanor Wolfe - sorry to have missed me. It took a while for it to down who she was - but the address Park Ave., helped. Nothing new in classes, except that I got a C+ on that math makeup quiz. It's time for me to wake up. Mlle. C. says she will certify that I don't need [a2nd] year foreign language. Hurrah! I don't think those were the glasses, Mother. There should be 2 pairs specs. at home. Medicine + laundry O.K. Love; FannieMr. + Mrs. Marcus Aaron, 402 S. Winebiddle Ave, Pittsburgh, Pa.
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Title: Streett, Laura -- oral history, December 10, 2014:
Description: Field of study: history and library science. Current occupation: Vassar College Archivist. Grew up in Troy, NY; undergraduate at SUNY New Paltz, graduate studies at the University of Maine; worked at Smith College and Cornell University before coming to Vassar. Keywords: LGBTQ, oral history, New York, history, Smith College, Vassar history, women's history, feminism, lesbian fashion, archives, marriage, family dynamics.
Date: December 10, 2014

Title: Page 1
Description: Included in Ross, Caroline (Barnes). Scrapbook, 1901-1905
"Photographs - Main Building through gate, October 1901 -- Photographs - Main Building across field, October 1901 -- Photographs - Old Observatory, October 1901 -- Photographs - Interior of the Museum [Vogelstein], October 1901 -- Photographs - Path with steps and campus in the background, October 1901 -- Photographs - Sunset Lake, October 1901 -- Photographs - Raymond, October 1901 -- Photographs - Ely Hall (Gymnasium), October 1901"
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1901 - July 20, 1906

Title: Page 172
Description: Included in Mansfield, Adelaide (Claflin). Scrapbook, 1893-1897
Songs - VC Trig Ceremonies
Date: From scrapbook dated c. September 1893 - November 27, 1901

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