father says that Austin Smith
never asked his sisters to sew a button or do repairs on his
clothing without paying them a small sum for it, and he
always received six cents for doing chores or running errands.
No doubt this was a practice maintained from early youth, for
when Sophia Smith was born, in 1796, the family was in very
moderate circumstances. The whole community was poor for some
time after the Revolution, and everyone saved pennies.

As to her education, she used to sit on the doorsteps of the
schoolhouse and hear the privileged boys recite their lessons. She
also had four or five months of instruction in the schoolhouse, and
was a student in Hopkins Academy for a short time and, when fourteen
years old, attended school at Hartford, Connecticut, for a term of
twelve weeks.

[Illustration: SOPHIA SMITH]

Then a long, uneventful, almost shut-in life, and in 1861 her brother
Austin left her an estate of about four hundred and fifty thousand
dollars.

Hon. George W. Hubbard of Hatfield was her financial adviser. He
advised her to found an academy for Hatfield, which she did; and after
Doctor Greene had caused her to decide on a college for women, Mr.
Hubbard insisted on having it placed at Northampton, Massachusetts,
instead of Hatfield, Massachusetts. With her usual modesty, she
objected to giving her full name to the college, as it would look as
if she were seeking fame for herself. She gave thirty thousand dollars
to endow a professorship in the Andover Theological Seminary at
Andover, Massachusetts.

She grew old gracefully, never soured by her infirmities, always
denying herself to help others and make the world better for her
living in it.

Her name must stand side by side with the men who founded Vassar,
Wellesley, and Barnard, and that of Mary Lyon to whom women owe the
college of Mt. Holyoke.

As Walt Whitman wrote:

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

She was a martyr physically, and mentally a heroine. Let us never fail
to honour the woman who founded Smith College.

Extracts from a letter replying to my question: "Is there a
full-length portrait of Sophia Smith, now to be seen anywhere in the
principal building at Smith College, Northampton?"

How I wish that some generous patron of Smith College might