bestow upon it two thousand dollars for a full-length portrait
of Sophia Smith to be placed in the large reading room, at the
end of which is a full-length portrait of President Seelye. The
presence of such a commanding figure seen by hundreds of girls
every day would be a subtle and lasting influence.

I like to nibble at a stuffed date, but do not enjoy having my memory
stuffed with dates, though I am proud rather than sensitive in regard
to my age.

Lady Morgan was unwilling her age should be known, and pleads:

What has a woman to do with dates--cold, false, erroneous,
chronological dates--new style, old style, precession of the
equinoxes, ill-timed calculation of comets long since due at
their station and never come? Her poetical idiosyncrasy,
calculated by epochs, would make the most natural points of
reference in woman's autobiography. Plutarch sets the example
of dropping dates in favour of incidents; and an authority more
appropriate, Madame de Genlis, who began her own memoires at
eighty, swept through nearly an age of incident and revolution
without any reference to vulgar eras signifying nothing (the
times themselves out of joint), testifying to the pleasant
incidents she recounts and the changes she witnessed. I mean to
have none of them!

I hesitate to allude to my next experience after leaving Smith
College, for it was so delightful that I am afraid I shall scarcely be
believed, and am also afraid that my readers will consider me a "swell
head" and my story only fit for a "Vanity Box." Yet I would not leave
out one bit of the Western lecture trip. If it were possible to tell
of the great kindness shown me at every step of the way without any
mention of myself, I would gladly prefer to do that.

After leaving Smith College, I was enjoying commencement festivities
in my own home--when another surprising event! Mr. George W.
Bartholomew, a graduate of Dartmouth, who was born and brought up in a
neighbouring Vermont town, told me when he called that he had
established a large and successful school for young ladies in
Cincinnati, Ohio, taking a few young ladies to live in his pleasant
home. He urged me to go to his school for three months to teach
literature, also giving lectures to ladies of the city in his large
recitation hall. And he felt sure he could secure me many invitations
to lecture in other cities.

R