ege Settlements Association. It
aims rather at the quickening of sympathy and intelligence on
social questions, and the moral and financial support which the
College Chapter can give its representatives out in the world.
Such by-products of the settlement interest as the Social Study
Circle, an informal group of undergraduates and teachers which
met for several years to study social questions, are worth much
more to the movement than the immature efforts of undergraduates
in directing settlement clubs and classes.

Already the historic perspective is sufficiently clear for us to
realize that the College Settlement Movement is the unique, and
perhaps the most important organized contribution of the women's
colleges to civilization during their first half century of existence.
Through this movement, in which they have played so large a part,
they have exerted an influence upon social thought and conscience
exceeded, in this period, by few other agencies, religious,
philanthropic or industrial, if we except the Trade-union Movement
and Socialism, which emanate from the workers themselves. The
prominent part which Wellesley has played in it will doubtless be
increasingly understood and valued by her graduates.

IV.

Let it be frankly acknowledged: the ordinary adult is usually
bored by the undergraduate periodical--even though he may, once
upon a time, have edited it himself. The shades of the prison-house
make a poor light for the Gothic print of adolescence. But the
historian, if we may trust allegory, bears a torch. For him no
chronicle, whether compiled by twelfth-century monk or twentieth-century
collegian, can be too remote, too dull, to reflect the gleam. And
some chronicles, like the Wellesley one, are more rewarding than
others.

No one can turn over the pages of these fledgling journals, Courant,
Prelude, Magazine, News, without being impressed by the unconscious
clarity with which they reflect not merely the events in the college
community--although they are unusually faithful and accurate
recorders of events--but the college temper of mind, the range
of ideas, the reaction to interests beyond the campus, the general
trend of the intellectual and spiritual life.

The interest in social questions is to the fore astonishingly
early. In Wellesley's first newspaper, the Courant, published in
the college year 1888-1889, we find articles on the Working Girls
of Boston, on the Single Tax, and notes of