intances and even strangers,
needed assistance at a time when she knew an emergency had come to them,
and often asked others to be the means of meeting such needs, not
letting it be known whence the help came. "Just tell them you have it to
give away," she would often say. Sometimes she gave to personal friends
a check, asking that they spend it as they thought best in ministering
to others.
This was done for many years to some who were in close touch with the
students of Colorado College. "Don't take the trouble to give an account
of this," she would say, "only be sure that it goes where it is really
needed." But when the account was rendered, she wanted to hear all that
could be told of the circumstances of each one who had been helped, and
often arranged that certain of these should have further assistance. To
a number this was voluntarily continued during their professional
studies. The following, from a letter to her son in 1908, shows her
sympathetic understanding of the students whom she helped:
"I wonder if I told you that the suit that you left here I gave to Mrs.
S---- for one of the college boys. The lining was greatly worn and so I
pinned on an envelope with $5.00 in it and she gave it to a very needy
fellow who is working and attending college. She had a letter from him
and from the mother. I am going to send her letter and some other
letters from other boys to whom the President has given a little from
time to time from a little that I gave him early in the winter. I want
you to read them, for I don't think that any of us realize how brave
these poor students are, and really they are the ones whom we hear of
later; the rich men's sons fall short in some way."
* * * * *
Mrs. Bemis was one of a group of women who, in the spring of 1889,
organized the Women's Education Society of Colorado College. The
resolutions passed by its executive board at the time of her death so
adequately express her relation to the Society that they are here quoted
in full:
"The Executive Board of the Women's Educational Society wishes to place
on record its sense of irreparable loss in the passing of Alice Cogswell
Bemis.
"Her association with the work of the Society has extended over a long
period of years, and her part in it has always been characterized by
fidelity to the purpose of the organization and keen discrimination in
the execution of the trust. She brought to the problems conf
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