teaching, and the mothers of girls gave of the money earned by selling eggs and braiding palm-leaf hats.

"Don't think any gift too small," said Miss Lyon. "I want the twenties and the fifties, but the dollars and the half-dollars, with prayer, go a long way."

So Mount Holyoke was built on faith and prayer and the gifts of the many who believed that the time cried out for a means of educating girls who longed for a better training. One hard-working farmer with five sons to educate gave a hundred dollars. "I have no daughters of my own," he said, "but I want to help give the daughters of America the chance they should have along with the boys." Two delicate gentlewomen who had lost their little property in the panic, earned with their own hands the money they had pledged to the college.

Even Miss Lyon's splendid optimism had, however, some chill encounters with smallmindedness in people who were not seldom those of large opportunities. Once when she had journeyed a considerable distance to lay her plans before a family of wealth and influence in the community, she returned to her friends with a shade of thought on her cheerful brow. "Yes, it is all true, just as I was told," she said as if to herself. "They live in a costly house, it is full of costly things, they wear costly clothes—but oh, they're little bits of folks!"

Miss Lyon, herself, gave to the work not only her entire capital of physical strength and her gifts of heart and mind, but also her small savings, which had been somewhat increased by Mr. White's prudent investments. And for the future she offered her services on the same conditions as those of the missionary—the means of simple livelihood and the joy of the work.

"Mount Holyoke is designed to cultivate the missionary spirit among its pupils," declared an early circular, "that they may live for God and do something."

Always Miss Lyon emphasized the ideal of an education that should be a training for service. To this end she decided upon the expedient of coöperative housework to reduce running expenses, to develop responsibility, and to provide healthful physical exercise. Long before the day of gymnasiums and active sports, this educator recognized the need of balanced development of physical as well as mental habits.

"We need to introduce wise and healthy ideals not only into our minds, but into our muscles," she said. "Besides, there is no discipline so valuable as that which comes from fitting our labors into the work of others for a common good."

One difficulty after another was met and vanquished. When the digging for the foundation of the first building was actually under way, quicksand was discovered and another location had to be chosen. Then it appeared that the bricks were faulty, which led to another delay. After the work was resumed and all was apparently going well, the walls suddenly collapsed. "Then," said the man in charge, "I did dread to see Miss Lyon. Now, thought I, she will be discouraged."

As he hurried towards the ruins, however, whom should he meet but Miss Lyon herself, smiling radiantly! "How fortunate it is that it happened while the men were at breakfast!" she exclaimed. "I understand that no one has been injured!"

The corner-stone was laid on a bright October day that seemed to have turned all the gray chill of the dying year into a golden promise of budding life after the time of frost.

"The stones and brick and mortar speak a language which vibrates through my soul," said Miss Lyon. "I have indeed lived to see the time when a body of gentlemen have ventured to lay the corner-stone of an edifice which will cost about fifteen thousand dollars—and for an institution for women! Surely the Lord hath remembered our low estate. The work will not stop with this foundation. Our enterprise may have to struggle through embarrassments for years, but its influence will be felt."

How lovingly she watched the work go on! When the interior was under way, how carefully she considered each detail of closets, shelves, and general arrangements for comfort and convenience! When the question of equipment became urgent, how she worked to create an interest that should express itself in gifts of bedroom furnishings, curtains, crockery, and kitchen-ware, as well as books, desks, chairs, and laboratory material! All sorts and conditions of contributions and donations were welcomed. One was reminded of the way pioneer Harvard was at first supported by gifts of "a cow or a sheep, corn or salt, a piece of cloth or of silver plate." Four months before the day set for the opening, not a third of the necessary furnishing had come in.

"Everything that is done for us now," cried Miss Lyon, "seems like giving bread to the hungry and cold water to the thirsty!"

On the eighth of November, 1837, the day that Mount Holyoke opened its door, all was excitement in South Hadley. Stages and private carriages had for two days been arriving with road-weary, but eager, young women. The sound of hammers greeted their ears. It appeared that all the men, young and old, of the countryside had been pressed into service. Some were tacking down carpet or matting, others were carrying trunks, unloading furniture, and putting up beds. Miss Lyon seemed to be everywhere, greeting each new-comer with a word that showed that she already knew her as an individual, putting the shy and homesick girls to work, taking a cup of tea to one who was overtired from her journey, and directing the placing of furniture and the unpacking of supplies.

It might well have seemed to those first arrivals that they must live through a period of preparation before a reluctant beginning of regular work could be achieved, but in the midst of all the noise of house-settling and the fever of uncompleted entrance examinations the opening bell sounded on schedule time and classes began at once. What seemed, at first glance, hopeless confusion became ordered and stimulating activity through the generalship and inspiration of one woman whose watchword was: "Do the best you can now. Do not lose one golden opportunity for doing by merely getting ready to do something. Always remember that what ought to be done can be done."

This spirit of assured power—the will to do—became the spirit of those who worked with her, and was in time recognized as "the Mount Holyoke spirit."

"I can see Miss Lyon now as vividly as if it were only yesterday that I arrived, tired, hungry, and fearful, into the strange new world of the seminary," said a white-haired grandmother, her spectacles growing misty as she looked back across the sixty-odd years that separated her from the experiences that she was recalling.

"Tell me what you remember most about her," urged her vivacious granddaughter, a Mount Holyoke freshman, home for her Christmas vacation. "Was she really such a wonder as they all say?"

"Many pictures come to me of Miss Lyon that are much more vivid than those of people I saw yesterday," pondered the grandmother. "But it was, I think, in morning exercises in seminary hall that she impressed us most. Those who listened to her earnest words and looked into her face alight with feeling could not but remember. Her large blue eyes looked down upon us as if she held us all in her heart. What was the secret of her power! My dear, she was power. All that she taught, she was. And so while her words awakened, her example—the life-giving touch of her life—gave power to do and to endure."

The young girl's bright face was turned thoughtfully towards the fire, but the light that shone in her eyes was more than the reflected glow from the