Book Description

Excerpt from Annual Reports President and Treasurer, 1907 To the Board of Trustees of Wellesley College: - In presenting a report of the year 1906-07 to the Trustees, there are some features to mention and some circumstances to relate which have never before occurred in the history of the College. For the first time the President of Wellesley had a sabbatical year. Miss Shafer, president from 1888 to 1894, had more than fulfilled the conditions for claiming such a privilege by twenty days; but she is my only predecessor who had been so long in office. We all think of Mrs. Palmer's distinguished service, which lasted nearly ten years, but part of that time she was a professor. Miss Howard, the first president, completed five years of service; and Mrs. Irvine, who was appointed upon Miss Shafer's death, four years and a half. So that when seven years had fully elapsed from the time of my entrance into office, a year more than the time entitling me to the sabbatical leave, it seemed wise to avail myself of this privilege and spend a part of the year, in accordance with the wish of the founder of the fund, in travel abroad. Therefore, on the thirtieth of June, 1906, I sailed from Boston, landing at Genoa a fortnight later. The summer was spent in Switzerland and Italy, and the autumn months in the Canton de Vaud on the Lake of Geneva. Beautiful and restful as this early part of the year was, it was all more or less within my range of experience, as I had often seen Switzerland, and had lived for months at a time in Italy. The new part of the year came in December, when on the sixteenth I sailed from Naples to Alexandria. Then came an entirely new world. We hastened directly to Cairo, and made our first visit to salute the Sphinx, with the massive pyramids guarding it. One seems to step back in history. Time no longer exists. One comes into something that seems elemental and universal, standing before these immense monuments of an unknown race. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."