In tracing the history of educational institutions and of other foundations existing for the public good, we find it necessary to distinguish those that had and those that had not a definite beginning. Some of our colleges and great schools have--so to speak--sprung, adult and armed, from the brain of their founder--or possibly from the conjoint thoughts and efforts of a few generous and like-minded patrons. Their birthdays are easily determined. Their continuity can be traced both in material persistence and progress and in moral and intellectual development and adaptation to changing conditions. Others--and prominent among them the subject of this sketch--came into being so gradually that their length of days may be variously calculated. To the past students of Newnham College, the beginning seems to be most naturally and fittingly associated with the day when a comparatively small dwelling house was first opened, in Cambridge, by Professor Sidgwick and a small group of friends, and placed under the wise and devoted care of Miss Clough, for the accommodation of a few young women who wished to give their time to serious study under the tuition of such University professors, lecturers, and private teachers as might be willing to further their desire for higher education. Incorporation as a College was not to come for nine years, nor any measure of distinct recognition by the University for ten years. But no Newnham woman would reckon our beginnings from 1880 or 1881. An antiquarian spirit might fancy that the germs were in the room in Mr. Clay's garden, where lectures were first delivered to women students and others. But student life and university instruction had for us its first embodiment in the little community of five, and their teachers and helpers, whose relations with Cambridge began in 1871. This settlement of Miss Clough and the five students was the small beginning out of which grew an institution which many hundreds of women now regard with passionate loyalty, and which no opponents or doubters can venture to despise. To understand its origin we need to go back a little and consider how and why the movement towards higher education for women was then beginning to take form, and why it came to be specially associated with Cambridge. [Illustration: MISS ANNE J. CLOUGH AND THE FIRST FIVE STUDENTS.]