Old students are encouraged to come up to read in the Long Vacation, and thus keep up their old friendships and renew their old interests. Sometimes, it is true, Newnham is almost too full, with visitors from outside, to afford the peaceful time for uninterrupted and independent work characteristic of the "Longs" of former days. Yet the visits of distant friends is often stimulating as well as pleasant. Almost every other year, since the University Extension Summer Meetings began--we may almost say at Newnham's initiative[15]--some of the students have been accommodated in Newnham. This is true, too, of the Vacation Terms for Biblical Study; since those were inaugurated by Mrs. Sidgwick's niece, Miss Margaret Benson, and intended chiefly as a help to school teachers, the promoters naturally looked to Newnham for hospitality, and many old students attend the courses. Learned societies of mathematicians, historians and others have often come to England from all over the world, and Newnham has been glad to entertain both learned ladies and the wives of learned men staying in the Colleges. Another kind of gathering may be mentioned, as somewhat original in idea and very useful in practice. Several of the students of Natural Science who, after taking their Tripos, had gone to teach in schools, complained of the scarcity and inferiority of the apparatus at their disposal. The lecturer in Chemical Science, Miss Ida Freund, arranged that a company of them should come to Cambridge for a part of the Long Vacation to learn how to construct the simpler kind of instruments for themselves. The result was very satisfactory, and the teachers learned not only how to make the best of the conditions under which they might have to teach, but also how to keep abreast of the progress of the Natural Sciences and of the methods of teaching them. It seemed natural that on Miss Freund's lamented death in 1914 the Memorial to her should take the form of a brief course of lectures by an experienced teacher on the teaching of Physics. The summer meetings, at which these lectures were delivered, helped to keep teachers from falling behind in the general progress of knowledge and also to guide them in the practical work of education. [Footnote 15: See p. 71.]