In the early days it required some independence of character to encounter the gibes and the wonder which women’s life at the university aroused outside it. People who did not know what a “divided skirt” was, undertook to affirm that all Girtonians wore them: at Newnham some unconventionality in dress was amply concealed by the general dowdiness of the early Newnhamite. The dreaded eccentricities in conduct or clothes would not indeed have killed the movement; and the authorities did not allow this dread to paralyse the quality of mercy, so that there was in fact small justification for the witty suggestion of a Newnham student that “Mrs. Grundy rampant and two Newnham students couchant” would make appropriate armorial bearings for the college. Nevertheless, as a concession to human weakness, smoking was not, and still is not, tolerated. Both colleges hold debates in the great hall and also inter-collegiate and inter-university debates. Here are some of the subjects discussed: “Is half a loaf better than no bread?” “That we spend too much” (lost). “That the best education offered to our grandmothers was more adequate than that offered by the High Schools of to-day” (lost). The most important society at Newnham, however, is the Political Debating Society, and the lively and absorbing interest in politics shown nowadays by the college is in striking contrast to the general indifference to politics at Girton. This year (1906) in an inter-university debate (Oxford and Newnham) the motion “That this house approves Chamberlain’s conception of empire” resulted in a ‘draw.’ Most of the students of both colleges are members of the Women’s University Southwark Settlement, to which they subscribe. There is a Sunday Society and two musical societies in addition to the original Choral Society at Newnham, and societies in connexion with each of the triposes take the place of the select “Jabberwock” and “Sunday Reading Society” of earlier days. The great indoor institution at both colleges is the students’ party at 10 p.m. known at Newnham as the “Cocoa.” Two to four is the chief recreation hour, and there are college, inter-collegiate, and inter-university hockey, fives, cricket, tennis, and croquet matches. One of the first conveniences provided at Newnham was its gymnasium, where in the early days of the college a senior moralist might be seen leaping over the back of a student who had just been “ploughed” in the divinity of the “Little-Go,” and a series of reverend seigniors would engage in a hopping match round the room led by the youngest “first year” who was an acknowledged expert in the art. The public of a generation ago imagined that [Illustration: MADINGLEY WINDMILL This old ruin is on a hill near Madingley, about four miles from Cambridge. A great sweep of Fen Country is seen in the far distance. The long range of red buildings in the middle distance is Girton College. On a clear day Ely Cathedral can be seen from the left of the windmill.]