Earliest Years at Vassar: Personal RecollectionsWood, Frances Ann
History
Earliest Years at Vassar: Personal Recollections
Wood, Frances Ann
Vassar College
The tables in the dining-room were alternately a short one seating
ten, and a longer one seating fourteen, with a teacher at the head of
each. The small rooms near the entrance were designed by the architect
as cloak-rooms, but were utilized at once for practice at table of
French and of German conversation. The corresponding rooms above near
the chapel door were also diverted from the original plan, and still
do primeval duty as linen closet and storage place. Notices given out
at morning prayers in Miss Lyman's time, later were read in the
dining-room up to 1892, when a bulletin board was placed in the second
corridor center, doing away with the custom.
The Students' Manual stated, "Direct traffic with the Steward's
Storeroom is forbidden." The student wishing to purchase fruit and
crackers--about the only articles obtainable--brought her money for
purchase to her corridor teacher at breakfast, with a list of what was
wanted. The teacher made the purchase and the articles were delivered
by messenger to the student's room.
There were corridor teachers in those days. They had the large rooms
facing the corridor at each end of the building and commanding full
view of the domain in charge. The duties of this teacher were to see
that the rules as laid down in the Manual for lights, exercise,
study-hour, silent time, and, yes,--baths, were kept. She also held a
short office hour daily for the benefit of those wishing to consult
her. She taught a Bible class and had a weekly prayer meeting, besides
the special Sunday evening service.
Twenty minutes daily, morning and evening, were devoted to silent
time, by which every student was absolutely sure of some part of the
day entirely to herself. It was no easy task to provide places for the
observance of this custom or to enforce it, and reluctantly, after
some years it was dropped.
All meetings opened with prayer, corridor meetings as well. At these
meetings--every Monday evening after chapel--the students reported
perfect or deficient, as the case might be, and also received such
general admonition as the teacher deemed advisable. Later the same
evening all the corridor teachers met Miss Lyman in her parlor to give
their respective reports and to receive her counsel and direction.
This meeting was also opened with prayer.
The lights in the corridors had to be extinguished promptly at the
stroke of the ten o'clock bell. The President's office was under the
student rooms, and some officer there in business conference one
evening saw him lift his hand in salutation to the ceiling, saying as
the gas over his study table flared up suddenly at the sound of the
gong, "My faithful daughters!"
Others were not quite so prompt. "It seems," said a witty teacher as
we walked slowly down her corridor long after the bell had struck one
"laundry-bag night," waving her hand to the long row of lights in full
force, "it seems it is never too late to mend!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account