“After witnessing some interesting exercises we assemble in the large hall, where a novel entertainment has been provided for us. A band of twelve young ladies appear upon the platform. They wear the colors of ‘Old Glory,’ but after a new fashion, four of them being arrayed from head to foot in red, four in blue, and four in white. While the ‘John Brown’ tune is heard from the piano, they proceed to act in graceful dumb show the stanzas of my ‘Battle Hymn.’ How they did it I cannot tell, but it was a most lovely performance.”[30] In the early days of the woman movement a hard struggle was necessary in order to secure for girls the advantages of the higher education. Into this my mother threw herself with her accustomed zeal. A lifelong student and lover of books, she ardently desired to secure for other women the advantages she herself so highly prized. Enjoying robust health, and accustomed to prolonged mental labor, she never doubted the capacity of her sex for serious study. So, despite the gloomy prognostications of learned doctors (all men), she and her fellow-suffragists persevered until the battle was won. Thus it was very fitting that the three institutions which bestowed honorary degrees upon her--Tufts College, Brown University, and Smith College--all counted women among their students. Her youngest daughter, Maud Howe Elliott, thus describes the scene at Providence:[31] “On June 16th (1909) Brown University, her husband’s _alma mater_ and her grandfather’s, conferred upon her the degree of Doctor of Laws.... Her name was called last. With the deliberate step of age, she walked forward, wearing her son’s college gown over her white dress, his mortar-board cap over her lace veil. She seemed less moved than any person present; she could not see what we saw, the tiny gallant figure bent with four score and ten years of study and hard labor. As she moved between the girl students who stood up to let her pass, she whispered: ‘How tall they are! It seems to me the girls are much taller than they used to be.’ Did she realize how much shorter she was than she once had been? I think not. Then, her eyes sparkling with fun while all other eyes were wet, she shook her hard-earned diploma with a gay gesture in the faces of those girls, cast on them a keen glance that somehow was a challenge, ‘Catch up with me if you can!’” The band played the air of the “Battle Hymn” and applause followed her as she went back to her seat. “She had labored long for the higher education of women, suffered estrangement, borne ridicule for it--the sight of those girl graduates, starting on their life voyage equipped with a good education, was like a sudden realization of a lifelong dream, uplifted her, gave her strength for the fatigues of the day.” A similar scene was enacted in October, 1910, shortly before her death, when Smith College conferred the same degree upon her.