The Story of Wellesley [68]
place where the elm of '81 will wave its branches for at least a hundred years, I hope.
The hundred years are still to run, and old College Hall has vanished, but the '81 elm stands in its "prominent" place, a tree of ancient memories and visions ever young.
It was not until 1889 that the pageant element began to take a definite and conspicuous place in the Tree Day exercises. The class of '89 in its senior year gave a masque in which tall dryads, robed in green, played their dainty roles; and that same year the freshmen, the class of 1892, gave the first Tree Day dance: a very mild dance of pink and white English maidens around a maypole--but the germ of all the Tree Day dances yet unborn. In its senior year, 1892 celebrated the discovery of America by a sort of kermess of Colonial and Indian dances with tableaux, and ever since, from year to year, the wonder has grown; Zeus, and Venus, and King Arthur have all held court and revel on the Wellesley Campus. Every year the long procession across the green grows longer, more beautiful, more elaborate; the dancing is more exquisitely planned, more complex, more carefully rehearsed. In the spring, Wellesley girls are twirling a-tiptoe in every moment not spent in class; and in class their thoughts sometimes dance. Indeed, the students of late years have begun to ask themselves if it may not be possible to obtain quite as beautiful a result with less expense of effort and time and money; for Tree Day, the crowning delight of the year, would defeat its own end, which is pure recreation, if its beauty became a tyrant.
This multiplication of joys--and their attendant worries--is something that Wellesley has to take measures to guard against, and the faculty has worked out a scheme of biennial rotatory festivities which since 1911-1912 has eased the pressure of revelry in May and June, as well as throughout the winter months.
Wellesley's list of societies and social clubs is not short, but the conditions of membership are carefully guarded. As early as the second year of the college, five societies came into existence: of these, the Beethoven Society and the Microscopical --which started with a membership of six and an exhibition under three microscopes at its first meeting--seem to have been open to any who cared to join; the other three--the Zeta Alpha and Phi Sigma societies founded in November, 1876, and the Shakespeare in January, 1877--were mutually exclusive. The two Greek letter societies were literary in aim, and their early programs consisted in literary papers and oral debates. The Shakespeare Society, for many years a branch of the London Shakespeare Society, devoted itself to the study and dramatic presentation of Shakespeare. Its first open-air play was "As You Like It", given in 1889; and until 1912, when it conformed to the new plan of biennial rotation, this society gave a Shakespearean play every year at Commencement.
In 1881, Zeta Alpha and Phi Sigma were discontinued by the faculty, because of pressure of academic work, but in 1889 they were reorganized, and gradually their programs were extended to include dramatic work, poetic plays, and masques. The Phi Sigma Society gives its masque--sometimes an original one--on alternate years just before the Christmas vacation; and Zeta Alpha alternates with the Classical Society at Commencement. The Zeta Alpha Masque of 1913, a charming dramatization in verse of an old Hindu legend by Elizabeth McClellan of the class of 1913, was one of the notable events of Commencement time, a pageant of poetic beauty and oriental dignity; and in 1915 Florence Wilkinson Evans's adaptation of the lovely old poem "Aucassin and Nicolette", was given for the second time.
In 1889, the Art Society--known since 1894 as Tau Zeta Epsilon-- was founded; and, alternating with the Shakespeare play, it gives in the spring a "Studio Reception", at which pictures from the old masters, with living models, are presented. The effects of lighting and color are so carefully studied, and the compositions of the originals
The hundred years are still to run, and old College Hall has vanished, but the '81 elm stands in its "prominent" place, a tree of ancient memories and visions ever young.
It was not until 1889 that the pageant element began to take a definite and conspicuous place in the Tree Day exercises. The class of '89 in its senior year gave a masque in which tall dryads, robed in green, played their dainty roles; and that same year the freshmen, the class of 1892, gave the first Tree Day dance: a very mild dance of pink and white English maidens around a maypole--but the germ of all the Tree Day dances yet unborn. In its senior year, 1892 celebrated the discovery of America by a sort of kermess of Colonial and Indian dances with tableaux, and ever since, from year to year, the wonder has grown; Zeus, and Venus, and King Arthur have all held court and revel on the Wellesley Campus. Every year the long procession across the green grows longer, more beautiful, more elaborate; the dancing is more exquisitely planned, more complex, more carefully rehearsed. In the spring, Wellesley girls are twirling a-tiptoe in every moment not spent in class; and in class their thoughts sometimes dance. Indeed, the students of late years have begun to ask themselves if it may not be possible to obtain quite as beautiful a result with less expense of effort and time and money; for Tree Day, the crowning delight of the year, would defeat its own end, which is pure recreation, if its beauty became a tyrant.
This multiplication of joys--and their attendant worries--is something that Wellesley has to take measures to guard against, and the faculty has worked out a scheme of biennial rotatory festivities which since 1911-1912 has eased the pressure of revelry in May and June, as well as throughout the winter months.
Wellesley's list of societies and social clubs is not short, but the conditions of membership are carefully guarded. As early as the second year of the college, five societies came into existence: of these, the Beethoven Society and the Microscopical --which started with a membership of six and an exhibition under three microscopes at its first meeting--seem to have been open to any who cared to join; the other three--the Zeta Alpha and Phi Sigma societies founded in November, 1876, and the Shakespeare in January, 1877--were mutually exclusive. The two Greek letter societies were literary in aim, and their early programs consisted in literary papers and oral debates. The Shakespeare Society, for many years a branch of the London Shakespeare Society, devoted itself to the study and dramatic presentation of Shakespeare. Its first open-air play was "As You Like It", given in 1889; and until 1912, when it conformed to the new plan of biennial rotation, this society gave a Shakespearean play every year at Commencement.
In 1881, Zeta Alpha and Phi Sigma were discontinued by the faculty, because of pressure of academic work, but in 1889 they were reorganized, and gradually their programs were extended to include dramatic work, poetic plays, and masques. The Phi Sigma Society gives its masque--sometimes an original one--on alternate years just before the Christmas vacation; and Zeta Alpha alternates with the Classical Society at Commencement. The Zeta Alpha Masque of 1913, a charming dramatization in verse of an old Hindu legend by Elizabeth McClellan of the class of 1913, was one of the notable events of Commencement time, a pageant of poetic beauty and oriental dignity; and in 1915 Florence Wilkinson Evans's adaptation of the lovely old poem "Aucassin and Nicolette", was given for the second time.
In 1889, the Art Society--known since 1894 as Tau Zeta Epsilon-- was founded; and, alternating with the Shakespeare play, it gives in the spring a "Studio Reception", at which pictures from the old masters, with living models, are presented. The effects of lighting and color are so carefully studied, and the compositions of the originals