File:The life of Alice Freeman Palmer (1908) (14779448171).jpg

Identifier: lifeofalicefreem1908palm (find matches)
Title: The life of Alice Freeman Palmer
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Palmer, George Herbert, 1842-1933
Subjects: Palmer, Alice Freeman, 1855-1902
Publisher: Boston, New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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4 ALICE FREEMAN PALMER a president! When I applied to her faithful secre-tary for information about the perplexities of theseopening years, I received the following reply: **Thethought of Miss Freemans feeling any perplexity inher position at Wellesley seems strange to me, whoknew so well the inner life of the office. Underneathher cheerfulness, her keen sense of humor, herthoughtfulness for others, her joy in all that makeslife lovely, there ran a current of confidence and un-hesitating trust in her Heavenly Father. She conse-quently never appeared perplexed. The presidencyof Wellesley was not a difficult position for her. Ineach emergency she saw by intuition the right courseto pursue. But that she, almost the first of womanpresidents and with little in the past for a guide,should have possessed this instinctive discernmentand, youthful and ardent though she was, shouldhave known that it is the plodding path whichleads to glory, must, I suppose, indicate in hersomething like genius.
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vni THE WELLESLEY PRESIDENCY (continued) The account of Miss Freemans career at Wellesleythus far given is obviously unfair and incomplete:unfair because it assumes that the policies describedwere altogether hers, regardless of the wise andloyal cooperation of her fellow trustees and profes-sors. Yet this unfairness is so inevitable that it willreadily be pardoned. We are obliged to say thatWellington won Waterloo, though we know howhelpless he would have been without the courage ofthe undistinguished soldier. Miss Freeman alwaysdeclared that the rapid rise of Wellesley was due toa multitude of causes and persons. Of course itwas, a multitude directed by herself. No presidentever had better helpers; nor they, one whom it wasbetter worth while to help. But in calling my account incomplete I speak ofsomething of larger consequence, and to repairingthe omission I devote this entire chapter; for theadministrative measures just recounted could havehad no such effect as actually followed if

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