This spirit of helpfulness and cheer began on the day of the fire,
and seems to have acquired added momentum with the passing months.
Clothes, books, money, were loaned as a matter of course. By
half past nine o'clock in the morning, the secretary of the dean
had written out from memory the long schedule of the June examinations,
to be posted at the beginning of the spring term. Members of
the faculty were conducting a systematic search for salvage among
the articles that had been dumped temporarily in the "Barn" and the
library; homes had been found for the houseless teachers, most
of whom had lost everything they possessed; several members of
the faculty had no permanent home but the college, and their worldly
goods were stored in the attic from which nothing could be saved.
It is said that when President Pendleton, in chapel, told the
students to go home as soon as they had collected their possessions,
"an unmistakable ripple of girlish laughter ran through the
dispossessed congregation." This was the Franciscan spirit in
which Wellesley women took their personal losses. For the general
losses, all mourned together, but with hope and courage. In the
Department of Physics, all the beautiful instruments which Professor
Whiting had been so wisely and lovingly procuring, since she first
began to equip her student-laboratory in 1878, were swept away;
Geology and Psychology suffered only less; but the most harrowing
losses were those in the Department of Zoology, where, besides
the destruction of laboratories and instruments, and the special
library presented to the department by Professor Emeritus Mary A.
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