Year’s Eve, at Trinity Church, when everyone hoped and no one knew that Phillips Brooks would come. The church was dim and fragrant with the odor of cedar and pine, and the people were hushed by the beauty of the ancient ritual. As midnight approached the great figure of the bishop appeared from among the trees of the choir and mounted the pulpit. Bishop Brooks spoke simply and solemnly and as the hour struck made a prayer out of his own deep heart. With his message for the New Year we went into an unforgettable, marvellous night, with snowy ground, a dark sky filled with fleecy clouds about a prismed moon. In three weeks the beloved Bishop was dead—a true bishop of all the people. The knowing of Phillips Brooks was one of the good things my years in Wellesley brought me.
College days were over. I was a graduate of Wellesley, with all that meant of training, of prestige, of obligation.
The four years had been busy and valuable, but they were not the happiest days of my life, as school days are often said to be. I was going through a period of re-adjustment and re-valuation that did not make for peace of mind. I was often lonely, for, although I had a wide and pleasant acquaintance, I did not make the intimate friends that I did either before or after college days. I have wondered why. Was I so unsettled that no one me dominated and attracted its own, or was I, the western girl, always something of a stranger in a strange land? It may have been better so, since I was to go so far from college
