In a small Illinois city there is a woman's college, founded as a
Preparatory School in the forties and soon advanced to be a
Seminary, which, with Anna P. Sill for its first head, Jane
Addams for its best-known graduate, and Julia Gulliver for its
present president, has come to be a college of standing and of
leading. Only Troy Female Seminary and Mount Holyoke Seminary
preceded it, in date of foundation, among the important women's
institutions.
Rockford College is ranked to-day, by the reports of the United
States Commissioner of Education, in rank one--among the sixteen
best women's colleges in the United States. It hasn't risen to
that rank by any quick, money-spurred spurt. It brings with it
out of its far past all the traditions of that early struggle for
the higher education which, by friction, kindled among women so
flaming an enthusiasm for pure knowledge. It remains "collegiate"
in the old sense, quiet, cloistral, inhabiting old-fashioned
brick buildings in an old-fashioned large yard, looking still
like the Illinois of war times more than like the Illinois of the
twentieth century, retaining all the home ideals of those
times--a large interest in feminine accomplishments, a strict
regard for manners, a belief in the value of charm.
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