class2000

TO THE CLASS OF TWO THOUSAND

(As published in the June of 1900 The Mount Holyoke, a monthly student magazine. This letter resides within the 100 year old time capsule that Mount Holyoke College will open on March 31.)

We, the class of Nineteen Hundred at Mount Holyoke College, do hereby convey to our successors the class of Two Thousand, greeting.

Believing that you will be a notable class, worthy of the distinction given by your name, we feel a bond of sympathy between us. We, too, have considered ourselves a somewhat notable class, while quite able to imagine that every name on our roll may be unknown to fame in your time; unless, indeed, some of our number shall be the grandmothers of some of yours. Possibly it is because of doubt as to the lasting brilliancy of our fame that we leave you this bequest, though our words will have lost the force of freshness long before you can read them.

Much gayety, much contentment, much strenuous study, are indicated in these memorials of our college life; and if the gayety is withered and frail when you look for it we trust you will realize that college women now have natures very like your own, though the same characteristics show themselves in different forms. For your amusement we bequeath to you a picture of ourselves, begging you to believe that we are really much better looking that it will give you reason to suppose.

We feel that our great antiquity should enable us to offer you impressive advice. But our minds are burdened by the weight of a hundred mysterious years, and we are haunted by premonitions that you will have learned in the kindergarten as much as we achieve in college. We greatly respect our posterity, as is suitable for those to whom Darwin has taught evolution.

Of one thing we are sure, and it gives us reason for congratulating you on the advantages of your age. We believe that some of the many reforms seen by us only in the hazy future of the world, and longed for with the force of a somewhat impatient optimism, will be records of history to you. We believe that some of the scientific laws we are groping for with sadly baffled energy will in your time be matters of common knowledge. You will doubtless be working earnestly toward the solution of other problems, and groping mistily for the discovery of other laws; but you will be happy in looking backward to see the well-defined road between our day and yours, a road marked by the memorials of many labors and many successes. We believe, too, that we shall then be as far along as you, and perhaps not less awake to the glory of progress. Of that we can scarcely tell. But if your science shall have taught you what some believe will be one of the commonest elements of your knowledge — the power of communication with the unseen world from which we may possibly be overlooking your destiny — we beg you to reply to this message of ours.

Tell us that you love our college. This is the great bond between us; and the love and loyalty that we pledge as we leave our Alma Mater shall never fail to live in our hearts, while we are sure that your love and loyalty will be as strong, and nobler as you have greater opportunities.

--Margaret E. Ball, 1900.