The history of the Annex is a very interesting and very instructive matter. As one reads it, the impression grows from beginning to end that the action of the overseers in incorporating it as a part of Harvard University, is the most natural and most logical thing in the world. From the very beginning in 1879 friends of the Annex have been friends of Harvard; its chief promoters have been for the most part Harvard professors and their wives; the influences which have contributed to its dignity and high character have been influences which have helped Harvard to its greatness. The growth of the younger institution has thus been largely fostered and directed by the older, and nothing could be more natural than the adoption of the younger by the older.

The history shows also what the untiring efforts of a few cultured men and women can do for a movement which must be admitted to be still in process of developement, still in more or loss of an experimental stage and not yet universally approved. The Annex offers courses of study whose standard is the same as that of Harvard, as high a standard as exists today, and makes the courses so attractive that young women of an age which very often finds them interested in nothing but society, are glad to give up part of this for science and literature and art. Not many years ago the young woman who went into "higher education" was inseparably associated, at least in the minds of young men, with bowed spectacles and philosophy and was fought shy of as being "intellectual" and so uninteresting. Today a young woman may be as intellectual as she likes and still be decidedly interesting. Thus the Annex has offered the best and has interested in the best a class which has contented itself heretofore with mere uninterested dabbling. This has been its great service, to make the highest education attractive. Much more is suggested by this history which we cannot discuss further; the whole thing points to a new era in higher education, an era which thinking men must welcome.