November 27, 1867

American orator and pioneer abolitionist Wendell Phillips, president of the Anti-Slavery Society, delivered his popular lecture on “Street Life in Europe” under the auspices of the Philalethean Society. On December 10, 1867, Matthew Vassar wrote to Sarah Stilson ’69, a student whose poem “Hill-Top Idyl” had pleased him at the original Founder’s Day and who was absent from the college for the term, “We have lately had several distinguish^d Lecturers at our College among them Rev^d Newman Hall of England, Wendell Phillips, Vincent & others.”

Elizabeth Hazelton Haight, ed., Autobiography and Letters of Matthew Vassar