June 13, 1882

The Classes of ’74, ’79, and ’80 held reunions on Class Day, and Fannie Bell Taylor ’82 delivered the class oration, based on the motto the Class of ’82 had chosen as freshmen, “Quid Agamus?” President Caldwell had based his Baccalaureate sermon on the motto, saying, “’82’s Class motto…ought to present itself now, at the completion of their college life, a more puzzling question than when it was chosen in their Freshman year; for hitherto they had pursued a work prescribed and fixed.” “God wants not promise,” he told the class,“but performance. Action is a necessity of life, a manifestation of power.”

“Miss Taylor’s oration,” reported The Vassar Miscellany, “was at once bright and strong, witty and earnest. Its freedom from hackneyed thought and expression was remarkable, inasmuch as the sentiment of all class mottoes…is intrinsically the same, rendering originality in the oration well-nigh impossible.”

After the reading of the class history by Mary Sanford ’82 and the class prophecy of Laura Glenn ’82, the assembly moved to the class tree, where class records were buried and Matthew Vassar’s spade was passed, with appropriate remarks from Mary Evans Shove ’82, to Martha Sharpe ’83

Of the more than 600 graduates of the college, over 100 were in attendance.

The New York Times, The Vassar Miscellany