January 11, 1909

Alumnae attendance was large for the Vassar Students’ Aid Society’s “Old College Afternoon” at the Hotel Astor in New York. A highlight of the gathering was the small group of silver spoons from Vassar Female College. The silverware had been recalled and destroyed in 1867 after the college officially dropped the word “female” from its name, but President Taylor was pleased to send the few pieces that survived to be auctioned for a good cause, student scholarships. Also on the “cosmopolitan” program, reported The New York Times, was “a clever whistling of Fritze Scheff’s ‘Drum Song’” and an original play by Ethelyn Emery Keays ’95 presenting “a study of present-day conditions in Japan.”