OUR GREAT AMERICAN UNIVERSITY. 547 



A would like the appointraent for himself, gave me the election. 



I at once entered upon my duties, and began to draw salary. This 

 was in May, and the university was to open in September. Mean- 

 while, I was to raise money ; so, after first giving my views concern- 

 ing the Faculty, I started for New York, begging. In two months I 

 contrived to secure $1,500 over my expenses, and then returned in 

 only a very moderate state of jubilation. Why is it that rich men 

 care so little for the cause of education ? 



At last the composition of our Faculty was determined, as fol- 

 lows : I, as president, was to teach mental and moral })hilosophy, 



logic, and finance. Brother A ironically suggested that perhaps 



I had better undertake five or six other branches in addition to these, 

 but I did not feel like being overworked. For professors we were to 

 have one of Latin, a second of Greek, a third of mathematics, a fourth 

 of history, a fifth of Englisli literature and rhetoric, a sixth of mod- 

 ern languages, and a seventh of chemistry and natural philosophy. 



As was to have been expected. Brother A bothered us again, 



urging that, as long as we were determined to appoint professors, we 

 ought to do fuller justice to the sciences. But these are comparative- 

 ly unimportant, as well as rather unsafe, branches of knowledge (if, 

 indeed, they can be called true knowledge at all), and therefore we 

 adhered to the scheme given above. "We did, however, draw up a 

 long plan of studies, including every prominent subject we ever heard 

 of, and in it relegated astronomy, botany, natural history, and geol- 

 ogy to the senior year of the college course. They could be taught 

 at the proj^er time without special professors. This plan or pro- 

 gi-amme we constructed in the most thoi'ough manner, arranging 

 hours for each professor, fixing text-books, and stating in which rooms 

 given recitations should be heard. One of our members it is easy to 

 guess who broached the subject of elective studies, but the rest of 

 us discountenanced all such experiments. We felt able to arrange a 

 better course of studies than any student could devise, and hekl firmly 

 to the idea that what was best for one was best for all. With the 

 needs of students after graduation we had nothing to do. As for text- 

 books, not a new one appeared on our list ; we chose only such as 

 were old and well tried ; that on chemistr}'-, for instance, was the same 

 which I had studied in the Sleepyville High-School thirty years be- 

 fore. When our professors arrived they annoyed us a good deal about 

 changing, but we firmlj^ adhered to our early decisions. The scheme 

 of hours, however, we did have to rearrange, for in practice it would 

 not work. We had planned it in such a way that sometimes one pro- 

 fessor would have to hear two different classes in different rooms at 

 once ; and in other instances the students were required to be simi- 

 larly ubiquitous. 



I have already mentioned the fact that the election of professors 

 was attended by much dissension in our board. This began, as usual, 



