550 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



professor nearly $2,000 a year, when he had always been able to get 

 plenty of clerks to work in his office for $600 ? " " Finally, after much 

 argument, he gave us 810,000, unaccompanied by his blessing. This 

 relieved our embarrassments for the time being, and we went along 

 quite swimmingly for the rest of the year, 



I wonder if there was ever a college whose professors and trustees 

 did not occasionally disagree ? We certainly had now and then a 

 squabble to vary the monotony of our labors, and were obliged in the 

 board more than once to revet*se decisions of the Faculty. But our 

 chief difficulty was with the chemist, whose ideas upon some subjects 

 were, to say the least, extravagant. To begin with : he wanted more 

 apparatus, said he could do nothing with the "meagre" supply we 

 had given him, and spoke rather disrespectfully of the committee 

 which bought it ; he actually referred to certain trustees as " idiots " 



(perhaps meaning Brother A ), which may have been true, but was 



unquestionably uncivil. It was in vain that I tried to convince the 

 young man of his unreason; I urged my superior age and experience, 

 and finally was obliged to crush him by saying, in my most polite 

 and dignified manner, that I had probably studied chemistry before 

 he was born, and that my teacher had succeeded brilliantly with no 

 apparatus at alL He also bothered us for more books ; so we gave 

 him twenty-five dollars to buy them with, and thus silenced him for a 

 while. That money he actually spent for works in foreign languages 

 vv^hich neitlier I nor any student could read. Such is a result of trust- 

 ing to the judgment of a professor. In the spring our chemist again 

 broke out in the most absurd manner. It so chanced that some of 

 our students had entered in advanced classes, a circumstance for 

 which we failed to provide beforehand, and upon the list of studies 

 framed by us they found certain branches which they wished to pur- 

 sue. Among these were the treacherous and valueless natural sci- 

 ences, for which we had no professors. It was at once found necessary 

 that these things should be taught : and who was to teach them but 

 the Professor of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy ? AVe intimated 

 to that gentleman that such work devolved upon him, and he objected 

 most irrationally. He claimed that his business was to teach chemis- 

 try and physics (as he called natural philosophy, though what that 

 branch has to do with medicine I never could see), and refused to un- 

 dertake any thing else. How unreasonable ! We only asked him to 

 hear a few extra recitations in astronomy, natural history, physiology, 

 botany, and geology, and he must needs object ! He said that he was 

 a chemist, and knew nothing of these other sciences ; that each of 

 them Avas the life-work of a specialist ; and that no man living was 

 competent to undertake even the tenth part of such a task. As we 

 knew perfectly well that twenty other colleges in the State employed 

 men who did precisely what he said no man could do, we insisted ; 

 and the upshot was that he resigned. Then the trustees passed an 



