130 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



have taken a glass and filled it with water to within a quarter 

 of an inch of the top, set it on a heavy table in the mechanical 

 drawing room in the second story of the main college building, 

 and have known a high wind to shake the building so violently 

 that the glass of water slopped over. Some of our present 

 buildings need attention, and we need some new, substantial 

 structures. 



We had a rousing address yesterday on " Citizenship," 

 and we were urged to be controlled not by our disgusts, but 

 by our admirations. As citizens we need to get a new ideal 

 of what the Connecticut Agricultural College ought to be. 

 It is a State college. In its merely State aspect the citizens of 

 Connecticut ought to take pride enough in it to support it, 

 and care for it properly. Add to the idea that it is a State 

 college your ideal of what a State college ought to be, and add 

 to that the fact that it is one of the national land-grant colleges, 

 and that it is receiving equal sums of money with the largest 

 states in the Union under the last Morrill act. Take those 

 facts and your ideal, and consider what you ought to do 

 under the circumstances. Probably you have a boy or a 

 grandson who ought to go there to be educated at some- 

 time. Take that fact also into account, and consider what 

 you ought to do to make that college an ideal institution. 



It's a perfectly easy thing to tear things down; it's a com- 

 paratively easy thing to find fault, but I challenge any man 

 here to point out the man, or the body of men, who, at some- 

 time or other, has not made mistakes in this life; we are all 

 fallible; the faculty are liable to make mistakes. I think they 

 would not claim that they have any large degree of infallibility; 

 but I believe that you can trust the faculty that you have there 

 now to make as few mistakes as any faculty in this country. 

 I believe that you can trust the board of trustees, and trust 

 them absolutely., I am not going to enlarge upon the unfail- 

 ing courtesy those gentlemen have shown the present ex- 

 ecutive, and the earnest attention they have bestowed upon 

 the best interests of the institution, or say anything of the 

 change affecting the policy of that institution previous to or 

 upon the date of September 12th last; but I am glad to be 

 able to say, in the teeth of the agitation and argument that 

 we have heard, that this college is not a political institution, 

 the mere sport of spoilsmen, that I have never seen politics 



