HIGH STANDARD OF EDUCATION. 83 



I shall feci it my duty to see the experiment fairly tried, if I 

 never receive a cent for my services — if I have to go abroad and 

 lecture, as many of our teachers do, in order to make a living- 

 while I am teaching. For the first class that comes in I expect 

 to do a great deal of the teaching myself ; and, if necessary, and 

 I cannot get any one else to help me, I will do it all, (applause;) 

 and if the State cannot pay me for it, I can live without it. 



Now what do we propose to do there ? In the first place, 

 gentlemen, I hold that it is impossible for us to fix upon a low 

 standard of education in that institution. In some of our insti- 

 tutions, I am sorry to say, they are so anxious to gain students 

 that they go on lowering the standard, dipping deeper and 

 deeper, taking a net with finer and finer meshes, and finally they 

 get nothing bnt minnows, and very few of them ; while those 

 colleges that insist upon a high standard of education go on 

 increasing, in spite of all adverse circumstances. I said to the 

 trustees of that Western institution, when they called upon me 

 for my plan of education : " Just look at the institutions of our 

 land. During the last five years, while war has been raging, 

 many of our small institutions, with low requirements, have 

 been almost blotted out ; but Harvard and Yale, where they 

 have - a high standard and work up to it, have not grown smaller 

 but larger all the time ; and this shows that the way to meet the 

 requirements of the common people is to have a high standard 

 and live up to it." If you want an illustration of this, I will 

 refer to the case of Brown University ; and I feel justified in 

 doing so because I have had, from its president and professors, 

 within three months, some account of it. You know that some 

 few years ago they undertook to change their standard ; it was 

 called " the short road, via Providence, to a college education." 

 And what was the result ? It was thought that, under the lead 

 of that eminent man, Dr. Wayland, they would have so many 

 students that all other colleges would be swept away — annihi- 

 lated. The result was, that the people emphatically repudiated 

 the whole thing, and they have had to give it up. I want to 

 make this emphatic. I want it understood that there is nothing 

 but the highest standard of education that will ever draw 

 together the sons of farmers. If you do not have that high 

 standard, they will send them to other colleges to give them 

 their education, and then let them get their agricultural educa- 

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