BOUND TO BE USEFUL. 57 



the property which was left the State for the purpose of build- 

 ing the college. I look upon all these matters as of minor 

 importance. I think the trustees will manage in some way or 

 other to get themselves out of their difficulties. They are 

 sensible men ; they are practical men ; they have got but one 

 thing at heart, and that is, the foundation of a college that will 

 be in accordance with the tastes of Massachusetts, be creditable 

 to themselves, and useful to our young men. I am therefore 

 perfectly willing to overlook any difficult questions of that sort, 

 and I am also disposed to take it for granted that the college is 

 to be a useful thing, and may be made a good thing, and that, 

 if necessary, without regard to its location. It seems to me 

 that 400 acres of land in one place, if it is good land, is just 

 about as good as 400 acres of land in another place, if you only 

 plant upon that land just exactly the same amount of brain 

 work in one place that you do in another. The fact that this 

 institution is within a mile and a half of Amherst College does 

 not involve it in the fate of Amherst College ; it does not estab- 

 lish the peculiar views of Amherst College ; it does not make it 

 Amherst College in any way ; it simply indicates that the people 

 of Amherst came forward and led the trustees to suppose that 

 they could comply with the terms of their proposition better 

 than any town in the Commonwealth. That seems to me to be 

 the fact in regard to that question. For one, I should have been 

 glad to have seen the college elsewhere, I am free to confess ; 

 but I find no fault with Amherst ; I shall be perfectly willing to 

 travel from here there ; and I do not want to throw any obstacle 

 in the way of the establishment of the college. I am willing to 

 overlook all this matter, for there is one thing which I think we 

 can do, and ought to do. There is a sort of fraternity of liter- 

 ature — a fraternity of intelligence. It makes not the slightest 

 difference whether it is agriculture, science, medicine, law, divin- 

 ity, or what not ; there is that delightful community of scholars 

 into which every educated man should desire to be introduced, 

 and in the lowest ranks of which every man will find sympathy 

 from those who sit in the highest seats of the synagogue. Now, 

 that fraternity I desire to have established here in Massachusetts. 

 I not only desire that the Agricultural College should be part 

 and parcel of the great system of education in Massachusetts, so 

 organized, that the boy, beginning in the primary schools, may 



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