I was also pleased to see Scott's Bluff, a remarkable sight in itself and 

 made famous by Parkman's Oregon Trail. On this trip I did no riding, 

 but travelled in a buckboard; we worked north to the bad lands at the 

 head of Quinn Draw in South Dakota, where Hatcher had made such 

 wonderful finds four years before. Thence I went with Barbour to 

 Lincoln, Neb., where I made a short stay, examining the many fine 

 fossils which Barbour had gathered in his museum. 



That was the summer which followed the election of 1896, in which 

 Bryan had been so decisively beaten. He had failed to carry his own 

 state, Nebraska, and his own town of Lincoln; it was made very plain 

 that his fellow citizens did not wish to see him in the White House, 

 where he must have made a disastrous failure. On the other hand, they 

 would endure no personal criticism of him and any sneering or con- 

 temptuous reference to him was hotly resented. Though they would 

 not vote for him, they admired and loved him. The "invincible ignor- 

 ance" which Bryan displayed in that first campaign remained charac- 

 teristic of him to the end of his life. When he went to the Philippines, 

 he was guided by a young army officer, who became very much at- 

 tached to him but who said that it was impossible for Mr. Bryan to 

 learn anything. He could see nothing that conflicted with his opinions. 



At the invitation of the Macmillan Company, I prepared for them a 

 text-book, which I entitled An Introduction to Geology and of which 

 the first edition appeared in 1897; a second edition was published in 

 1907 and the third in 1932. The book has had a very fair measure of 

 success and has brought me many friends. When it was first published, 

 an assistant in the Hbrary pointed out to a visitor a bookcase containing 

 forty or fifty copies of the text-book, which had been ordered by mem- 

 bers of my class, saying "have you seen Dr. Scott's new book?" The 

 visitor, supposing that they were the different volumes of one work, 

 exclaimed: "Great heavens! if that's the introduction, what's the sub- 

 ject like, when you get to it?" 



Despite the enthusiasm aroused by the Sesquicentennial and the gifts 

 of funds and new buildings which followed it, there was very general 

 dissatisfaction with the low intellectual tone of the University. Dr. 

 Patton seemed to take no interest in the development of the Graduate 

 School, allowing Dean West to appoint the Faculty committee which 

 administered the School. The Board of Trustees appointed an investi- 

 gating committee, which held hearings and questioned most, if not all, 

 of the professors, to see whether something could not be done to im- 

 prove matters. I never heard of any result of the investigation, though 



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