upon the students. In consequence, there was a hostility toward the 

 Faculty, which, happily, has long since given way to a much better re- 

 lationship. It was impossible for me to believe that the sedate gentlemen, 

 some of them highly distinguished scholars, whom I had known and 

 respected all my life, were capable of the sinister designs which the 

 Freshman imagination attributed to the professors. I was, therefore, 

 a "facultyite," a most disgraceful thing to be. "Bootlicking," or currying 

 favour with instructors, was abhorrent to all rightly constituted minds 

 and I was held to be guilty of that, because I could not be standoffish 

 with old friends. 



I have quite forgotten the nature of the mortal grievance that drove 

 our class to revolt early in the term. At all events, we held a largely 

 attended meeting in Mercer Hall, which was neutral ground, not under 

 college control, and passed all sorts of desperate resolutions, leading, 

 as I remember it, to threats of a strike and a refusal to attend classes. I 

 endeavoured to point out that, situated as I was, it was quite imprac- 

 ticable for me to take part in the movement, but I was hardly given a 

 hearing and was impatiently invited to "shut up." 



I do not dwell upon these facts in order to explain or mitigate my 

 unpopularity with miy classmates, or, perhaps, it would be better to say, 

 want of popularity, for I think the feeling was negative, not amounting 

 to dislike. Other members of the class, in situations like mine, were 

 much better liked. Andy McCosh, son of the great "Jimmy" (as we al- 

 ways called him), the President, no less, was very popular. Andy, though 

 a canny Scot, taciturn, undemonstrative and unenthusiastic, was held 

 in a real affection. This shows discernment on the part of those callow 

 youngsters, for Andy's great qualities, which shone forth so brightly in 

 his career as one of the leading surgeons in New York, were not obvious 

 to the unobservant. 



Early in my Freshman year a friend of my oldest brother, in Pitts- 

 burgh, asked a classmate of mine what sort of a person I was and re- 

 ceived the reply: "Oh! he's a queer kind of a chap; never has anything 

 to do with anybody." Nevertheless, I did make one friend, Frank Speir; 

 "his adoption tried," I grappled him "to my soul with hoops of steel." 

 For more than fifty years ours was a warm and unbroken friendship, 

 despite the fact that we took opposite sides in the controversies of the 

 Wilson administration. His family, too, received me with the utmost 

 kindness and cordiality. 



Another very close friend was Harry Osborn, who was long one of 

 the most distinguished of American men of science. That friendship, 



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