CHAPTER TWENTY 



DR. PATTON'S ADMINISTRATION 



WE opened a new chapter in our lives by moving into our own 

 house at 56 Bayard Lane. We began housekeeping with three 

 and a half servants, the half being the part-time work of a man to look 

 after the furnace, cut the grass, etc. The united wages of the three 

 maids were less than half of what a cook, or general servant, receives 

 nowadays. 



The academic year 1 888-1 889 was the first under Dr. Patton and it 

 sufficed to show the slackness of his ways. The Trustees were most un- 

 reasonable in not giving him a stenographer or a private secretary, thus 

 forcing him to write all his letters with his own pen. Soon, he was bit- 

 terly criticised for not answering letters, but the criticism should have 

 been directed against the Board rather than against the overburdened 

 President. He stated openly, in Faculty meetings, that he had no belief 

 in discipline and that it was a good thing for a young man to come to 

 college, even if he did no more than rub his shoulders against the 

 buildings. As he wittily phrased it: "It is better to have come and loafed, 

 than never to have come at all." That there is something of value in 

 this idea, I am inclined to believe, but to manage an American college 

 on that system is to invite disaster. In this country the struggle for 

 existence is so much less intense than in Europe, that young men are 

 not penalised here for neglecting their educational opportunities so 

 severely as they are there. 



As elsewhere narrated, I spent the summer in eastern Oregon, on 

 the seventh of my Western expeditions. In the following winter I had 

 one of the most disagreeable and annoying experiences of my life. I 

 had invited the members of the preceding summer's expedition to dine 

 together at my house and was momentarily expecting the arrival of 

 my guests, when I received a call from a Mr. Ballou, with an introduc- 

 tion from Cope; I had heard of him before and knew that he was a 

 friend of Cope's, who had named a fossil for him. When, therefore, 



C 218 ] 



