314 Convcnli'in of Ohio College- Officers, [July 



So a student who means to conceal th-e offense of a fellow-student, 

 or to divert investigation from the right track, thoiigh he may not 

 tell an absolute lie, yet is t)i a lying state of mind, than which many 

 a sudden, unpremeditated lie, stuc-k oxxt by the force of a vehement 

 temptation, is far less injurious to character. A lying state of 

 mind in youth has its natural culmination in the falsehoods and per- 

 juries of manhood. 



"When students enter college, they not only continue their civil 

 relations, as men, to the officers of the college, but they come under 

 new and special obligations to them. Teachers assume much of the 

 parental relation toward students, and students much of the filial 

 relation toward teachers. A student, then, is bound to assist and 

 defend a teacher as a parent, and a teacher is bound to assist and 

 defend a student as a child. The true relation between a College 

 Faculty and College Students is that which existed between Nelson 

 and his sailors ; he did his uttermost for them and they did their 

 uttermost for him. 



Now, suppose a student should see an incendiary, with torch in 

 hand, ready to set fire to the dwelling in which any one of us and 

 family are lying in unconscious slumber, ought he not, as a man, 

 to say nothing of his duty as a student, to give an alarm, that wc 

 may arouse and escape ? Might we not put this question to any- 

 body but the incendiary himself, and expect an affirmative answer? 

 But if vices and crimes should become the regular programme, the 

 practical order of excercises, in our colleges, as they would to a 

 great extent do, if the vicious and profligate could secure impunity 

 through the falsehoods or the voluntary dumbness of fellow-stu- 

 dents ; then, surely, all that is most valuable and precious in a col- 

 lege would be destroyed, in the most deplorable way ; and who of us 

 would not a hundred times rather have an incendiary set fire to his 

 house, while he was asleep, than to bear the shame of the downfall 

 of an Institution under his charge, through the misconduct of its 

 attendants ! And, in the eyes of all right-minded men, it is a far 

 lighter offense to destroy a mere physical dwelling of wood or stone, 

 than to destroy that moral fabric, which is implied by the very name 

 of an Educational Institution. 



The student who would inform me, if he saw a cut-purse purloin- 

 ing the money from my pocket, is bound by reasons still more 

 cogent, to inform me, if he sees any culprit or felon destroying 

 that capital, that stock in trade, which consists in the fair name or 

 reputation of the College over which I preside. 



