156 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



forty feet. When the scrap pile was burning one 

 evening, the President came rushing over, fearing 

 that a building was on fire, but seeing what it was, 

 he remarked : " Mr. Superintendent are you not 

 burning up some things of value ? " I was, prob- 

 ably, but I was determined to fix that old rubbish 

 so that it could not be used again to clutter up the 

 campus. 



That part of the farm which lay between the 

 buildings and the village of Ames, about two miles 

 away, was low land and subject to overflow in the 

 spring for short periods, from a crooked, sluggish 

 stream. Weeds, from four to eight feet tall, 

 covered the face of this wild, hummocky pasture, 

 which was only sparsely set with coarse grasses. 

 In this pasture several fine full-blooded animals 

 which had been purchased at long figures in Il- 

 linois, New York and Canada, were kept with 

 other cattle; but no one could have told whether 

 the cattle were scrubs or Duchesses and Dukes, 

 because of the weeds. As this land abutted the 

 causeway across the lowland over which the main 

 road approached the college, it was a great eye- 

 sore and gave a bad impression of our farming 

 methods; so I sent a sturdy Norwegian, with a 

 team of mules hitched to an old mower, to mow it. 



