The Days of a Man Cisss 



young men and young women of superior order, 

 though the good people of Bloomington, and many 

 old friends of the University as well, were very much 

 alarmed for fear freedom of choice would lower 

 standards and bring in an inferior type. The re- 

 A new verse was overwhelmingly true. The classes of 1886 

 stwiuius ^^^ 1887, small in number for reasons not far to 

 seek, ranked with the strongest the institution had 

 ever graduated. Numbers, moreover, soon doubled, 

 and the professors themselves felt a stimulus due 

 to contact with young people drawn — not driven 

 — to their work. 



In 1886, also, I persuaded the board of trustees 

 to discontinue the preparatory school, throwing all 

 responsibility for local secondary work on the town, 

 and turning over the abandoned old building for 

 high school purposes. Thus cutting in half the 

 nominal registration again created some alarm, but 

 that too abated when it was found that the num- 

 ber of new matriculates exceeded that apparently 

 lost by the separation of the high school. Mean- 

 while, moreover, the graduating classes rapidly in- 

 creased in size. 



As to the faculty, my first executive move was 

 to divide my work and call Dr. Branner, already 

 regarded as among the most promising of American 

 investigators in his field, to the new chair of Geology 

 and Botany. In 1888, however, Botany was made 

 a separate department under the direction of Dr. 

 Douglas H. Campbell, a brilliant young investi- 

 gator from the University of Michigan, then lately 

 returned from Europe where his work had com- 

 manded the highest praise. 



Another of my early innovations, already noticed, 



L 294 ;] 



