CHAPTER XXI 



DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS AT CORNELL - 1868 -1872 



THE first business after formally opening the univer 

 sity was to put in operation the various courses of 

 instruction, and vitally connected with these were the lec 

 tures of our non-resident professors. From these I had 

 hoped much and was not disappointed. It had long seemed 

 to me that a great lack in our American universities was 

 just that sort of impulse which non-resident professors 

 or lecturers of a high order could give. At Yale there had 

 been, in my time, very few lectures of any sort to under 

 graduates ; the work in the various classes was carried on, 

 as a rule, without the slightest enthusiasm, and was con 

 sidered by the great body of students a bore to be abridged 

 or avoided as far as possible. Hence such pranks as 

 cutting out the tongue of the college bell, of which two or 

 three tongues still preserved in university club-rooms are 

 reminders ; hence, also, the effort made by members of my 

 own class to fill the college bell with cement, which would 

 set in a short time, and make any call to morning prayers 

 and recitations for a day or two impossible a perform 

 ance which caused a long suspension of several of the best 

 young fellows that ever lived, some of them good scholars, 

 and all of them men who would have walked miles to at 

 tend a really inspiring lecture. 



And yet, one or two experiences showed me what might 

 be done by arousing an interest in regular class work. 

 Professor Thacher, the head of the department of Latin, 

 who conducted my class through the &quot;Germania&quot; and 



354 



