258 HENRY HILL GOODELL 



was compelled to resign in a few months, by reason of ill- 

 health. The trustees then elected Professor William S. 

 Clark, who had been for years interested in the movement 

 for agricultural education, and who was at that time 

 filling the chair of chemistry and botany in Amherst Col- 

 lege. He was a man of singular enthusiasm and energy, and 

 to him more than any one else the College owes the meas- 

 ure of success it has attained. The course of study marked 

 out by him has been substantially followed ever since. 

 Resolved on having the best, he quickly gathered about 

 him a corps of instructors that made the College at once 

 leap into prominence; and the series of novel experiments 

 he conducted relating to the circulation of sap in plants 

 and the expansive force exerted by the vegetable cell in 

 its growth, caused the gifted Agassiz to remark that if the 

 College had done nothing else, this alone was sufficient to 

 compensate the state for all its outlay. The squash he 

 had selected for observation, in its iron harness, lifting 

 five thousand pounds before it had ceased to grow, excited 

 attention far and wide, and was visited by thousands. 1 

 But his best work was as an educator. Bringing to the 

 lecture-room that intense enthusiasm and personal mag- 

 netism so characteristic of the man, he quickly established 

 a bond of sympathy between teacher and scholar that 

 was never broken. The same brilliant qualities that at- 

 tracted men in the outside world made themselves felt 

 in his teaching. The dry details of science were enlivened 

 by the light play of his fancy, and the charming method of 

 his teaching seldom failed to arouse the dullest intellect. 

 The College was opened to receive students on the 2d 



1 See College Report, 1875. 



