HOW THEY TAUGHT IN THE EARLY DAYS 



CHARLES EDWIN BESSEY, 1869 



Picture these grounds as they were forty years ago, with one 

 college building (now, I think, called Williams Hall, but in 

 those days merely "the College Building"), one small dormitory, 

 four dwellings for professors, a barn, a toolhouse, and a shed for 

 sheep; the grounds mostly ungraded, the surrounding fields 

 undrained and still retaining many of the giant stumps left when 

 the recent forest was cut away. About the College Building 

 was a little spot of graded bluegrass lawn, with a few gravel 

 walks bordered with flower-beds and shrubbery. Here had 

 been retained some of the broad, spreading oaks of the primeval 

 forest to give dignity to the landscape. North and south and 

 east and west, the nearby forests still loomed, cool and shadowy, 

 filled with wild shrubs and countless wild flowers. And through 

 the grounds ran the Red Cedar River, with its overhanging 

 trees, its single wooden bridge, and many inviting swimming- 

 pools. It is a quiet, rural picture which comes back in memory 

 as I think of the College of the days when I knew it best. 



The faculty as I first knew it consisted of six men : Abbot, 

 our beloved president; Kedzie, the strong and sometimes stern 

 chemist; Miles, the philosophical naturalist; Prentiss, the 

 polished disciplinarian; Clute, the thoughtful student; and 

 Fairchild, the mild-mannered scholar, now all resting in their 

 graves; added to a year or two later by Cook, the genial teacher, 

 who is still living. There was one assistant, Daniels, a quiet, 

 helpful man who assisted Dr. Kedzie in the laboratory work in 

 chemistry. These men gave all of the instruction then offered in 

 the single college course of study. The College Building con- 

 tained thirteen rooms, namely: the Chapel, and the Chemical 



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