The Days of a Man 1900 



document on the back of a menu card. This my 

 colleagues signed and, thus prepared, it still remains 

 practically unchanged. Annual meetings are regu- 

 larly held at one or another university. Each sends 

 shi P as many delegates as it pleases, though having but 

 one vote; at the same time all resolutions are advisory 

 only, so as not to limit the free action of any institu- 

 tion within the group. In a small way, the make-up 

 of the association and its relation to colleges generally 

 bear a strong resemblance to that proposed for the 

 "League of Nations." The "Big Fourteen" group 

 of 1900 has since increased to about thirty. The 

 charter members were : 



California Johns Hopkins 

 Catholic University Michigan 



Chicago Princeton 



Clark Stanford 



Columbia Virginia 



Cornell Wisconsin 



Harvard Yale 



At a meeting held at Yale, President Arthur Twin- 

 ing Hadley read a scholarly paper on the organization 

 EHot on of the medieval university. In the discussion which 

 medieval- followed, Dr. Eliot (with a clear-cut audacity we 

 younger men could not venture to emulate) rose to 

 say that "the American university has nothing to 

 learn from medieval universities, nor yet from those 

 still in the medieval period." 



I shall now touch briefly on a painful and trying 

 episode which, originating in September, 1896, be- 

 came gradually critical during the next four years. 

 If the matter concerned only myself and my own 

 shortcomings, temperamental or otherwise, I should 



C 2 3 



