258 AS UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR-I 



found that in the great majority of my students there was 

 not a trace of real knowledge of physical geography and 

 very little of political. With this state of things I at once 

 grappled, and immediately " conditioned " in these studies 

 about nine tenths of the entering class. At first there were 

 many protests ; hut I said to my ingenuous youths that no 

 pedantic study was needed, that all I required was a prepa- 

 ration such as would enable any one of them to read intel- 

 ligently his morning newspaper, and to this end I advised 

 each one of them to accept his conditions, to abjure all 

 learning by rote from text-books, to take up simply any 

 convenient atlas which came to hand, studying first the 

 map of our own country, with its main divisions, physical 

 and political, its water communications, trend of coasts, 

 spurring of mountains, positions of leading cities, etc., and 

 then to do the same thing with each of the leading coun- 

 tries of Europe, and finally with the other main divisions 

 of the world. To stimulate their interest and show them 

 what was meant, I gave a short course of lectures on 

 physical geography, showing some of its more striking 

 effects on history; then another course on political geog- 

 raphy, with a similar purpose; and finally notified my 

 young men that they were admitted to my classes in his- 

 tory only under condition that, six weeks later, they should 

 pass an examination in geography, full, satisfactory, and 

 final. The young fellows now took their conditions very 

 kindly, for they clearly saw the justice of them. One 

 young man said to me: "Professor, you are entirely right 

 in conditioning me, but I was never so surprised in my 

 life ; if there was anything which I supposed I knew well 

 it was geography ; why, I have taught it, and very success- 

 fully, in a large public school. ' ' On my asking him how he 

 taught a subject in which he was so deficient, he answered 

 that he had taught his pupils to l ' sing "it. I replied that if 

 he would sing the answers to my questions, I would admit 

 him at once ; but this he declined, saying that he much pre- 

 ferred to accept the conditions. In about six weeks I held 

 the final examinations, and their success amazed us alL 



