382 AS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT -VI 



course of lectures upon the historical development of crim- 

 inal law ; and while giving it to my senior class after my 

 return, I noticed a student, two or three years below the 

 average age of the class, carefully taking notes and ap- 

 parently much interested. One day, going toward my 

 house after the lecture, I found him going in the same 

 direction, and, beginning conversation with him, learned 

 that he was a member of the sophomore class ; that he had 

 corresponded with me, two or three years before, as to the 

 best means of working his way through the university; 

 had followed out a suggestion of mine, then made, in that 

 he had learned the printer 's trade ; had supported himself 

 through the preparatory school by means of it, and was 

 then carrying himself through college by setting type for 

 the university press. Making inquiries of professors and 

 students, I found that the young man, both at school and 

 at the university, was, as a rule, at the head of every class 

 he had entered; and therefore it was that, when the 

 examination papers came in at the close of the term, I 

 first took up his papers to see how he had stood the test. 

 They proved to be masterly. There were excellent schol- 

 ars in the senior class, but not one had done so well as this 

 young sophomore ; in fact, I doubt whether I could have 

 passed a better examination on my own lectures. There 

 was in his answers a combination of accuracy with breadth 

 which surprised me. Up to that time, passing judgment 

 on the examination papers had been one of the most te- 

 dious of my burdens; for it involved wading through 

 several hundred pages of crabbed manuscript, every term, 

 and weighing carefully the statements therein embodied. 

 A sudden light now flashed upon me. I sent for the young 

 sophomore, cautioned him to secrecy, and then and there 

 made him my examiner in history. He, a member of the 

 sophomore class, took the papers of the seniors and resi- 

 dent graduates, and passed upon them carefully and admir- 

 ablybetter than I should have ever had the time and 

 patience to do. Of course this was kept entirely secret ; 

 for had the seniors known that I had intrusted their papers 



