430 AS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT- IX 



was a sudden influx of students, and it was asked whence 

 they came, the answer always was, "Another Western col- 

 lege has burst up"; and the "burst up" had resulted, 

 almost without exception, from faculty quarrels. 



In another chapter I have referred to one of these ex- 

 plosions which, having blown out of a Western univer- 

 sity the president, the entire board of trustees, and all 

 the assistant professors and instructors, convulsed the 

 State for years. I have known gifted members of facul- 

 ties, term after term, substitute for their legitimate work 

 impassioned appeals to their religious denominations, 

 through synods or conferences, and to the pubiic at large 

 through the press, their quarrels at last entangling other 

 professors and large numbers of students. 



In my "Plan of Organization" I called attention to this 

 evil, and laid down the principle that "the presence of no 

 professor, however gifted, is so valuable as peace and har- 

 mony." The trustees acquiesced in this view, and from 

 the first it was understood that, at any cost, quarrels must 

 be prevented. The result was that we never had any which 

 were serious, nor had we any in the board of trustees. One 

 of the most satisfactory of all my reflections is that I never 

 had any ill relations with any member of either body ; that 

 there was never one of them whom I did not look upon as 

 a friend. My simple rule for the government of my own 

 conduct was that I had no time for squabbling; that life 

 was not long enough for quarrels; and this became, I 

 think, the feeling among all of us who were engaged in the 

 founding and building of the university. 



As regards the undergraduates, I initiated a system 

 which, so far as is known to me, was then new in American 

 institutions of learning. At the beginning of every year, 

 and also whenever any special occasion seemed to require 

 it, I summoned the whole body of students and addressed 

 them at length on the condition of the university, on their 

 relations to it, and on their duties to it as well as to them- 

 selves; and in all these addresses endeavored to bring 

 home to them the idea that under our system of giving to 



