256 ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION ix 



the arrangements which have been made by the 

 board of trustees, but I confess that I have little 

 to do but to applaud them. Most wise and 

 sagacious seems to me the determination not to 

 build for the present. It has been my fate to 

 see great educational funds fossilise into mere 

 bricks and mortar, in the petrifying springs of 

 architecture, with nothing left to work the institu- 

 tion they were intended to support. A great 

 warrior is said to have made a desert and called 

 it peace. Administrators of educational funds 

 have sometimes made a palace and called it a 

 university. If I may venture to give advice in a 

 matter which lies out of my proper competency, 

 I would say that whenever you do build, get an 

 honest bricklayer, and make him build you just 

 such rooms as you really want, leaving ample 

 space for expansion. And a century hence, when 

 the Baltimore and Ohio shares are at one thousand 

 premium, and you have endowed all the professors 

 you need, and built all the laboratories that are 

 wanted, and have the best museum and the 

 finest library that can be imagined ; then, if you 

 have a few hundred thousand dollars you don't 

 know what to do with, send for an architect and 

 tell him to put up a fagade. If American is 

 similar to English experience, any other course 

 will probably lead you into having some stately 

 structure, good for your architect's fame, but not 

 in the least what you want. 



