He ploughed and sowed for all of them, and all of them are reaping 

 the fruits of his labor. 



May I be somewhat personal, for I take it that personal reminis- 

 cences will be interesting at this time ? I came here a green lad 

 from a small farm in northern Worcester county, and I shall not for- 

 get my first meeting with Professor Stockbridge. I can see him stand- 

 ing on what is now the campus, superintending some of the finishing 

 touches to the buildings, on which the paint was not dry — a tall, 

 spare man, dressed in a rough suit of clothes and a slouch hat, with 

 sandy hair and beard slightly streaked with grey, with keen, kindly- 

 eyes looking out from beneath shaggy eyebrows — a striking charac- 

 ter in the full vigor of manhood. He was thirty-seven years old 

 when he began the work of his life, and eighty-four when he died. 

 As you may imagine, he was far from my picture of a college profes- 

 sor, who should have been dressed in black clothes, with gray beard 

 and gold-bowed spectacles, and of whom I expected to stand in awe. 

 We were all standing at that time in a fifty-acre field surrounded 

 with Virginia fences and filled in here and there with corn fields and 

 apple trees and tumble-down tobacco sheds. An incongruous pic- 

 ture it made, with the modern buildings towering above it all. 

 But the impression which he made upon me was that he was one of 

 our kind — an approachable man, who could drive a yoke of oxen or 

 preside at a town meeting with equal ease. Boys get curious im- 

 pressions, but I know it went through my mind that if I got home- 

 sick — which I did — I could go to him and talk it over — which I did 

 not do, however, because it is a boy's way to bluff it through. 



The next recollection I have of him is in the management of a class 

 of sixty unruly chaps from farm, city and village, in our first lesson in 

 husking out a field of corn. It was a bright October afternoon, and 

 although I was brought up amid beautiful scenery I shall never for- 

 get this picture and its superb setting. It had its healthful influence 

 on us, as it must have had on those who have followed us. Neither 

 shall I forget his masterful and tactful way of handling us ; and just 

 here let me say that I think his tact and judgment were, after all, 

 his greatest gifts, which he had occasion many times afterwards to 

 bring successfully into play in his management of the student body 

 in manual training, then a new departure in college education. We 

 must have been a sore problem to him, for it should be remembered 

 that we were the pioneer class — the experimental class — and he and 



