January 5, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



of the board, who, in themselves, repre- 

 sented liberal culture, combined with a 

 genuine democracy of feeling and a loyalty 

 to the Commonwealth, compelling the be- 

 lief that nothing was too good for the chil- 

 dren of the people. 



The issue was made and met in the ap- 

 pointment of the first faculty of instruc- 

 tion ; and in the selection of the first 

 presiding officer fortune was singularly 

 favorable to the rrew school. A professor 

 in a New England college who has received 

 the highest political honors his State could 

 confer upon him had been invited to be- 

 come the president of the college, but cir- 

 cumstances arose which made his accept- 

 ance impossible. Dr. Orton had been in 

 Ohio only a few years, but he had become 

 widely and well known, not only on ac- 

 count of his accomplishments as a geol- 

 ogist, but as well by his charming personal 

 qualities, and he had been already chosen to 

 fill the chair of geology. To him the 

 trustees now turned, and he reluctantly 

 consented to be the first president of the 

 Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College. 

 I say reluctantly, for it was well known 

 among his friends and associates that he was 

 loath to assume administrative duties which 

 must necessarily interfere with the con- 

 tinued pursuit of his' specialty in which he 

 was already recognized as an authority. 

 Happily for the institution he yielded his 

 personal preferences, and for eight years he 

 was at once president and professor. 



Among the several thousand young men 

 who crossed college thresholds in Ohio in 

 the autumn of 1873 seventeen entered the 

 building in which we now are, and enrolled 

 themselves as students, the first of the 

 many thousands who have since followed 

 their example. I cannot describe and few 

 can appreciate the many trials and difficul- 

 ties of those earlier years. The institution 

 was practically unknown, even among 

 those from whom its patronage was most 



likely to come. It stood for a new de- 

 parture in education which was just enter- 

 ing upon its experimental stage, and with 

 few exceptions it was looked upon with sus- 

 picion by other colleges in the State. The 

 members of its first faculty, of whom only 

 four are now living, were mostly young men, 

 full of ambition and enthusiasm for their 

 work and thoroughly in harmony with the 

 spirit of the time, for even then had come the 

 dawn of the marvelous last quarter of the 

 wonderful nineteenth centurj', a period dur- 

 ing which, short as it is, the relation of man 

 to the material universe to which he belongs 

 has undergone a far greater change than in 

 any other period in history. It is often, in- 

 deed generally, possible in looking backward 

 upon things accomplished to see many 

 mistakes that might have been avoided 

 and many opportunities not properly util- 

 ized. As I review, however, the principal 

 events of Dr. Orton's presidency of this 

 institution I am at a loss to say, even with 

 the better knowledge that accompanies re- 

 trospection, how the many emergencies that 

 presented themselves could have been met 

 more wisely. To begin with, his stan- 

 dard of educational work was of the high- 

 est type. He fully realized that the suc- 

 cess of the institution depended on the 

 establishment and maintenance of a stan- 

 dard of scholarship so high as to compel 

 the respect of the best educational forces 

 not only at home but abroad. Himself a 

 scholar in the broadest, best and most ex- 

 acting sense, he encouraged faculty and 

 students to seek the best ideals, and no one 

 of them who gave the slightest indication 

 of the possession of the divine afflatus in 

 learning ever failed of appreciative recog- 

 nition from him. He believed that the 

 character of an educational institution 

 should be judged by the quality of its work 

 rather than by the number of students en- 

 rolled in the annual catalogue, a principle 

 which everybody admits and nearly every- 



