MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
PRESIDENT CHARLES KENDALL ADAMS. 
For the presidency of the University of Wisconsin, which 
was doubtless the most important work of his life, Dr. Charles 
Kendall Adams was peculiarly fitted by circumstances as well 
as training. Born in Vermont Jan. 24, 1835, of a, family that 
was old, but, like the typical Few England farm, poor, he had 
in his boyhood meager opportunities for study, in summer 
working on the farm, in winter first attending and later teach¬ 
ing district schools. But he was always eager to learn, and his 
brother used to* tell how with a* hook on his plow he sometimes 
let his beast; make a* furrow at its will till aroused from, his pre¬ 
occupation. Perhaps it was significant that this youth who was 
after a while to become a! torch-bearer of learning started West 
carrying in his hand a copy of Shakespeare which had been 
overlooked in the packing up. Having migrated to Iowa in 
1855 he began to study Latin and Greek after his 21st birth¬ 
day, and entered the University of Michigan in 1857. 
He entered from a private academy after hurried prepara,- 
tion, and gave me long afterwards the impression that only 
kindly leniency on the part of his examiners let him into the 
university. It was only necessary to get in “by the skin of his 
teethability, zeal, and industry did the rest. I have heard 
him say that only the helpful human sympathy of Professor 
Boise on his first recitation encouraged himi to hold up his head 
after that first failure. Doubtless this encouragement, that 
never failed afterwards, made the man, and how grateful he 
always was to Boise! Perhaps even his lifelong partiality for 
Greek studies was due to that. He worked his way through 
college by manual labor and service in the library, but found 
time to read as well as to work and study, for in his freshman 
