Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/42

 32 GEO. B. KUYKENDALL Ed Watson had a fine mind and abundant ability to acquire learning. After graduating in the Willamette University went back and graduated 1 at Harvard, and was chosen to go back and take part in college boat races on the Thames in England. It would be easy to extend this list and note characteristics of many of the Umpqua Academy early students, and tell how they came off with honors and success in life. My space limits will permit the names only of a few, among which were Stan- ley O. Royal, Miller G. Royal and his younger brother and Anina T. Royal, who married Rev. Clark Smith and went as a missionary to Africa, where she died of African fever at her post of duty, proving the stuff of which some of the academy students were made. Then there was George W. Riddle, who has written his name in the annals of home re- gions and the state of Oregon, Dr. W. P. Grubbe, Angeline Grubbe, Morris Harkness, Homer Harkness, Chas. Wesley Kahler, George Kahler, the Applegate boys and many more. School government at the old academy a few years after it opened up, took a sort of Puritanical trend, with the idea predominant that the "old Adam" (some said it was the devil) in the boys and girls, had to be held down and squelched out. Very strict rules were made in regard to the associations of sexes, it being assumed that the devil in them was bound to break out unless the lid was screwed on tight and held down. It was a rule that the boys and girls should not walk side by side going to school, and all exhibitions of gallantry were to be taboo; they should be kept separate and under strict sur- veillance, and "raked over the coals" for the slightest over- stepping. This, as should have been foreseen, had exactly the opposite effect from what was intended. It was like trying to stop the water of a garden hose by placing a thumb against it, there was no stop, but a big splatter. The young folks could not be kept under thumb, and the trustees had a troublesome time enforcing the adopted regime. While people in the country around sometimes thought that the old academy and vicinity was a sort of slow place, an ex-