Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/565

Rh A would like the appointment for himself, gave me the election. I at once entered upon my duties, and began to draw salary. This was in May, and the university was to open in September. Meanwhile, I was to raise money; so, after first giving my views concerning the Faculty, I started for New York, begging. In two months I contrived to secure $1,500 over my expenses, and then returned in only a very moderate state of jubilation. Why is it that rich men care so little for the cause of education?

At last the composition of our Faculty was determined, as follows: I, as president, was to teach mental and moral philosophy, logic, and finance. Brother A ironically suggested that perhaps I had better undertake five or six other branches in addition to these, but I did not feel like being overworked. For professors we were to have one of Latin, a second of Greek, a third of mathematics, a fourth of history, a fifth of English literature and rhetoric, a sixth of modern languages, and a seventh of chemistry and natural philosophy. As was to have been expected, Brother A bothered us again, urging that, as long as we were determined to appoint professors, we ought to do fuller justice to the sciences. But these are comparatively unimportant, as well as rather unsafe, branches of knowledge (if, indeed, they can be called true knowledge at all), and therefore we adhered to the scheme given above. We did, however, draw up a long plan of studies, including every prominent subject we ever heard of, and in it relegated astronomy, botany, natural history, and geology to the senior year of the college course. They could be taught at the proper time without special professors. This plan or programme we constructed in the most thorough manner, arranging hours for each professor, fixing text-books, and stating in which rooms given recitations should be heard. One of our members—it is easy to guess who—broached the subject of elective studies, but the rest of us discountenanced all such experiments. We felt able to arrange a better course of studies than any student could devise, and held firmly to the idea that what was best for one was best for all. With the needs of students after graduation we had nothing to do. As for textbooks, not a new one appeared on our list; we chose only such as were old and well tried; that on chemistry, for instance, was the same which I had studied in the Sleepyville High-School thirty years before. When our professors arrived they annoyed us a good deal about changing, but we firmly adhered to our early decisions. The scheme of hours, however, we did have to rearrange, for in practice it would not work. We had planned it in such a way that sometimes one professor would have to hear two different classes in different rooms at once; and in other instances the students were required to be similarly ubiquitous.

I have already mentioned the fact that the election of professors was attended by much dissension in our board. This began, as usual,