Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/568

550 professor nearly $2,000 a year, when he had always been able to get plenty of clerks to work in his office for $600?" "Finally, after much argument, he gave us $10,000, unaccompanied by his blessing. This relieved our embarrassments for the time being, and we went along quite swimmingly for the rest of the year.

I wonder if there was ever a college whose professors and trustees did not occasionally disagree? We certainly had now and then a squabble to vary the monotony of our labors, and were obliged in the board more than once to reverse decisions of the Faculty. But our chief difficulty was with the chemist, whose ideas upon some subjects were, to say the least, extravagant. To begin with: he wanted more apparatus, said he could do nothing with the "meagre" supply we had given him, and spoke rather disrespectfully of the committee which bought it; he actually referred to certain trustees as "idiots" (perhaps meaning Brother A), which may have been true, but was unquestionably uncivil. It was in vain that I tried to convince the young man of his unreason; I urged my superior age and experience, and finally was obliged to crush him by saying, in my most polite and dignified manner, that I had probably studied chemistry before he was born, and that my teacher had succeeded brilliantly with no apparatus at all He also bothered us for more books; so we gave him twenty-five dollars to buy them with, and thus silenced him for a while. That money he actually spent for works in foreign languages which neither I nor any student could read. Such is a result of trusting to the judgment of a professor. In the spring our chemist again broke out in the most absurd manner. It so chanced that some of our students had entered in advanced classes, a circumstance for which we failed to provide beforehand, and upon the list of studies framed by us they found certain branches which they wished to pursue. Among these were the treacherous and valueless natural sciences, for which we had no professors. It was at once found necessary that these things should be taught: and who was to teach them but the Professor of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy? We intimated to that gentleman that such work devolved upon him, and he objected most irrationally. He claimed that his business was to teach chemistry and physics (as he called natural philosophy, though what that branch has to do with medicine I never could see), and refused to undertake any thing else. How unreasonable! We only asked him to hear a few extra recitations in astronomy, natural history, physiology, botany, and geology, and he must needs object! He said that he was a chemist, and knew nothing of these other sciences; that each of them was the life-work of a specialist; and that no man living was competent to undertake even the tenth part of such a task. As we knew perfectly well that twenty other colleges in the State employed men who did precisely what he said no man could do, we insisted; and the upshot was that he resigned. Then the trustees passed an