DARTMOUTH COLLEGE FIFTY YEARS AGO

THE writer graduated from Dartmouth College with a profound sense of its worth and of its service to himself, which years have only deepened and strengthened. At the suggestion of the editor he ventures to offer this brief sketch drawn from his memories of Dartmouth as he knew it.

Fifty years ago the College drew its students' almost exclusively from the farms and small villages of New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts. Of towns of a population of ten thousand, New Hampshire and Maine had but two each, Vermont none, and Massachusetts but' two outside of the eastern section. Except in a few of the larger towns, in all not more than a dozen, high schools in the modern sense did not exist. Common schools were universal and in general well taught, but in the rural districts and smaller villages were limited to two terms of not more than twelve weeks each—the winter in charge of a " master," the summer taught by a "mistress" whose pupils were mostly girls and small children. For education of a more advanced grade the almost exclusive resource was the academy, endowed and unendowed. The unendowed, entirely dependent upon tuition fees and occasional contributions from public-spirited citizens, gathered students mainly from a small group of neighboring towns, and offered instruction in the common and higher English branches, including Mathematics and the Sciences, together with Latin, Greek, and often French. Here many boys began their preparation for . college, and a much smaller number finished it, sometimes by the unpaid services rendered outside of regular classes and hours by a devoted teacher. A few boys were fitted for college by local clergymen or other college men fitted to render this service, and willing to do it. A much larger number came from endowed academies, of which New Hampshire had two of ' first-rate quality—Kimball Union and Phillips Exeter. Of the ninety-one members of my own class in College, eight were privately prepared, four came from high schools, and seventy-nine were fitted by academies. In these academies the three years' course preparatory for college was almost exclu- sively determined by the requirements of Dartmouth College. These were Arithmetic, Algebra through Equa-tions of the First Degree, _ English Grammar, Geography—Ancient and Modern, Greek Grammar including Prosody, Xenophon's Anabasis, five books, Homer's Iliad, four books, Sallust entire, Cicero's Select Orations, ten, the whole of Virgil, Grammar, and writing Latin. Some abatement was made in the reading requirements in the case of schools noted for their careful drill. The classical training given was exceedingly exact, thorough, and rigorous. Grammar was carefully taught and insisted upon throughout the course. Forms and the rules of syntax were memorized and applied in formal parsing in a set order, exact translation was insisted on, and when a pupil ventured upon a free rendering, perhaps on account of the vagueness of his knowledge, he was bidden to "construe," that is, to give the English equivalent of each word. Eii? amidst all this persistent drill, such intelligent emphasis was placed upon the thought, spirit, and style of the authors read that they made a vivid and permanent impression upon the student. Whatever else may be said of this preparation for college, it was certainly a compact and con- sistent whole, and as such, in my opinion, superior in point of training to the sporadic, mixed, and partially elective courses now in vogue. By way of parenthesis I may remark that the best scholar in my class was a woman, but for her no college doors were open.

Admission to college by certificate even from the best schools was unknown. Without exception all must submit to an examination at the college, and that individual and separate.

The faculty of the College proper (with which alone this paper deals) consisted of the President, nine professors, one instructor and one tutor. The chairs were Greek, Latin, Mathematics, Oratory and Belles Lettres, Theology, Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, Intellectual Philosophy and Political Economy, Geology, Mineralogy, and Chemistry. The Instructor in Modern Languages, French and Italian, gave no courses except in the winter term, which formed no part of the course, counted nothing towards graduation, and was attended by only a handful of students. As few graduate courses were accessible in this country and advanced study abroad had not become common, the scholarly equipment of the faculty was almost wholly derived from the ordinary college course supplemented by more or less private study, and in some cases by a course in a theological seminary. Most of them, however, were well versed in their specialties, four or five, including President Lord, were really able men, and one, the professor of Greek, was the most capable _ and stimulating instructor I ever knew. As a body, they gave the College an atmosphere of culture, refinement, and mental alertness, their habits and manners were good models for conduct, and the ideals they set before us were an inspiration to an earnest participation in the world's work with the highest aims. They were in touch with the thought and intellectual life of the period and contributed some share to it in public addresses of occasion and in periodical literature, but otherwise they wrote little and published less. There was no parade of "original research," though they were not strangers to its spirit or without its fruits. They gave themselves to their college work without reserve and were content to make trained and cultivated men their scholastic product, apparently caring less for current fame than for permanent and effective influence.

The fact that they were almost exclusively Dartmouth men insured the conservation in the main of the long-established spirit and methods, but perhaps made the College a trifle too self-centered. The infusion of more blood from without would doubtless have been a decided advantage.

The Freshman and Sophomore years were entirely devoted to Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, with weekly exercises in themes and declamations, with very brief courses in Rhetoric and Natural Theology. The mathematics included Geometry, Algebra, Plane and Spherical Trigonometry, Surveying, Analytical Geometry and Integral and Differential Calculus. The Latin authors read were Livy, Ovid, Horace, and Tacitus; in Greek, the Iliad, Selections from the Historians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. In the Junior year were read Demosthenes, Plato, Cicero, Juvenal, and Terence. The other subjects were Logic, Evidences of Christianity, Rhetoric, Natural Philosophy, Mineralogy and Astronomy, themes and declamations (original) before the College throughout the year. The fare of the senior year included Intellectual Philosophy (Reid), Political Economy. (Say), The Federalist, History of Civilization (Guizot), Rhetoric, Edwards on the Will, Butler's Analogy, Moral Philosophy (Wayland), Geology and Chemistry, with lectures on the English Language and Literature, and on Anatomy and Physiology, themes and forensic discussions besides original declamations before the College throughout the year.

Outside of the Languages and Mathematics no courses ran through a year, but the fact that they each occupied five or six hours per week in some degree obtained for them an attention equivalent to that secured in two or three hour courses running through a year. Then it should be noted that three subjects at a time was the almost uniform rule, an arrangement which secured concentrated and intensive study in marked contrast with the imperfect, slight, and too often superficial and confused notions'gained when the schedule of work is wholly or mainly made up of two or three hour courses, often only slightly related and hence altogether covering a wide field. It will be noticed that the course of study was fixed and compulsory from beginning to end. The elastic curriculum with the introduction of the so-called practical studies, advocated by President Wayland and in some measure introduced at Brown University, so far as I know found no favor with the faculty or students. In any case, student opinion and student wishes, if expressed, would have been without influence upon the result, as of persons uninformed and inexperienced in such matters. I have no reason to believe that debates over the educational values of different branches ever disturbed the serenity of faculty circles, or that they were ever invaded by the strife over the position of studies in the course or the time allowed them. As electives were unknown, no professor was tempted to offer easy or attractive courses to secure large classes.

But in the composition of the course of study, with its emphasis upon the Classics and Mathematics and its inflexibility, Dartmouth did not differ essentially from the colleges of its rank. At Yale electives were limited to a choice between three courses in Mathematics in one term of the Sophomore year, and to a choice between Greek, Latin, and Mathematics in two terms of the Junior year. In the third term of the Junior year the following elective studies were allowed : Select Greek and Latin, Hebrew, Modern Languages, Practical Surveying, but only in addition to the required studies of the term. Modern Languages might be taken at any time during the course as extras and must be paid for as such. At Harvard electives were provided for only in the Junior and Senior years, and there were confined to a choice between' the Classics, Modern Languages, and Mathematics. It.will be noticed that neither at Harvard or Yale was there any provision among the electives for emphasis upon the political or social or the material sciences which have gained such general and deserved favor in our time. For one thing, the emphasis upon the humanities from the beginning of the preparatory course gave some view of the field of the historical and political sciences, and for another their full day had not come. Nor had the material sciences or English Literature won the recognition due to their importance, while Zoology, Morphology, and Botany had no place in the curriculum. The same may be said as to the modern languages, the essential importance of whose literatures as instruments of culture and storehouses of priceless content were greatly underestimated at the very least as elements in undergraduate courses of study, Then in a fixed course of study with continuity and correlation of work, the. number of subjects was necessarily limited. The College was not rich enough to offer two or three courses of study or a long list of electives with all that implies in teaching force and appliances. The one course of study as it stood in choice of subjects, in time given to each, and in their order of presentation, represented the experience and best judgment of the College authorities. lam not sure what they would have done with larger means, but I am certain that they would have thought the transfer of the selection and arrangement of studies to crude and uninformed young men an abdication of one of their most important functions and duties. Had they besides this got some prophetic vision of the disintegration and demoralization of secondary education preparatory to college at present, quite possibly impending, I am sure they would have stood aghast at the prospective chaos and confusion. Perhaps they would have been egregiously mistaken in their foreboding of evil results.

In all subjects offered, the assigned lesson to be recited with more or less comment by the instructor was the almost invariable rule. Lecture courses were few, and set lectures in, other courses were rare, and this in spite of the fact that the classes even though seventy-five in number were heard not in sections, but undivided. I take it for granted that the faculty fully recognized the fact that the best results were not attainable in such large classes, but deemed the evil less than that of putting a part of the work in the hands of inexperiencedtutors, a view for which much can be said with truth. No other alternative was open to the College with its narrow means. The method in the sciences differed from that in other subjects mainly in the more abundant lectures, especially in connection with experiments by the instructor. Of laboratory work the student got none, and 'of laboratory instruments or methods he had no knowledge except as they were shown in the very instructive and often brilliant illustrative experiments in the presence of the class. I suspect that these were sometimes chosen less for their value as illustrations of important facts than for their spectacular effect, a device not uncommon in the use of the illustrative story or epigram. The principles of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy and the applications of Mathematics thereto, were well taught considering the necessary limitations of the methods. The professor's son and assistant, and years afterward, successor, Professor Charles A. Young, laid the foundation of his scientific knowledge here, but it is fair to say that he had the very great advantage of his father's, private, as well as public instruction, together with his example and direction in laboratory and observatory. In the other sciences the knowledge acquired by us was narrowly limited, scrappy, and unsatisfactory, and even then so regarded. Still the brief time and little labor expended upon them was by no means lost, even for those of us to whom after life offered no opportunities for wider or more fruitful study, for we got a glimpse of the goodly land we were not to possess, which has been an abiding memory. The instruction in the languages, and particularly Greek, was efficient and satisfactory in its results. For one thing a good foundation had been laid in the preparatory school, and for another the instructor in Greek (Professor Putnam) was a man of fine scholarship, culture, and teaching skill. Of comparative and historical grammar we heard little, and the modern refinements as to the use of case and mood were unknown, or at least not exploited by pupil or teacher. But we were given a thorough and fruitful knowledge and appreciation of the authors read—their thoughts, spirit, and style. To us they were not dead but living, and they brought us under their powerful and permanent spell. Outside of a few excellent lectures by Professor S. G. Brown, no attention was given to English Literature, but most students read widely and effectively in the classical English writers, well represented in the excellent libraries. Rhetoric was well taught, and writing for careful criticism was insisted upon throughout the course. As a result of this, and of the classical studies so strongly emphasized from the beginning of the preparatory school, the ability to write clear, forcible, and polished English was no uncommon attainment. Of such branches as Political Economy it can be said that their treatment was about as effective as it could be in the time given to them in a course wherein no subject was pursued for a consecutive year, outside of the Classics and Mathematics. In these studies the text-book and recitation system with all its limitations and defects, had the great merit of giving the student a clear knowledge of the subject so far as it could be done within a brief space by a competent teacher with a text prepared by an acknowledged master—a result often unattained, I am inclined to think, by a wide and varied reading which the average student has not the time or ability to correlate and digest, even with the help of excellent lectures and the direction of the instructor, especially when the course in question is given but two hours per week in connection with half a dozen other courses, often quite separate in subject matter but as exigent in the reading suggested or required. A distinct and serious defect in the method as practised at Dartmouth was that collateral reading was little urged or provided for, so that most students were literally men of one book, and the narrow and one-sided views incident thereto. I remember that while studying Edwards on the Will, whose unanswerable logic utterly demolishes the Arminians, we often wondered whether their positions as they would state them were as weak and defenceless as there set forth. The size of the class of course limited individual participation of students by recitation or question, but private conferences were always welcomed by the instructor, though little taken advantage of by the majority of students. The keen and vigorous debates outside of the classroom in some degree made up for the more fruitful discussions possible in small classes or seminaries.

The ordinary program of College exercises was chapel at 6 a. m., followed by recitations by the four classes, each in its one recitation room, a second recitation at n, the third recitation at 4:30, followed by chapel. On Saturday the afternoon recitation was omitted. Sunday morning attendance at church was required, the class monitor noting absences as at other required exercises. Chapel was a simple, dignified, and impressive religious service, conducted by the President, aided by the choir and organ accompaniment. Students on all occasions stood on the entrance or exit of the President. Aside from any religious sentiment, and this was general, the men enjoyed the sense the gathering gave of the unity, fellowship, and dignity of the College body. It is certain that the presence at thirteen chapel and one church service each week of the whole College inspired and fostered an intense College spirit, and also that the meeting of the classes here and at recitations, always by themselves and in the same order, gave a conscious-compactness of organizationunknown to themodern class and university. The intimacy of class association and acquaintance, and the consciousness of class entity, were enhanced by the identity of studies and the unity of each class at every exercise. Its integrating influence was definitely felt and in sum was inspiring and wholesome, and its recollection is warmly cherished and highly valued. It produced the most intense class loyalty which also became College loyalty of the utmost advantage to the institution. lam inclined to think that the lack of it in present days in part accounts for the greater development of fraternities and the emphasis upon the social element therein, with the excessive group exclusiveness incident thereto.

The College yeat extended from the last week in August to the last week in July, with a two weeks' vacation at the close of the spring term, and one of fourteen weeks at the end of the fall term, to allow students of limited means, the large majority, to teach, mainly in the then incipient high schools. A winter term of seven weeks offered an optional course to the very few students who chose to make use of it, especially for the study of the modern languages, for which this was the sole opportunity. Oral examinations before and by a committee of gentlemen of education, invited by the faculty, occurred at the end of the fall and summer terms. The gentlemen selected were usually clergymen more or less rusty in most of the subjects, and so little feared, but the suspicion that the examination standings were really made by the professor in charge insured the most careful preparation, not to speak of the cramming not very rare.

Reports of standings were never obtainable by students, but at the end of each year a letter from the President to-the parents reported the consolidated standing for the year as determined by recitation and also by examination, and added a report of all absences from recitation, chapel, or church, excused or unexcused. The scale of marking was from I to 5. It was the tradition that only two men, Rufus Choate and Professor Putnam, had attained a perfect mark (1), throughout their course, until the record made by Judge W. A. Field of '57. In my own class the consolidated standing of the lowest man in the first third was 1.67. No one could find his standing in a particular study.

Athletics were wholly a student affair, and a perplexing problem to nobody. There was no special athletic organization, no director or coach, no umpire or referee, 110 regulation suits or defensive armor, no training, technical knowledge, or skill, except as gained in the more or less formal games, no contests with other colleges, no records to be made or broken, no canvass for students for athletic purposes by methods questionable or otherwise, hence no expenses. Track athletics of every kind were almost unknown, cross country long distance walks were a favorite exercise, baseball though much played attracted no general attention, but football was popular at all seasons when weather allowed. Formal games were confined to Saturday afternoons, the only sufficient period free from College exercises, with which neither games nor practice could interfere. The matched games, in which practically all students participated, often a hundred on a side, were either class contests or literary society contests, " Socials and Fraters" (Social Friends and United Fraternity), Old Division, i.e. Freshmen and Juniors against Sophomores and Seniors, or New Hampshire against the field. This was possible because everybody knew everybody, and the membership of each group in the contest. The game was exclusively one of kicking. When ready for play the leader of one side placed the ball in position and called out the conditions of the contest, such as, "Old Division, Sophomores and Seniors on warning, no bounding, no picking up." The body of players stood in front of him in such position as they pleased, without distinction of sides, but leaving the regulation free space for his kick. Usually he sent the ball as far as possible, but in direction determined by the presence of his trusted supporters, but sometimes he "toed" the ball a few feet to gain space, but the moment he touched it, it was anybody's ball. Then came the struggle of the opposite parties to advance the ball to their respective goals, which were nothing more than fences on the sides of the Campus. There was room for strength, agility, tact, and skill. The playing was often fast and furious, and exciting to a degree. As a sport attracting general interest and gaining general participation, and as a physical exercise, exhilarating and almost never attended with injuries, it was a decided success. It induced no student to neglect his proper work, and in no way disturbed the even tenor of College life, except sometimes on the occasion of the Sophomore-Freshman annual game. It was the traditional custom for the Freshmen to challenge the Sophomores to a matched game of three or five innings. Though the Freshmen were somewhat superior in numbers, they were usually inexperienced in the game, or at least had played little together, and so were easily beaten, but now and then the Sophomores were routed with great applause from the other classes, in this case only spectators, for in ordinary contests all interested in the game were participators, contributing to the contest not voice only but strenuous effort.

When I consider the current athletic situation in the matter of football, to the great body of students merely an attractive and exciting spectacle, a very small group of players, overtrained often to permanent physical harm, and generally to the serious detriment of scholarship, the matched game rather a fight of gladiators than a friendly contest of sportsmen, the numerous serious injuries, often purposely inflicted, the annual sacrifice of life, the unwholesome excitement of the spectators spurring the players to the greatest risks of life and limb, the betting, the bitter college rivalries, the unfair and sometimes corrupt means used to secure good players, the transportation of large bodies of students to distant games, the lavish expenditures and consequent huge debts,— the despair of students, faculty, and alumni, —I am inclined to believe the former days of crude athletics better than ours in the matter of physical exercise, as an exhilarating sport, and in general influence, and trust the day is not far distant when the good sense and growing conviction of college authorities as to its serious evils will be made effective in the radical revision of the game or its exclusion from college sports.

Of physical training in the gymnasium, scientifically conducted and required of all, with which athletics is commonly erroneously confused, there was no thought by faculty or students. Its day had not dawned, nor has it yet attained its true place as a part of education, nor will it reach it while conducted as a training school for spectacular athletics.

Literary societies, which had been an early feature of the College and long enjoyed a vigorous life, were represented by The Social Friends and the I nked Fraternity—to one of which each student was assigned by the faculty on entering College. At the period with which this paper deals, these societies had acquired valuable libraries of about eight thousand volumes each, through taxation of members and donations from the senior classes. But otherwise, through the growth of secret societies, they had survived their usefulness, except as a field for College politics, and as a valuable training school in parliamentary rules and practice.

Fraternities had fairly won high repute and great influence in the College. The general basis of their election of members at the close of the Freshman year was high scholarship or literary excellence and personal character. In a modified form they continued the old-time work of the literary societies. Their weekly programs, of essays, orations, debates, and formal conversations on assigned themes, were usually prepared with the greatest care, and after presentation ubjected to the criticism of the members. The carefully chosen course, consecutive for three years, dealt with history and literature, and so in some measure supplied a serious deficiency in the College course. Here were offered the best literary productions of the student body, not infrequently repeated on the college platform by the Juniors and Seniors as required exercises. Their halls were inexpensive rooms, simply furnished, convenient for social and literary meetings, for chapter houses were not in fashion. Of spreads and general social functions there was no thought. Except for some tendency to clannishness, not however greatly accentuated, I think these fraternities were entirely wholesome in their influence, not only as social groups, but as important factors in the literary and intellectual atmosphere of the College.

The only student publications were a Society Annual containing the lists and officials of each organization, an occasional sheet—the Aestrus (gadfly) —an anonymous publication after the fashion of the Roman libellus, filled with criticisms, witticisms, and abuse of individual students and members of the faculty, mainly the latter. It must be said that generally it was neither moderate, fair, nor decent.

The little college town offered no social privileges to the students, nor did the faculty appear to recognize it a duty or privilege to furnish social life for them. Far away from the political and business centers, the College was a little world in itself, living a sort of cloistered life, which made for intense influence of faculty upon students and students upon each other. After graduation ordinary social life had to be taken up anew, or rather at first hand after seven years of practical exclusion from it.

At the close of the Sophomore year the decease of Mathematics as personanon grata was celebrated by an elaborate funeral at dead of night. The coffin was filled with the current mathematical text-books and followed by the class in funeral procession, in which those who had suffered most from the foe now to be laid at rest were specially prominent and demonstrative in their sorrow. The exercises at the grave on the Common consisted of a suitable discourse and of a requiem written for the occasion and set to a tune in a minor key.

Pranks at the expense of Freshmen were even then an old tradition. Individuals were rarely subjected to severe treatment, and such victims were usually upstarts or swells who got little general sympathy. The public initiations into the literary societies were sometimes very ridiculous and amused everybody except the unfortunate victims, but were escaped by those who had friends to advise them that attendance upon this function was entirely unnecessary. Chapel rushes were a more serious matter. As the Seniors sat in front and the Freshmen next the door, the Sophomores, seated just behind the Freshmen, were in a position to rush them pell mell out of the Chapel door and down over the high steps at the close of the services. The scrimmage often became furious, individual as well as general, requiring faculty interference. Sometimes these disorders continued at frequent intervals for weeks. On one occasion, the Freshmen successfully resisted the attempt to rush them and held possession of the door until the President made his way through the turbulent throng and ordered them to desist. Then followed, byway of mutual retaliation, the defacement and defilement of the Freshman recitation room, a worse treatment of the Sophomore room, a coat of green paint on the Freshman seats in church, the oiling of the chapel seats of the Sophomores, winding up with a furious rush. Then the faculty took up the matter, and after an investigation separated two Sophomores from College, and once more "order reigned in Warsaw." The reversal of, the order of seating put an end to rushes many years ago, but the Sophomore-Freshman feuds and their resulting disorders persisted much longer. As a general rule the public order was excellent, and the student body as well-mannered, serious, and dignified as one could wish. But there were exceptions. Now and then an annoying outbreak of horn blowing disturbed the quiet of the College precincts and village, or vexed some professor for the moment out of favor, or a company of hilarious boys played some serious pranks.

In case of disorders of any kind, the President and professors were the sole police, and took an active hand in their repression. The chase of offenders by professors at night through buildings and over the grounds, or the search of students' rooms was not an unknown occurrence. College government was strict rather than severe, but did not attempt too much as to private conduct, which was on the whole satisfactory.

Besides suspension and expulsion, a form of penalty in vogue at Dartmouth has, I think, not survived, or at least is not known in the Westrustication. This consisted in send- ing the delinquent to a town at some distance to. live and study under the tuition and watch-care of some trusted person, usually a clergyman, for weeks or months. Upon the reports made to the President, as to studiousness and correctness of conduct, depended the restoration of the delinquent to his place in College. This was found, I believe, a very wholesome and effective means of discipline.

The personal relations of the professors and the students had something of the reserve and dignity of military officers, but with none of their air of caste superiority. They were readily accessible at their official hours or in their homes, and without the close personal touch and semi-comradeship of the Western university of our day, did not lack in cordiality and heartiness.

The College buildings were Dartmouth, Reed, Wentworth, and Thornton Halls, and the Observatory. Reed contained the libraries, museum, chemical apparatus, the collection of portraits, and the one science lecture room. The other recitation rooms—only one for each class—were in Dartmouth Hall. The furniture and furnishings were of the simplest sort. The heating was by wood stoves, and it was an ancient custom that students must pay for the fuel used in their recitation rooms, by collecting the necessary sum, class by class. Sometimes the Freshmen vowed they would not raise the money, but would wear overcoats until the faculty were frozen out, but after a few severe mornings and much grumbling they succumbed to the inevitable, much to the amusement of the professors and upper classmen.

The scientific apparatus was thought sufficient for the study of the professors and for the illustration of the lectures to be given, but for student laboratories there was no provision or thought. The cabinet of geology and mineralogy was limited, but excellent for the use made of it.

The College and society libraries open to students contained about 30,000 volumes, in large measure well-chosen and valuable. The annual catalogue would be a curiosity among those of the present day. It contained but forty pages, and of these only twenty-five concerned the College proper. With the names of students were given their rooms, mostly in the College dormitories. The Course of Study is set out in detail, with the text-books used, but no explanations or amplification whatever. Thirteen lines are given to the libraries and fifteen to apparatus, including observatory, laboratory, and geological cabinet. There is no parade of buildings or appointments, and no setting forth of the advantages of the College or the town. The advertisements in the papers were limited to the dates of entrance examinations and of the opening of the terms. I speak of these things because they illustrate the spirit and attitude of the College, and the colleges of the time. There was no apparent anxiety about attracting students. Never a word was said about student effort in behalf of large attendance and there was no apparent nervousness about it as compared with the past or with other colleges. The College had an established reputation, it would do its best for all who came to it, that was all. Neither President nor faculty went on canvassing lecture tours, or visited preparatory schools to drum up students by a parade of the advantages of the College, or by bribes in the way of free scholarships. Of the fierce and sometimes unscrupulous competition as it exists in the Middle West in this Year of Grace, the colleges of New England knew nothing.

The College aimed to turn out not so much finished scholars as capable men. These she prepared to go on to the perfectness of scholarship indeed, but her larger purpose was to fit them, through trained mental powers subject to the will and conscience, for the highest service in all the departments of practical life in modern society. In her first hundred years she proved that .such training can be efficiently acquired by an education mainly classical and mathematical, for she is justified by her sons.

I rejoice that the Dartmouth of today is greatly enlarged in faculty, in endowment, in buildings, and all appliances, as well as in the scope of its work, largely through the benefactions of its loyal alumni, and what is still better, that she continues to impress her old distinctive spirit upon the larger body of students who delight to call her Alma Mater.

Professor Amos N. Currier, '56, Dean of the University of lowa