USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Waterville > The history of Colby College > Part 27
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The first modest step toward what Albion Woodbury Small would later make Colby's coordinate system of education was made in 1874. It seems the few women in college had been carrying off too many of the competitive prizes. Call- ing a halt to such monopoly, the Trustees voted that "one prize of ten dollars and one prize of five dollars be offered to the young ladies of the sophomore and junior classes respectively-said prizes being for excellence in written parts; and the prizes heretofore offered shall henceforth be for the competition of the young men alone."
It has already been noted that a prominent trustee throughout the Champlin administration was Maine's leading statesman of the time, Hannibal Hamlin, who had been Governor, Representative to Congress, United States Senator, and Vice- President of the United States. He had taken a prominent part in many vital decisions for the College and had been especially influential in helping Champlin raise the endowment fund upon which the gift of Gardner Colby was contingent. In 1874 Hamlin established the public speaking prizes that still bear his name at Colby. They were at one time known as the Freshman Reading Prizes, because the contestants were selected from the class in reading, conducted once a week by President Roberts. In the 1930's the donor's name was restored to the title, and the Hamlin Prizes are still awarded to freshmen for excellence in public speak-
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ing. Although they are now awarded without discrimination as to sex, they were originally set up separately for men and for women, after the pattern adopted for the sophomore and junior prizes.
That the comparative affluence of the later years of the Champlin adminis- tration did not continue is revealed in a report made by the Finance Committee in 1876. "The Committee regrets to note, according to the Treasurer's report, that estimated expenses exceed estimated receipts by $1228, aside from appro- priations for special objects. The strictest economy is therefore recommended. We believe all the securities are good and are paying interest, with the exception of $24,000 of Wisconsin Central R. R. bonds, and those will be good when the road is finished, and it is now rapidly approaching completion." As indication of the spirit of economy, the Board voted not to appropriate any money for lightning rods.
Pressure for better gymnasium facilities had been persistent since 1872. The Board had twice decided that the gymnasium should not be rebuilt until funds had been subscribed specifically for that purpose, but by 1876 they could resist the pressure no longer, and they voted to authorize borrowing the money neces- sary to rebuild the gymnasium and later repay the loan from subscriptions.
In the 1870's the expense of a college education was inching its way up. Only thirty years earlier the Trustees thought they were taking great risk when they increased the tuition charge to twenty-four dollars a year. In 1878, with- out a word of explanation or apology, the Board voted annual tuition of forty-five dollars. The old boarding charge of $1.25 a week had also doubled, and numerous fees had been added. Nevertheless it was an extravagant student who then spent more than two hundred dollars for all of a year's expenses at Colby. In later years opinion would be frequently divided whether an increase in tuition should apply to classes already in college or only to those entering after the increase was voted. So heated was that contention after the increase voted in 1878 that the Trustees felt obliged to hold a special meeting the following December, at which it was voted to apply the increase only to the class that had entered subsequent to the summer of 1878.
Gardner Colby died on April 2, 1879, and in his will bequeathed to the College $120,000, of which $20,000 was in the form of a scholarship fund for needy students. That bequest brought Mr. Colby's benefactions to a total of $200,000, the largest amount the College would receive from a single source for many years.
One persistent difficulty troubled both President Robins and the Trustees al- most to the end of that administration. The optimistic expansions made in the later years of the Champlin administration had made it impossible to balance the budget until 1878. Meanwhile the College had been obliged to deposit valuable securities as collateral for loans to meet the annual deficits. The Trustees there- fore decided to raise a special fund to release the collateral which had been posted to the extent of $30,000. To raise money for buildings and for educational ex- pansion is hard enough. It is much more difficult to secure money "to bury dead horses." By heroic efforts the Trustees accomplished their purpose in three years, and at their annual meeting in 1881 they were able to announce that the entire $30,000 had been subscribed. Three members of the Board, Abner Co- burn, J. Warren Merrill, and Gardner Colby, each gave $5,000, two persons gave $1,000 each, seven made subscriptions of $500, seven of $250, two of $200, while the number who gave $100 each exceeded fifty. The remainder was made up of several hundred small subscriptions from $5 to $50. Persons close to Mr. Colby
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said that it was the success of that campaign and the final balancing of the annual budget that induced him to add to his already generous gifts by designating $120,000 for the College in his will.
By 1880 the strain of his many duties and his determination not to let up at all in his exacting schedule of classes, speaking engagements, and fund-raising trips, had undermined President Robins' health, which for several years had not been robust. He decided to submit his resignation. The Trustees were deter- mined not to accept it, and they set up a committee empowered to work out some plan satisfactory to Dr. Robins and to call a special meeting only if he should insist upon resigning. Because the President's health prevented his resumption of duties in the fall of 1880, the committee decided to call a special meeting in December, when it was voted to grant President Robins leave of absence for the remainder of the academic year. Dr. Shailer and Dr. Ricker were authorized to confer with the faculty in regard to providing for the emergency. They urged that the extra duties be discharged by members of the faculty without calling in outside assistance. The faculty concurred, with the single provision that they be empowered to employ a tutor if necessary. President Robins returned to his office in the fall of 1881, but failed to regain his health sufficiently to keep up the exacting pace. In January, 1882, the Trustees called a special meeting, in the call for which it was stated, "The President finds himself in such a state of health that an immediate and final release from the duties of his office seems essential to his recovery." Robins himself submitted the following letter to the Board.
To the Honorable, the Board of Trustees of Colby University:
Accepting, at your request, a leave of absence from the close of the first term of the last academical year, I returned to my college duties at the last commencement. So much was I encouraged by my gain in strength that I arranged my affairs for an indefinite continuance of my relation to the College. After two months, however, my vigor gradually declined until I was forced, about one week after the beginning of the second term, to give up the daily recitations of the seniors in Political Economy to Dr. Smith, who kindly consented to assume the burden. I had previously communicated to several members of the Board my fear that I should again be forced to succumb and my conviction that, in such case, the best course would be immediate severance of my con- nection with the College. Subsequent experience has confirmed me in that conviction. I am convinced that it would not be prudent for me ever again to assume so weighty responsibilities. I have to beg, there- fore, that you will arrange the details of my release promptly.
The Trustees reluctantly accepted Dr. Robins' resignation and appointed Ricker, Bosworth and Crane a committee to work out the necessary details with Dr. Robins. At the same time they set up a committee of five to recommend his successor. They voted to continue the President's salary through the remainder of the academic year and to grant him free use of the President's house until his successor should be ready to occupy it. The Board sent to Dr. Robins the fol- lowing letter of appreciation:
You assumed the presidency of our University at a critical epoch. The currents of opinion and the concurrence of events were demanding a progressive movement and more comprehensive discipline. You brought to the position a clear and lofty ideal of the legitimate purpose and mis-
.
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sion of such an institution, and definite views respecting the means and methods by which they may be accomplished. To the pursuit of these ends you have devoted yourself with an enthusiasm and per- sistency which have excited the admiration of the friends of the Uni- versity, lifted it in the estimation and confidence of the public, and rendered the period of your presidency one of unprecedented progress. Your efforts to raise the standard of scholarship and moral training, by insisting upon the proper combination of intellectual and Christian culture, have met with gratifying success. The fervid enunciation of your views has stirred deeply the spirits of the friends of liberal learn- ing, and your administration has demonstrated the feasibility of those views and the manner in which they may be carried out.
Thanks to President Champlin's successful appeal for funds, thanks to the generosity of Gardner Colby, Abner Coburn and Warren Merrill, and by no means least, thanks to the emphasis on both intellectual standards and Christian prin- ciples so happily combined by Henry Robins, Colby University was in excellent condition to call to its presidency the genial, friendly, scholarly and devout man who bore the name of Colby's first missionary. After considering a large num- ber of possible successors to President Robins, the Trustees decided the man supremely fitted for the job was he who had been pastor of the Waterville Bap- tist Church during the war years when James Champlin was President of the Col- lege. That man was George Dana Boardman Pepper.
CHAPTER XXI
College Life In Robins' Time
HAT was student life at Colby University like in those nine years of Henry Robins' presidency from 1873 to 1882? One man who remembered well the early years of that regime was Dr. Clarence E. Meleney, who after receiving his Colby degree in 1876 became a prominent educator, who served both on the staff of Teachers College at Columbia University and as Associate Superin- tendent of the New York City schools. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniver- sary of his Colby graduation Dr. Meleney wrote an interesting comparison of college education in 1876 and in 1926.1 Concerning admission, which was gained wholly by examination, Dr. Meleney had this to say:
The examination for admission was limited to Latin, Greek and Ele- mentary Alegebra. My preparation had been only two years of the languages and only six weeks in Algebra. In English I had read portions of the Bible and had committed verses to memory; some of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, some of Scott and Dickens, and could write a let- ter to my home folks. My lack of a fundamental knowledge of English and mathematics was a handicap all through my college course and was revealed to me when I tried to teach, in Benton, a country school com- posed of boys and girls from the farms, some of my own age. I had to begin to study Kerl's Grammar and cypher out the problems in Green- leaf's Arithmetic. History was practically an unexplored field, and geography was a patchwork of countries of various colors spotted with cities and traced by rivers.
As for the college studies themselves, Dr. Meleney remembered that he read some Livy and Horace, some Greek which he could not recall. He wasn't es- pecially grateful to Professor Samuel K. Smith for making him commit to memory the whole of Whately's Rhetoric and Logic, but he did thank that stern profes- sor for introducing him to Shakespeare. Meleney and his classmates didn't find Professor Smith's assignments in Anglo-Saxon too difficult because they all used "the Bible as a pony." All Meleney had of science was the task of committing to memory Gray's Botany and Huxley's Physiology. "I recall with what re- served patience our professor listened to our literal recitations."
Disputing those who avowed that Professor Elder's instruction also de- manded memoriter learning, Dr. Meleney wrote:
To his credit Professor Elder introduced real science instruction in his chemistry laboratory. That was a veritable oasis. Would that physics
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and biology had been opened up by the same method. In physics we tried to recite the textbook description of various mechanical machines, while the apparatus itself was locked up in a show case.
Like many men before and since, Dr. Meleney was concerned about the opportunities he missed in college.
Here was a library with shelves and stacks of wonderful books on all subjects of human knowledge. How I lament the fact that few of their covers were ever opened by me, and that no reading outside the text- books was suggested by any professor. I do not wish to disparage the college of that time. We were to blame who were blind to the opportuni- ties it furnished. Though handicapped by lack of facilities, equipment, revenue, faculty, and even students, the little college turned out men and women who today are leaders in the learned professions, in business and in public affairs.
In previous pages the custom of a long winter vacation to enable college stu- dents to teach in the common schools has been frequently mentioned. Dr. Meleney described, in delightful detail, his own experience in such teaching.
To accommodate the many students who needed to earn money dur- ing the college year, the long vacation was in December and January, and the short one in July. The long winter vacation enabled many of us to obtain a teaching position in some country district in Maine, and we usually extended the vacation by another full month. Preparing for that teaching enabled us to make up our own deficiencies in English, mathematics, history and literature. We each took with us, for the va- cation, a box of books from the society library.2 I was fortunate in being able to do all my vacation teaching in a high school, while most of my classmates had to be content with an ungraded rural school. In one school I read with a class of older pupils the same French book that my classmates were reading in college. Of course we had no instruc- tion whatever in educational philosophy or teaching methods. In that day education was considered neither a science nor an art.
One of Dr. Meleney's classmates was the man who was to be the President of Colby and gain fame as "the father of American Sociology," Albion W. Small. His recollections, though not so complimentary as Dr. Meleney's, were neverthe- less pointedly definite.
If the members of '76 had been polled, not one of them could have said that he came to Colby because of any attractions it offered. Each would have asserted that he was here because it was impracticable for him to attend any other college. Under the circumstances the attitude was rather that of prisoners than of voluntary residents. Yet we all got much from the college. Each of us was the beneficiary of the quicken- ing influences which began to be felt the moment Dr. Robins took the leadership. The life of the college was nevertheless in seething ferment. Prejudices, partisanships, passions and patriotisms were generated and released in ways which perhaps contributed more to all around develop- ment than any classroom curriculum could ever accomplish.3
Judge Harrington Putnam, Class of 1870, although he had graduated in Champlin's time, kept in close touch with the College during the Robins ad-
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ministration. Many years later he recalled that, in the decade following his own graduation, methods of instruction changed very little. At the age of 75 he wrote for the Colby Alumnus an informative article concerning how and when methods in classroom practice changed in American colleges.
Judge Putnam pointed out that the twenty years just after the Civil War might well be called the "era of verbal memory cultivation." The way to learn anything was to memorize it literally. The ability to repeat from memory long extracts from the text was the mark of a scholar, and such evidence of memory was considered proof of mental ability. Henry Adams felt it necessary to apolo- gize because his famous father, Charles Francis Adams, had a "memory hardly above average." Even lawyers were rated by their memorizing ability. Judge Putnam recalled that Caleb Cushing, often called the most learned lawyer in Massachusetts, when a legislative report was not at hand, could always supply the text verbatim if it was one that he himself had written.
Judge Putnam had attended Columbia Law School after his graduation from Colby. There he and his classmates had been surprised and somewhat shocked to hear Professor Theodore Dwight warn the students against memorizing the words of their textbooks. He insisted that the practice of law demanded the accurate memory of ideas and substance, not of precise words, and that memoriz- ing the mere words often interfered with a mastery of the substance.
Judge Putnam was therefore decidedly in favor of the newer method which was gradually replacing memoriter instruction. He had come to see that there is even a gain in forgetting. He wrote:
Today our colleges are seeking to intensify the power of individual thought, too often weighed down by undigested learning, and to think out independently a question, without too much absorption of ideas from others. Our ancestors gained a facility of phrase, from having in school days memorized Shakespeare, Dryden and Pope. But though such fa- cility may refine the taste and broaden the imagination, it does not pro- vide the more solid fruits of study.
For many years it had been an occasional, but not a regular custom for some group to play the prank of issuing what were called "false orders" at some college function. After Hannibal Hamlin gave a permanent fund to provide prizes in Freshman Declamation, that exhibition of freshman oratory became the favorite occasion for this bit of college fun, which began not very harmfully, but in the early years of the twentieth century reached the proportions of a col- lege scandal.
In one of President Robins' early years, two students who were passing out programs at the door of the Baptist Church, where the speaking was held, were suddenly seized by a group of sophomores and tied up in a barn. Two dignified, sober-faced members of the raiding class took their place, and with great courtesy proceeded to pass out their own version of the program. Those false orders lampooned the speakers and their subjects.
At first the faculty was immune from these pranks, except as it considered college discipline violated by the disorder. But in 1878 the year book called the Colby Oracle, then only in its fifth year of publication, contained an article that aroused faculty wrath. The matter even reached the Trustees, who at their annual meeting voted "that the article appearing in the Oracle of 1878 assailing the Faculty of the University meets the unqualified disapprobation of the Trus- tees." Let us see what those brash editors of the Oracle, Albert Getchell and
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Frank Jones, had actually put into print. The offensive article was a burlesque account of a faculty meeting. The more stinging passages were these:
There was an upheaval from the chair occupied by Professor Smith, who arose and said, "While there are many actions of the students which are extremely annoying to me, and perhaps a source of evil to the College, yet I would caution against any hasty, unpremeditated ac- tion in our attempts to prevent those actions. If the regulations must be made more stringent, let it be so, but let each new restraint be carefully considered. My chief complaint is that in my department procrastination and 'cutting' are the rule rather than the exception. Otherwise I find but little fault."
When Professor Smith resumed his seat, a noise was heard in a remote corner of the room, which proved to be Professor Lyford, nearly con- cealed in the shadow of a chair, his countenance not presenting the serenity of that of his predecessor. He said, "Although I might com- plain much about the conduct of our students in the classroom, I will only call attention to the appellations bestowed upon me by the stu- dents: 'A relic of the Silurian Age', 'Preserved since Paleozoic Time', and many more which I have neither time nor patience to rehearse. If they had more to do and the regulations were more severe, there would be less of this poor ribaldry. Therefore I will agree to any law, how- ever stringent."
The next speaker was Professor Elder, who reached for another 'Yara', lit it and said: "Boys will be boys. Laws are of no value unless they are enforced. There are now enough dead laws on our books."
Professor Foster then secured the floor. Assuring his colleagues that he would not speak at length, he held forth for twenty minutes. In part he said, "While I shall not severely censure the young gentlemen for bestowing upon me the epithet of Johnny, I must protest mildly this familiar way of addressing those who have survived many generations of students and are still in enjoyment of their faculties. A report is prevalent that my lectures on Greek history are merely 'horse' transla- tions. This is a gross exaggeration, and if any person will compare my lectures with Harpers' editions of the Greek authors, he will find that the former frequently present different language and occasionally even different ideas. But I am most grieved by their assertion that, if I had a recitation lasting two hours instead of one, I should talk the class to death. Wherefore I shall earnestly advocate the affixing of penalties for deeds not now indicted and not even yet committed. These students must be inculcated with the necessity of subordination to authority."
As Professor Foster took his seat, amid sighs of relief all around him, Professor Taylor remarked: "I think something ought to be done to prevent the increase of equestrianism among our students. As for my- self, I fear, I loathe, I hate, I detest, I abominate a horse. Pass what- ever regulations you see fit, and my classes will conform to them."
As Professor Hall was too overcome by his emotions, Professor War- ren was the next spokesman. "Gentlemen, I will detain you but a mo- ment. I am not much troubled because I am called 'Cosine', but the re- ports that I am susceptible to female influence and favor greatly the ladies in my classes do trouble me considerably, and I stigmatize them as completely false."
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All eyes were now turned toward the President, and that gentleman, after placing a Latin and a Greek grammar on the table, began thus: "Gentlemen, the idiosyncrasies of some of our students have led to such frequent departures from the paths of rectitude that they can no longer be palliated, and additional regulations should be made and enforced ipso facto. If any of my remarks seem incoherent, or if I fail to pre- serve a logical nexus throughout, I must ask you to attribute it to my perturbation of mind when I contemplate the numerous instances of partial (I had almost said total) depravity among our students. They refuse absolutely to associate with my trusty messengers. They stop in front of my residence and sing 'Good Night, Doctor', until the entire neighborhood is aroused from slumber. A certain class, which I have been judiciously weeding out, has a new song which has a refrain 'There'll be no need of a Doctor's Spy'. We must exercise firmer restraint on these students. Any motion is now in order."+
It may broaden our view of student life in the '70's and early '80's if we take a quick look at the student organizations of the time. The Greek letter fraternities had come in with DKE in 1845, followed by Zeta Psi in 1850. In 1878, those two were still the only secret societies in the College. The Dekes had rather the better of it in numbers, having at that time seven seniors, seven juniors, nine sophomores and ten freshmen-a total of thirty-three members, while the Zetes had four seniors, five juniors, six sophomores, and four freshmen -a total of nineteen. But the Zetes had the advantage at that particular time, in respect to members who later became prominent in public life, for among their number was Hannibal E. Hamlin, distinguished son of a famous father, Edwin C. Whittemore, college trustee and historian, William W. Mayo, founder of Op- portunity Farm for Boys, Hugh Chaplin, well-known Bangor attorney, and C. E. Owen, for many years an officer of the Maine Baptist Convention.
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