We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
WABASH COLLEGE, 1896-I90O 43
in such matters probably had something to do with the pleasure with which I returned to Mrs. Lee's each September.
The question of which fraternity I should join bothered me for a while, as I had good friends among both the Phi Psis and the Phi Delts. It was Benjamin Harrison who decided it for me. Harrison was a Phi Delt, and what was good enough for a former president of the United States was good enough for me. I survived the initiation and took considerable part in the affairs of the fraternity, both at college and afterward.
If I might have felt that my home town had missed me as much as I missed it since leaving, I must have been quite taken aback when Christmas vacation came. It never occurred to me that any of my old friends would fail to recognize that I was returning from my first term at Wabash. But while I was walking up the street, carrying my suitcase, Mart Farley, the blacksmith, called out: "Hi, Willie! Going someplace"?"
In college, as in high school, I was an average student— no more and no less. But Wabash has always held high standards, and we had to work. I got along pretty well with the professors, because the first year I worked very hard and established a reputation. I hadn't planned it that way just to make the subsequent years easier, but that was the way it worked out, and it proved a first-rate plan. That first year I suppose I was really scared that I would fail, not having learned to study too well in high school. Moreover, since I was taking the classical course, I had to pack two years' work in Greek into one. That furnished one of the horrible trials of my college life. If it had not been for dear old Professor Zwingli McLean, I don't think I would have made it. Fortunately Zwing was a kind man.
There were several professors at Wabash who had an influence on me —including Dr. Bodine in geology and Dr. Emery in chemistry. I got along splendidly with Dr. Tubby Tuttle, who was the professor of history and political economy. American history probably was my favorite subject, and American leaders my favorite heroes. They helped form my philosophy of life and of politics. The comment on the Declaration of Independence made by Jefferson illustrates what I mean: "All its authority rests on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in letters, printed essays, or the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc." The conception that "harmonizing sentiments" of many people give proper authority early became for me one of the central principles of political action.
There was one man there with whom I didn't get along so well. He was Professor Studley, who taught mathematics; he was as exact and cold as a multiplication table. To him, things either were or they weren't. To make it worse, he was the freshman class adviser. Each class had a member of the faculty as its own particular shepherd, and the authorities in