acquaintance with them--ah, they were few, and I am sure I did
not have a dozen conversations with them outside their class
rooms--gave me, each in his different way, an ideal of character,
of conduct, of the scholar, the leader, of which they and I were
totally unconscious at the time. For many years I have known
that my study with them, no matter whether of philosophy or of
Greek, of mathematics or history or English, enlarged my notions
of life, uplifted my standards of culture, and so inspired me with
new possibilities of usefulness and of happiness. Not the facts
and theories that I learned so much as the men who taught me, gave
this inspiration. The community at large is right in saying that
it wants the personal influence of professors on students, but
it is wholly wrong in assuming that this precious influence comes
from frequent meetings or talks on miscellaneous subjects. There
is quite as likely to be a quickening force in the somewhat remote
and mysterious power of the teacher who devotes himself to amassing
treasures of scholarship, or to patiently working out the best
methods of teaching; who standing somewhat apart, still remains
an ideal of the Christian scholar, the just, the courteous man or
woman. To come under the influence of one such teacher is enough
to make college life worthwhile. A young man who came to Harvard
with eighty cents in his pocket, and worked his way through, never
a high scholar, and now in a business which looks very commonplace,
told me the other day that he would not care to be alive if he
had not gone to college. His face flushed as he explained how
different his days would have been if he had not known two of his
professors. "Do you use your college studies in your business?"
I asked. "Oh, no!" he answered. "But I am another man in doing
the business; and when the day's work is done I live another life
because of my college experiences. The business and I are both