Stanford

“ Stanford had to keep up appearances, and smiles, though the serpents of envy and regret gnawed at her vitals. It was very gay there! Life seemed all made up of music, and dancing, and feasting, and mirth, and skating, and sleighing, and dressing, and singing. Life went like a fairy spectacle, or an Eastern drama, or an Arcadian dream—with care, and trial, and trouble, monsters unknown even by name.
Mme. Jules La Touche played the rôle with charming grace—a little shy, as became her youth and inexperience, but only the more charming for that. ”

“ And it was the university of which he was to become, in later successful years, a patron and trustee. Stanford did much for Herbert Hoover; but so has he done much for Stanford.
Any university means many things, for all their lives, to those who have come timidly and wonderingly to its doors as boys and girls, and have gone out on that final day of happy reward and tearful good-byes as men and women eager to try themselves against the world outside of sheltered school-rooms. And most of these things are to most persons who have known them, things of pleasant and loving memory. ”

“ It is a far cry from the simple walls that sheltered the brown-hued savage to the magnificence of Stanford, and the beauty of Berkeley, but it may be accepted as a proof and a recognition of the eternal fitness of things that Stanford's splendid quadrangle retains the motif of the early mission, and has pre- served in enduring stone an architectural type which is, above all others, in harmony with the blue, unclouded skies and sunshine-flooded hills of California. ”

“ It is for the students to see that no custom of idleness or of dissipation, no fashion of cynicism or of disloyalty ever becomes hardened into a tradition at Stanford University. It is for the professors to strengthen them in this decision, and to point out the best that men have ever thought or done, to lead the way to gentle breeding and the enthusiasm of noble thought. ”

“ Stanford came back from the East and someone over in the Hall proposed that we give them a welcome home. We could get a bigger demonstration there in those days than you can now, I'll bet; you know everybody who was anybody at all lived in Encina then; that was the center of the College life, politics began and grew up there, and it was over there in the old lobby that we started the Stanford spirit. ”

“ Considering all the conditions, the quality of Stanford has from the first been astonishingly good both in the faculty and in the student body. Can we not, as we sit here to-day, frame a vision of what it may be a century hence, with the honors of the intervening years all rolled up in its traditions? Not vast, but intense; less a place for teaching youths and maidens than for training scholars; devoted to truth; radiating influence; setting standards; shedding abroad the fruits of learning ”

“ Stanford has no other purpose in life than that of carrying out every detail of her husband's purposes. Her devotion has shown itself in maintaining the work of the university unimpaired during this period of hard times, while the estates are in probate, and therefore not available for university purposes. ”

“ Fortune could never smile upon Lincoln sufficiently to work any material change in his dress; he had always looked like a pauper; to-day, poverty showed in the journalist rather than in the carefully-dressed physician.
Williamson's heart grew lighter. This Stanford man, rising before him in his hour of desperation, should tide him over his temporary trouble. Of all the men at the University there had been none who had spoken so often and so sincerely of the Stanford spirit as Lincoln. Here was a chance to put it to a test. He knew his man. ”

“ All the traditions are individualistic. Red tape and organization are at their minimum. Interruptions and perturbing distractions hardly exist. Eastern institutions look all dark and huddled and confused in comparison with this purity and serenity. Shall it not be auspicious? Surely the one destiny to which this happy beginning seems to call Stanford is that it should become something intense and original, not necessarily in point of wealth or extent, but in point of spiritual quality. ”

“ These are stories of the University as it was before the era of new buildings. While the attempt has been made to create, in character, incident and atmosphere, a picture of Stanford life, the stories, as stories, are fiction, with the exception of "Pocahontas, Freshman," and "Boggs' Election Feed," which were suggested by local occurrences, and "One Commencement," which is mainly fact. The original draft of "His Uncle's Will" was printed in The Sequoia with the title "The Fate of Freshman Hatch." ”

“ Stanford, you understand, is a rival university, and they carry in triumph a battle-ax which they captured from this enemy many years ago; their military president and professors encourage this kind of play ferocity, as training for the setting up of slaughter-houses later on. These future world conquerors are pleased to portray themselves under the terrifying symbol of the Golden Bear. Almost every college is some kind of wild animal, you know; Princeton is a Tiger, and Yale is a Bull-dog, and they all sing songs about eating somebody up. ”

“ Stanford said in his address on the day of opening, "I speak for Mrs. Stanford as well as for myself, for she has been my active and sympathetic coadjutor, and is co-grantor with me in the endowment and establishment of this University."
They had been urged to give their fortune in other directions, as some persons believed that much education would unfit people for labor. "We do not believe," said Mr. Stanford, and the world honors him for his belief, "there can be superfluous education. As man cannot have too much health and intelligence, so he [Pg 224] cannot be too highly educated. ”

“ For the university must ever be infinitely greater than the sum of all its parts. For its largest part is never present for our measurement, and this part we can not measure is the sum of all its future influence.
This university was founded on love in a sense which is true of no other. Its corner-stone was love—love of a boy extended to the love of the children of humanity. It was continued through love—the love of a noble woman for her husband; the faith of both in love's ideals—and as an embodiment of the power of love Stanford University stands to-day. ”

“ Illusion pure and simple."
"Others have tried," objected Stanford, pessimistic again. "Many others. With gadgets and machines...."
"None has tried it," said Riggs, "with the power of mind alone. With the sheer determination to wipe out five thousand years of memory."
"That will be his stumbling block," said Stanford. "The old, dead memories are the things he has to beat. He has to get rid of them ... not just bury them, but get rid of them for good and all, forever."
"He must do more than that," said Riggs. "He must replace his memories with the outlook he had when he was a child. ”

“ Each Saturday some of the boys came up and brought the campus news. One time, all enlisted Stanford tumbled out [Pg 273] of their tents, every last one of them, to welcome a big, slow-moving, slow-speaking man, who plays first-base at the Commencement Game. A corporal who had never been to college and who had a newspaper idea of students, asked if that was the football captain whom they were crowding around and almost trying to hug, and Marion answered no; that he was a bigger man than even the head coach. ”

“ The erection of Stanford has given an impetus to the State University, and both are doing noble work, not only for the Pacific coast, but for the whole country. One of the most noteworthy things in the history of American university education thus far is the fact that the university buildings erected by boards of trustees in all parts of the country have, almost without exception, proved to be mere jumbles of mean materials in incongruous styles ”

“ He wanted to be a trustee of the University of California, and when he failed, he decided to start a rival institution. When his only son died in early youth, the heart-broken old man chose this means of perpetuating the boy’s name, and he pledged to Leland Stanford, Jr., University his land, his racehorses, and a part of his railroad stock; also a valuable asset in the form of David Starr Jordan, a scientist and teacher with some real interest in democracy.
Senator Stanford died in the midst of the panic of 1893, and his university was in a predicament ”

“ Stanford desired that the students should "not only be scholars, but have a sound practical idea of commonplace, every-day matters, a self-reliance that will fit them, in case of emergency, to earn their own livelihood in an humble as well as an exalted sphere." To this end he provided, besides the usual studies in colleges, for "mechanical institutes, laboratories, etc." There are departments of civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, besides shorthand and typewriting, agriculture, and other practical work. ”

“ At the age of seventeen I considered myself qualified to form a judgment of men, and I was amazed and indeed disgusted that my mother should see anything in Mr. Stanford to please her. He and my father were at the opposite ends of the sex, as far removed as the bows from the stern of a ship. He was a spare and narrow man, pale as veal, in complexion sandy, the expression of his countenance hard and acid, his eyes large and moist and the larger and moister for the magnifying spectacles he wore. ”

“ They lingered there until the clock struck ten—Kate's songs and the moonlight charming the hours away. When they went into the house, and took their night-lamps, Stanford bade them good-bye.
"I shall probably be off before any of you open your eyes on this mortal life to-morrow morning," he said, "and so had better say good-bye now."
"You leave by the eight A. M. train, then," said the Captain. "It seems to me everybody is running off just when they ought to stay at home."
Stanford laughed, and shook hands with Grace and Kate—with one as warmly as with the other—and was gone. ”

“ Man is bounded by the limits of space, but the race once established on this planet of ours, we see no limit of time, no prospect of a twilight of gods in which the darkness shall fall on the world because universities are no longer needed. The center of gravity of Stanford University, of its student body, and of its influence on civilization, is hundreds of years, thousands of years ahead.
To the students of to-day, the professors of to-day, and the trustees of to-day, the university to-day belongs, but not as a personal possession ”

“ I was thinking how fortunate I was to have been graduated from Stanford with such high honors, and how my good luck had stayed with me until I received my doctor's degree in a famous Eastern university and came out to take an associate professorship at the Berkeley campus.
I was watching the hurrying figures below on the crosswalks and idly noting the brilliant green of the shrubbery and the trees and the lawn. I was mixing up Keats with a bit of philosophy and thoroughly enjoying myself. Knowledge is truth, truth beauty, I mused, that is all we know on Earth, and all we need to know. ”

“ The higher education in the State is being put upon a secure basis. Hon. Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, have recently given a great part of their vast fortune for the establishment of a university which bids fair to be the foremost educational institution on the continent. In a letter specifying his views in regard to the management of the university, Governor Stanford says:
We deem it of the first importance that the education of both sexes shall be equally full and complete, varied only as nature dictates. ”

“ Barely one hour’s ride from San Francisco south, lies the Leland Stanford Junior University, which at the time of its foundation, in 1885, was the greatest gift ever bestowed upon humanity by any one person. ”

“ As to the public at large, in time they will judge us by our fruits, if we are allowed to live to bear fruitage. To a loyal friend of Governor Stanford, Senator Hoar of Massachusetts, I wrote this on June 20, 1894:
You will pardon me for writing to you to express my very great pleasure and that of Mrs. Stanford in the stand you have taken in defence of Senator Stanford's memory and in the effort you have made toward the protection of the university from the evil effects of prolonged litigation in which its endowment would be at stake. ”

“ No one has ever struggled more loyally to do so than Mrs. Stanford. Since her husband died we have not received a dollar of his money, but the university has gone on without check or hindrance, though at times she has been forced to give up luxuries and to limit her expenses in every conceivable way. As a matter of fact, she has each year given me a personal bond for all she thinks that she can raise from the farms and from her own small personal property. Her devotion to the work is absolute and she is giving her life to it. When she loses, she will die. ”

“ Passing the fenny counterscarps of Holland, we begin our journey at Stanford, which stands in a mild air and pleasant country abounding with noblemen’s seats. Many religious houses have been at Stanford, and once a college founded there, of which they boast much; but of all these things we expect shortly an exact and full account from the reverend Mr. Peck. About 1708, a brass seal was dug up, in the castle at Stanford, of Thomas bishop of Elphin in Ireland ”