Amherst College - Olio Yearbook (Amherst, MA)

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ent advance that may naturally be expected of one so gifted in mind and heart, and so keenly interested in the world wherein he moves. His was no disposition to fall into a routine, fol- lowing a way marked out by others and leaving his tasks where he found them. He entered the teacher's work as an explorer and discoverer, ready not only to master but to extend the resources of his chosen sphere. And his world was waiting to meet him with a rare welcome. As soon as his college course was finished he was called to a position well fitted to bring out what was in him. He be- came principal of the Albany Academy, at a time when it was badly run down g and it was not many years before the institu- tion, feeling the new vigor that was directing its affairs, advanced from an attendance of only seventy all told to an attendance of over three hundred, the largest number that had ever been known in its history. This prosperity was due alike to the wise scholarship that presided over its courses of study and to the extraordinary executive ability that managed its business affairs. Success like this could not escape recogni- tion. Numerous calls to college presidencies and other im- portant positions, in business as well as in learned pursuits, requests for addresses and papers on educational and other topics 5 academic honors-the degree Ph.D., given in 1880 by the University of the State of New York, the degree of LL. D., given both by Princeton and Rochester in 1882, and more recently the degree ot' L.H.D. given by Columbia College in 1887,-evince that the world had discovered a true leader in education, an instructor whose influence, overflowing the bounds of a single school or city, was a power in the world at large. In the old era of collegiate education the road to a college presidency led almost invariably through the Christian minis- try. This was natural and right, in its day, and in the con- ditions of culture that then prevailed. It was an honor to the American educational ideal, too, that a leader on whom so much depended should be required to have the experience derived from training the best people to the highest standards I2

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er-rill Edwards Gates. ERRILL EDWARDS GATES was born at Warsaw, in Western New York, April 6, 1848. The three names that he bears are each signiticant in some way of the sturdy, yet progressive spirit that is typical of the genuinely American character. The name Gates, through what his father, Hon. Seth M. Gates, did as member of Con- gress in the cause of anti-slavery and in the famous protest against the annexation of Texas, has, an honorable historic place by the side of such names as William Slade, joshua Gid- dings and john Quincy Adams. Of the Merrill family, which is old and well-known in western New York,onc of the members is prominent as an editor of the New York World. A direct descendant, on his mother's side, of the illustrious theologian jonathan Edwards, whom a speaker at the recent Missionary Association called the greatest man that ever walked the streets of Northampton, President Gates, in settling so near an ancestral home, comes to us no stranger to what is best in the New England traditions of piety and learning. After a brilliant course at the University of Rochester, where he came under the influence of that eminent educator, Presi- dent Martin B. Anderson, for whose sake indeed he abandoned an original intention of spending his junior and Senior years at Yale, and took his entire college course at Rochester. Mr. Gates was graduated in 1870, with the highest honors. His college life was thus contemporary with that of President Low of Columbia and President Andrews of Brown, and with the twenty years of fruitful experience intervening since his gradu- tion he enters upon his work at Amherst well equipped in vari- ous ways, and at just the age when mental and bodily vigor and ripened judgment are at their best. The years since, as a young graduate, he entered upon his chosen career of teaching have marked the steady and consist- II

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of character. But is it a smaller advantage, in the increasing practical demands of our times, that the president of a college should have been associated with the growing mind through its preparatory training, and that like Greatheart in Pilgrim's Progress he who had conducted the wayfarers safely past giants and lions to the palace Beautiful should receive from his king the further commission to lead his charge onward until they themselves should be leaders? Such a preparation it was, which was afforded Dr. Gates by his twelve years of success- ful life in Albany. In 1882 he was called to the presidency of Rutgers College, at New Brunswick, N. J. It is of course but a partial estimate, and that too taking account perhaps of what is of least signifi- cance, to measure the truest progress of a college by its 1na- terial advancementg but this test is at least the most palpable to the world. And here is the summary of his career at Rut- gers, as given by the New York 72.11168 .' In the eight years of his presidency the number of professorships at Rutgers has been increased from sixteen to twenty-two, the number of students has nearly doubled, the library has been increased from 9,000 to 26,000 volumes, a new chemical laboratory cost- ing 845,000 has been built, and a large dormitory, to accommo- date a hundred students, costing fL75,00o, is just finished, and will be opened in September. Over jf300,000 has been given to the college during his presidency. At the time when this paragraph was printed, August 1, 1890, President Gates's mind was engaged in an earnest debate which of three courses to take : whether to remain at the head of the college that had so remarkably responded to his wise leader- ship, or to accept the presidency of Oberlin, which had been offered him some time before, or to obey the call which the trustees of Amherst had just given him to become president of Amherst College in the place of President Seelye, whose con- tinued ill-health had compelled him to resign. In due time, after one or two visits to Amherst and careful observation of the field, he accepted the last-named invitation, making his decision known August 28, 1890. I3