Dickinson College - Microcosm Yearbook (Carlisle, PA)

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College which can now point to an honorable and useful career of over five score years. The College was founded, but where was the man of culture, learning and executive ability who would be willing to head a little college in the backwoods of Pennsylvania? Where but in Scotland? Dr. Johnson has defined oats as a grain used to feed horses in England, and men in Scotland. Some one has retorted to this definition, Look at the fine horses that England raises and the fine men Scotland raises. Dr. Chas. Nisbet, the first president of Dick- iuson, was a sturdy specimen of an oat fed -Scotchrnan. He was a metaphysician 5 a logician 3 a mathematician, and such a great latin scholar that if he were living to-day, he could decipher the latin on his own tombstone. Poor old man, he thought he had fallen on evil days when he had reached Carlisle and had looked the situation over, but resigning himself to the task, with the aid of his small, but able DC Y M 0fi l Builfling- faculty, he at that early day made Dickinson a college whose name was honored and respected. The present site was secured. West College was built, and when it burned to the ground, the dear Old West that we know and love arose from the ashes. ' T One little incident in President Nisbet's life shows his peculiar fitness for the responsible position of college president. While preaching in Montrose, Scotland, he said something which offended the town council so seriously that they got up and left the room in a body, but this did not trouble old Nisbet the least bit. He quoted the peculiarly applicable text, The wicked flee when no man pursuethf' and proceeded with his sermon. We have no doubt, that, if he could step forth from his picture in Chapel Hall, he would be perfectly able to orate on the burning shame of such damnable and reprehensible conduct perpetrated by a pack of infernal fools and consummate scoundrelsf' About the only thing that we know about student life in those days is that the poor duffers spent most of their time studying the ancient languages and mathematics. They could not help it. The society for prevention of cruelty to animals had not yet been founded. Also remember, gentle reader, when you think of these poor students, that the firm of Hinds 8: Noble was not in existence then. After President Nisbet died, the College had many ups and downs in its life, mostly downs, until finally, in 1832, the doors were closed. Then Dickinson became a Methodist college and entered upon a period of ever- 15

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widening usefulness. The first Methodist president was the eloquent John P. Durbin. One day, after President Durbin had preached to the Congress of the United States, Henry Clay said to him, Never preach again, for neither you nor any other man can surpass that. One of Dr. Durbin's successors was Dr. Peck, Jesse T. Peck, S. T. D., LL. D., president of Dickinson College, as he , .-, . . . t often pompously introduced himself. Dr. Peck afterwards became 1 a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, but it is not for that the average Dickinsonian remembers him. His name for all times will be associated in the annals with that of Moncure D. Conway. Dr. Conway is one of Dickinson's most illustrious sons, but it is not for his achievements in the world of letters that we most frequently think of him, but Dr. Conway's greatest feat, in the eyes of the twentieth century Dicksonian, was the practical joke which he played upon Dr. Peck. Dr. Peck was going to Staunton, Va., to attend a conference. It happened that there was an insane asylum at Staunton. Taking advantage of these circumstances, Conway sent a message to the head of the asylum, warning him that an insane man with a bald head and a big paunch was going to Staunton. Everything worked well, President Peck went to Staunton. The head of the asylum met him, and the distinguished president of Dickinson spent several exceedingly uncomfortable hours in the asylum. Dr. Conway says that when over a century afterwards he visited the U. P. Literary Society, this was the first thing of which the society wished to hear him speak. After Dr. Peck resigned, Chas. Collins, D. D., became president. President Collins was a rigid disciplinarian. Upon one occasion, however, the students prevented him from holding the usual chapel service. The campus had been mowed for commencement. All night the students toiled like beavers, and when the faculty went to chapel in the morning they found it transformed into a hay mow. If only the walls of Old West and Old East could speak, what stories they could tell us of midnight spreads, of the hot cannon ball which the professors used to catch hold of as it rolled through, of West College, of the old bell which refused to ring because it was minus rope or clapper, of the buckets of water that have been poured from its windows upon the unwary passerby, but the old college has stood through it all. Although the tide of rebellion surged to its very doors, not one 16 Jacob Tome Scientific Building. Old South College.