Emporia State University - Sunflower Yearbook (Emporia, KS)

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make additions to our Library, until in 1895 we were made glad by an appropriation of 56,500 for books, Some of the friends suggested that the Legislature had made a mistake, but we are sure that it knew exactly what it was doing. We shall expect it to do even better than that when the shelves in the new Library Build- ing are in place. Our system of entertainments has become a great feature of the School. For years We had depended upon an occasional lecture and the spasmodic lecture courses in the city. In the fall of '89, with some hesi- tation, I proposed to the Faculty and students that we organize a joint stock company with shares at one dollar each to provide a winter's course of lectures. Over three hundred shares were taken in iive minutes, and Professor Wilkinson was appointed chairman ot the managing committee. In a confidential way, I learned that our dividends would be about sixty-nve cents apiece, and quietly suggested to some of the members of the literary societies that they anticipate its payment by getting their members to donate their profits, when announced, to the treasuries of their respective societies. In that Way, each society re- ceived a neat little sum, and was pleased to appoint one of its members to represent it on a joint commit- tee from Faculty and societies to- manage such courses in the future. Like nearly everything else attempted on the Normal Ridge, they have been great successes from the first. There was just one little, lorn piano in the building in '82, and the two societies managed in some way to get small organs for their halls, which furnished melo- dious music when they could get anyone to play on them. When they had scraped up enough money to make the iirst payment on a piano, the School bought the organ belonging to the Literati Society for use in the Gymnasium, and some unfortunate country church paid a. fabulous price for the wheezy instrument over in the Lyceum Hall. I think a member of the present Faculty conducted the negotiations, and am sure that he could soon mane a fortune in running a second- hand store. These sales, with the sum of fifty dol- lars allowed each society by the Regents enabled them to pay cash for their pianos, and every boy in the institution put on his best suit and brought his best girl to the grand opening that followed. It was a great occasion for music atlthe State Normal, and as I now pass through the building, hearing the four- teen or more pianos responding to the touch of earnest stud-ents and accomplished players, I must be per- mitted to maintain that they do not give me greater pleasure than did those pioneers on that memorable night. We Were unable to find students every hour who could play that old Literati organ for us in the Gymnasium, and so purchased an orchestron equip- ped with a number of popular airs. It was turned by hand, and ground out the marches like a hand corn- sheller. That machine-music put a new life into the calisthenics for awhile, though it was almost as dif- Hcult to get someone to keep it moving in proper time as to play on the organ. When Professor Stone came, she asked for a piano, and there happened to be just enough money left in the fund to get it. This recalls the calisthenics drill of '82. After

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without any furniture whatever, and a few rickety chairs huddled together on the bare floor at the front in each of the two society halls suggested ire rem- nants and poverty. Though the Legislature of '76, in a mood of anti- normalphobia, in which it abolished the other State Normals, had actually enacted a provision that no ap- propriations should ever be made to the School, we succeeded in getting a grant in '83 of nearly six thou- sand dollars to floor the basement rooms and make some other needed improvements. In '85 the appro- priation exceeded that amount by a few hundred dol- lars. The rapid growth in the enrollment gave me courage to ask for a new wing in '87, but it was only after an hour's earnest pleading that I succeeded in getting the promise of the president of the Board of Regents to help get it. He thought it an impossibility until he found his friends in the Legislature ready to line up for the bill. Judge Kellogg, now secretary of our Board of Regents, was at that time a State senator. After hearing my glowing story of the prospects in the House, he said, with a smile: You get the bill through the House and I will get it through the Senate. I knew from that minute that we would win. He kept his word, and how the boys and girls did celebrate on the final passage of the bill! A big jollincation meeting in the assembly-room, with ap- propriate musical improvisations, big talk from big men who had lent a hand, a big bonfire in front of the campus, with the ire patrols in big red caps flank- ing the revelers, with no end of clatter and yells told how glad everybody felt that we were getting out of the wilderness. .. When we swarmed out into the new Wing in Feb- ruary, '88, we seemed to have enough room to last a century, but in two years the hive was again full. We sought to enlarge the old assembly-room and to erect a gallery. Thanks to a kind Providence and the Populist party, we were denied relief in that way, and in '93 had grown large enough and bold enough to ask for the east wing. A thousand students startled their neighbors on their Way home with the shout: A new wing and a new assembly-room for the State Normal School! The campaign was successful, and the poets and boniires and tin horns on the drill ground west of the campus expressed our joy in a iit- ting manlner. In the meantime, our appropriations for current expenses were growing larger each year, and the appropriation for the new boiler-house and Gym- nasium in H99 did not seem much of a sum after all. To him that hath shall be given. The appro- priation of 360,000 for the new Library Building last winter shows what a great place the institution has taken in the confidence and aiection of the people of the State. The Library of '82 was in the small room taken by the present corridor between the Eeast Libra- ry and No. 48. It was made up of remnants' of three libraries, and was chiefly remarkable for the books it did not contain. The librarian, a jolly entertainer, usually managed 'to keep students from going there to study by entering into a heated argument over the virtues of greenbacks and fiat money, a proceeding that iinally yielded gracefully to'the new order of things. Since that time politics has found little place in the Li- brary or anywhere else in the institution. The Legisla- ture allowed us a few hundred dollars each year to

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devotionals or after recess, Professor Davis, the' direct- or, would take the platform, and calling alternate rows of students to their feet, would put all of them through a lively course of exercise that sent the blood agoing rapidly. It was a beautiful sight to see the whole assembly-room responding in graceful unison to his quick, sharp commands. One day, however, Regent Crichton called my attention to the serious swaying of the building under the tread of so great a company, and conhrmed my fears of its dangers. The plan now in vogue was then adopted, and students afterwards took their work in calisthenics in the Gym- nasium during their vacant hours. ' We have had many delightful visitors during the past twenty years, but I think non-e of them has given us greater pleasure than Herr Bille, the Danish Consul, who visited us some time in '83, He was a courtly gentleman and a man of generous learning and world- wide acquaintance. In introducing him, I mentioned several of his distinguished fellow-countrymen, among them Hans Christian Andersen. This proved a happy mention, for in his response, he spoke most charmingly of his intimate personal relationship with Andersen, and waxed eloquent over his many excellent qualities and brilliant gifts. He expressed his great joy that his friend is so highly esteemed away out in this center of the great American continent. Sidney Lanier was o-nce looking at a great field of red clover, when suddenly it all seemed to be in motion, and in po-etic vi-sion he saw the Course of Time coming toward him, the clover heads marching slowly along with here and there one towering above its fellows as the great souls of the race have risen above their contemporaries. In the increasing throng coming before me in this reminiscent mood to-night, I recognize not a few only, but many whose brilliant intellects and noble natures won them exalted places among us, and who left us fragrant memories of their unswerving devotion and sympathetic cooperation. To tell all about a single one of them would carry me far beyond my allotted space. One characteristic of them all, however, Whether in the ranks or in leadership, is just as marked now in this life-picture as in the days- when they were touching elbows with us as We passed up and down the halls-intense ear- nestness and lofty purpose. This retrospect calls back the faces of others who were in nearer and more confidential relationship dur- ing those selfsame years, my associates in the Faculty and in the Board of Regents. There were nine mem- bers of the Faculty in '82, and in adjoining ourselves to each other, we found much in common. Our differ- ences were honest differences, and consequently but helped us to 'rind the truth. The rapid increase in the enrollment and the larger mission opening to the School demanded much forethought and anxious plan- ning. Many things that have conspired to make the School strong and vigorous, and are now taken as a matter of course, were inaugurated by us with fear and trembling. One of the first problems we undertook to solve was the advancement of the standard for entrance and graduation: The two years' or common school course was abolished in '83. That course 'was supposed to be a drawing card. The Class of '82 contained forty-four members, the Class of '83 numbered thirty-six, and with the assurance that the Class of '85 would hardly be half as large if the common school course was abolished, it took a great deal of courage for a new administration to do it. The very nrst graduating class under the new rule dropped down to eighteen, but the next rose to thirty-three, and finally went away be- yond the hundred mark. All of those nine teachers except myself engaged in other work within a. dozen years, and some of sainted memory have entered into rest, but a true history of the growth of the State Normal School will not omit their important services. A. R. T.