Emporia State University - Sunflower Yearbook (Emporia, KS)

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' ReI11il'liSC6l1C6S. BY A. R. TAYLOR. EMINISCENCES! what a beautiful word! how meaning! What a strange mixture of hope, pleasing its sound, and yet how variegated its of disappointment, of realization, of joy, of grief, of patient waiting, of anxiety, of loyalty and disloyalty of associates, of surprises, of unrequited effort, of toil, of hours of weakness, of moments of strength, of de- feat and triumph, of temptation and victory, of uncer- tainty and assurance, of despair and encouragement, of dread and delight, of loneliness and sympathetic fel- lowship, of turbulence and peace, is found in this vita- scopic picture so magically repainted by that melodi-- ous old Latin word, rewwmiscerwesl Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain. Awake but one,.and lo! what myriads rise! Each stamps its image as the other flies. fr For nineteen years I have been going in and out at the old south door, but they have been such busy years and have disappeared so quickly that I was startled at the suggestion of the editor that I indulge in a few reminiscences for Thenadafys. They have all seemed so fresh and so real that I had thought of the-in only as Nowadays. It has really semed one long day. And yet, how utterly changed is everything since that day in April, '82, when I followed the Regents- up the steps and into the assembly-room to. be introduced to the students as their new President. Poor things! In their ignorance they gave me a generous welcome, little suspecting 'the dire experiences in store for them with the opening of the new administration. They all sat behind -regulation desks, and with heads erect and arms folded, listened attentively to the few words of greeting in which I told them of the thrill of pleasure it gave me to look into their beautiful and interesting faces. Before leaving the city, I heard that the boys and girls, as well as the Regents, were much gratified at the brevity and appropriateness of the address. That was my first crumb of comfort. To acquaint myself with the Kansas educational system, I accepted the conductorship of the Lyon County Institute, so kindly oiered me by Superintend- ent Wharton. The afternoons were usually spent at the Normal Building, dreaming and planning. The summer had been cool and pleasant, but a few days before school opened, a dry, scorching, hot wind crept up from the south, and in a week the life was burnt out of every sprig of grass and every green thing in sight. Students were coming in for whom I was tramp- ing the streets' to find boarding-places, and I had ample opportunity to discover how, helpless I was before the pitiless simoon of that awful week. The new year opened with a slight increase in the enrollment, which comforted me greatly. The whole building was but half furnished, however, several rooms in the basement were without iioors, some were

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ALBERT R. TAYLOR, PII. D., PRESIDENT -7-

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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