Furman University - Bonhomie Yearbook (Greenville, SC)

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in themselves to the wider and stronger curronts of civilization. Hitherto the school was largely insulated in a quiet retreat, adapted to study, moderate amusement and the development of scholarly and gentlemanly tastes. The first President of Furman advocated boarding in private families and deprecated the congregation of the body of students into one building as being apart from the restraining influences of female society in tho homes and as giving a breeches hold to the non-religious or restless dements. Along with the sweeping away of this provincialism of the South came an alteration in family :dcais and in tho moral standards, and these changes projected themselves into the smaller college world. Thoro became also a demand for smaller expenses at college. The agricultural portion of the State in the last 15 years of tho century had to contend with unfavorable seasons and with markets that were overstocked. Necessary provisions were held at prices that were often actually below the cost of production. Tho messes were inaugurated in this period of depression and for years they furnished board at remarkably low costand helped impecunious young men to complete their courses. At present the expense at the mess, due to rise in the necessaries of life, is not much below that in private families where other advantages moro than counterbalance the value of a few dollars. The first symptoms of unrest which appeared during or after this transition era were in connection with the secret societies which had been recognized as adjuncts of the institution. After years of friction, more or less restrained, between the fraternity and non-fraternity men. the societies were formally abolished in 1898 and in their places class organizations grew up and a class spirit was cultivated. The past differences were gradually forgotten and the enthusiasm engendered by tho newly introduced intercollegiate games effaced them entirely. The friction in the student body ceased, but it reappeared between the faculty and some of tho trustees and between some of the students and the faculty. Cases of discipline became not infrequent and the joint administration of discipline by faculty ar.d students became no longer practicable until the teams and athletic committee adopted and enforced more stringent regulations. Athletics are now generally considered as an essential accompaniment of a college training, boing intended to develop the physical man as the Y. M. C. A. and as tho inspiring chapel services are intended to build up the religious life. In a good democracy the foundation is laid in the virtue of the individual and where that virtue is not wanting it is tho highest typo of society this world has ever seen. The price of this sort of liberty is eternal vigilance, and that vigilanco must be enhanced when the same liberty is extended to the trinity that is in men body, mind and spirit. It would be a healthy and well-rounded development when the body, mind and religious nature are in harmonious development. But who Is not afraid of the human body, which the Apostle Paul had to beat and bruise to keep it under, lest it may rejoice in the gratification of its appetites and passions and refuse obedience to its lawful sovereign. tho soul? A great athletic contest is in progress and the solicitude of the spectators—parents, teachers. students—is tense in view of the issue at stake. i

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Sketch of Furman. Furman University is now fully girded for its race through the second half century of its existence. With its background of historic worth and foundations laid in persona! sacrifices by men morally as strong as Atlas, its future can reasonably be expected to extend through one or more milleniums. But the times have changed and the problems to be solved relate not more to finance than to morality. It is hardly possible in these days when the demand for money is so imperious that professors should live like raior-'oicks. or that students should spend their college days in hunger and in seediness. The well-to-do people in the State have beon wonderfully multiplied in number and they aro no longer satisfied with anything short of the best. Fortunately these new and better conditions are at work to furnish a more abun-ant endowment and other necessary paraphernalia. Over $50,000 in cash of the recent pledges has been realized, which is both a present help and a pledge of the redemption of the remainder when they become due. The solidarity of the denomination in support of the school was never more conspicuous, and in this auspicious day of sectional amity our present President is easily the man best adapted to tap successfully ar.d turn in this direction pent-up streams of benefaction which cannot find nearer home as promising fields for irrigation. It is with special pleasure that one can mention the immediate realization of a beautiful literary building to be presented by Mr. Carnegie and an endowment of the same by an as yet unknown citizen of the State. It means the addition of some $50,000 to the value of the plant and an annual increase in the number and value of the books in the library, a vast improvement in the Implements for both teachers and studonts. The point has not yet been reached when all concern for the finances may come to an end. but the mere matter of continuity of cxistcr.co is no longer paramount. It is rather the question of well-being, welldoing and how best to deserve the good things the future has in store. In the traditional policy of the school, the Trustees entrust the internal management of the school to the faculty, the faculty try to unite the minimum exercise authority with the rninimum liberty of the studont.on the supposition that the young men who come to Furman are young gentlemen and in the belief that such administration of affairs evokes and stimulates what is noblest in men. And on the part of the stu-ent body there has been a generous response to this trust in their manliness, either as a body or major part of it. This was especially noticeable In the struggling years. A mere handful of young mon attended who learned to place a high value upon time and opportunity. They went out in succession and aftor two decades they began to send back to the long left classic walks their sons and their neighbor's sons. In the (. meantime the people of the State were rising out of the ashes of the Shermanic conflagration and adju9t- L

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whether a sense of personal accountability to God and rospect for all rightful authority shall be the potent arbiter of our actions by day and by night or whether a lower plane is to be the theatre of the second half century's history. At no very distant day the endowment and buildings at Furman will be worth a million dollars. But how unspeakable would be the poverty amidst such wealth in a lower moral atmosphere compared with that of the sixties, when moral manhood was erect and six feet high and when the financial poverty was mirrored in a letter written by Dr. Furman one February in answer to a bogging letter: I have received only S300 this session and I have had to pay that out for fertilizers. tt