Stanford University - Quad Yearbook (Palo Alto, CA)

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Our University HE history of the University begins with the first day of October, iSgi. Of course there was a prehistoric period, and some of the best authenticated dates in that borderland of myth and tradition may well be set down here. In March, 1885, the L,egislature of the State passed the Act under which the Grant of Endowment was made in the following November. May 14, 1887, the corner- stone was laid. March 26, 1891, David Starr Jordan was appointed President. The first announcement of Faculty and Courses of Instruction was made in Circular No. 4, printed in IndianapoHs and issued from Bloomington, Indiana, about the first of June, 1891. This Faculty list included the president, one non-resident professor, fifteen professors, the librarian, two assistant professors, two instructors, the registrar and two non-resident lecturers — twenty- five in all — of whom eighteen were to report for duty on the first day of October. Work was outlined in nineteen different depart- ments, thus giving the departments nearly one instructor apiece. All the courses in English were assigned to Professor Anderson, and it was announced that in addition he would have charge of the French during the first semester ! The first of the Faculty to reach Palo Alto were the President, Dr. Richardson and the Registrar, and the date was June 25, 1891. When in the cool of that evening the President and Registrar strolled into the unfinished administration building of the quadrangle they were promptly

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CARDINAL. : ' ' Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Stanford !

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ordered out by the watchman. At that date Encina was only partially roofed ; floors, doors and windows were yet to be put into the quad- rangle, Roble and the Museum were just begun, the gymnasiums unthought of. Not a sod had been turned in the unbroken field where the cottages now stand. A single house was visible at Palo Alto, and four trains a day would stop at the little covered platform if duh- signalled. Escondite Cottage luckily opened to receive the president, but the ' ' tramp professors ' ' trudged the dusty two miles and a half between Menlo and the University the long summer through till up sprang Jasper Paulsen ' s ' bus at irregular intervals and prices. More than four hundred students responded to the first roll-call. Kncina was full to the brim. The thirst for education had developed in unexpected quarters, and persons of widely varied qualifications pressed forward to get some droppings of the new education. The improvised entrance requirements fairly sifted the general mass of applicants and kept most of the unfit away from Palo Alto altogether. But when a determined remnant surged past the regular requirements demanding admission as special students, most of the professors struck their colors at once. It has now become a fixed tradition that all of those who had the courage to make the assault not one was so far down in the scale of preparation as to fail to obtain the indorsement of some good-natured professor. And in those halcyon days there were no committees to revise the action of the major professor. Did one wish to take more than eighteen hours — as many even as twenty-six — the major pro- fessor graciously signed the application and there was an end on ' t. Those indeed were pioneer days ! With candlelight in the halls and professors their own market men ; without a post-office, and with May- field as the emporium of trade ! And how many an eye-tooth was cut that first year ! And what high-jinks went on at Encina, till Fesler and the Committee on Student Affairs got the guillotine erected ! In those days the Faculty not mereh (r young, the awV young. Think of Eaird, and Woodruff, and Sampson, and Griggs, as they must have been six years ago ! There were rebuffs, and the ros} hue sometimes faded, but nothing could reall) affect the bouyancy of spirit. No pioneer, be he faculty or student, but will maintain that those were the golden days that ma}- never come again. There was the thrill of creation in each new morning ' s work, the flashing of the light that never was on land or sea. It was the time of expansion, when the president habitually counted that day lost whose low descending sun saw no new instructor appointed or additional department projected.