Stanford University - Quad Yearbook (Palo Alto, CA)

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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.

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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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The opening of the University saw the establishment of the Palo Alto, a monthly newspaper, earnest in its advocacy of the now forgotten project to raise a student memorial to the founders of the University. The Palo Alto finally launched upon the dangerous sea of art illustra- tion, and joining forces with Berkeley appeared as an intercollegiate magazine, finally going out in a great blaze of notoriety which shook the Examiner to its foundations. The Sequoia was also started ; and that first famous game of football sealed the Universit3 ' ' s athletic supremacy. The second year brought a great increase in students and faculty, the Daily Palo Alto, the completion of the museum, new shops, new departments, new projects unnumbered. Prices had been raised in the halls, and out the students went taking almost forcible possession of May- field, filling it full to bursting. That was the year when a real estate halo rested over College Terrace, while Palo Alto was struggling to get itself born. The second long vacation was saddened by the sudden death of Mr. Stanford. And this great loss had a most momentous bearing upon the affairs of the University ' . With no ready money of its own, its endowments wholly unproductive, a great financial storm precluding . the possibility of borrowing, the estate of Mr. Stanford thoroughly tied up in the courts, only the personal fortune and personal devotion of Mrs. Stanford stood between the University and eclipse. The news- papers, with a curiosity only equaled by their colossal obtuseness, scented danger where there was none, and never saw the thin ice at all. The president sent out a circular letter to all old students stating that the revenues were ample for existing departments, and that no work undertaken would suffer. This pious fiction was possible because Mrs. Stanford had heroically assumed the enormous burden, which indeed she has never laid down to this moment. And so with some clipping of wings, but no ver} ' perceptible shrinkage of equipment the third year went on with another increase of two hundred students. And we did get a post-office. The fourth year saw few outward changes. The government suit settled down like a pall upon future prospects, but present revenues were untouched. The number of students went up to eleven hundred — still high water mark — and the first full class, the pioneers, were graduated. Enthusiasm never flagged, and the prestige of the Uni- versity steadily increased.