Stanford University - Quad Yearbook (Palo Alto, CA)

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must have come to wish for the blessed oblivion of not being remem- Stanford bered. His special enthusiasms were promptl}- suppressed. The Quad skip in his walk and the teeming fruitfulness of his l)rain, conditions 1904 which portended genius in his home circle, were now his undoing. By a rough but elTective treatment he was presently whipped and disci- plined into shape until he became boisterous or studious, enthusiastic or contemplative in the prescribed Harvard fashion. The faculty he found fixed in its orbit, not in the least disturbed by his appearance, not modified by his desires or ambitions or revolutionary ideas. The Uni- versity machinery appeared not to care a rap for anything he thought or did. It observed him and presently labeled him, and he sank or swam according to his degree of conformity to the Harvard standard. Behind the Harvard of 1891 were more than two hundred and fifty vears of history making and tradition making. All the momentum of this force was turned upon the Freshman, for his training, his develop- ment, his regeneration. The result was that he presently acquired the Harvard gait, the Harvard clothes, the Harvard attitude, the Harvard vocabulary, the Harvard learning, and in due course of time was graduated and went out into the world with the everywhere recogniz- able Harvard stamp upon him. For the Stanford Freshman there was no model to which he was predetermined to be conformed. It would be untrue to assume that there were not historical and traditional forces shaping and condition- ing the new university which had been laid oft ' on the Palo Alto Farm. The charter, the founders, the faculty, American university ideals — all these were such forces. But they were in the background. They were concretely undiscovered. Everywhere was a virgin soil. Every- thing had to be discovered ; everything newly formed. There was nothing that was not fluid, nothing that in its detail might not be dif- ferent, no problem for which a new solution might not be sought. The faculty was„ not fixed in any orbit. It had not laid down any precedents. There were no older students already fitted into academic grooves and ready to treat with supercilious scorn any fresh enthusiasm or innovat- ing idea. From college, from high school, from machine shop, from whatever outlving district the student came he was caught up into the intoxication of new beginnings. There were no college papers, no class organizations, no athletics, no musical clubs, no fraternities, no wearers of the Cardinal and no Cardinal to wear, no college heroes, no politicians nor poets nor litterateurs. Zion. Carolus Ager, Shirley Baker. Chappie — not one of these redoubtable names, shouted from the

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Stanford Quad 1904 iPTfTC Traditions After Twenty Years HE several thousand iM-cshmen of A. D. 1891 who were denied the good fortune of being admitted to Stanford University did not differ very much, considered as the raw material of human beings, from the luckv Four Hundred who were welcomed to the untrodden corri- dors and fascinating arcades of the Inner Quadrangle, and to the candle-lighted recesses of Encina and Roble, during those never-to-be-forgotten natal days. The applicants who knocked at the doors of Stanford, of JNIichigan, of Cornell, even of Harvard, ])resented essentially the same combination of awestruck, moonstruck, tongue-tied sensibilitv, of buov- ant optimism, of the pure wine of ambition, of self-reliance, of preter- natural sophistication. H there were dift ' erences these favored Stan- ford in the matter of general competency and practical equipment at the expense of rigid school training. Stanford Chemistry was certainly very like Harvard Chemistry, and there was at Palo Alto no speciallv trade-marked History, or Latin, or Engineering. But here likeness ceases. Not longer than a day or two was the Harvard Freshman permitted to remain under the delusion that the earth was his and he its center. Verv shortlv and verv devoutlv he

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Stanford t M c)t Encina even, wcmld liave produced a single describable emotion. Quad ' ' 1 li ' relation to the et)inninnit life the student found no rules, no 1904 traditions, no apparent end to his tether. There were no guiding posts which gave the slightest clue to what might prove snap courses, to what instructors could be profitably worked, to any proper use of moonlight bathed arcades. iMrst of all then there was the universal and fascinating voyage of discovery, the engaging pursuit and discovery of one another ; of faculty by faculty, of student by student, of each by the other, of founders, of business ofifice, of Mayfield, of vineyard, of arboretum, of evenings on Alvarado Row, of Redwood, of Woodside, of Ham ' s and King ' s, ct al. The student had to study his major professor, to find his heaven-born poets, football heroes, funny end men, journalistic geniuses, statesmen, rulers — or, failing the search, to set to work to make some. An evening with the Barneses that first semester stirred emotions, exhilarations which the most elaborate social function of 1903 cannot even faintly suggest. These were true Bohemian days, and here only were the conditions and the atmosphere in which academic Bohemia could truly come to flower and fruitage. A trip to Woodside or La Honda had all the charm of scenery and pleasant company which it may exhibit in 1903, with that indefinably something more which belongs only to pioneer days. Here were no beaten paths ; it was as if no person had ever walked these ways before ; each expedition opened into fresh El Dorados and enchanted wonderlands. But there was another element far more important in creating the enchantment of morning time at Stanford. The real soil out of which grew and flourished so luxuriantly the Stanford and the Stanford spirit of pioneer days was the dominating personality of President Jordan. He was the Pied Piper of Stanford. In sunshine and cloud, whether plans prospered or came to naught, whatever betid, he piped on in that rollicking, generalizing, precedent-overturning, irresistiblv contagious, optimistic comradery which cast its inexpressible, ineradi- cable glamor over everything between foothills and bay. At that piping his faculty felt the spell, dropped their several pursuits, and hasted together from all quarters of the earth ; students followed him across deserts and mountains and flocked in from all the natural features of the Pacific Coast. At that piping the primitive conditions and inade- quate equipment of raw bcgimiings took on the transfigured hue of richness and unequaled opportunity. It was Professor Smith who found this ]n )ev in one of the da s we do not now hesitate to call dark