University of Massachusetts Amherst - Index Yearbook (Amherst, MA)

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1916 Professor Mackimmie is a teacher, not alone by instinct and training, but by inheritance as well. Duncan Ross, his grandfather, founded the iirst school in Durham, Nova Scotia, and to another kinsman, James Ross, was given the honor of being the first president of Dalhousie College. An early biographer of Washington has said, Hereditary rank may be an illusion, but hereditary virtue gives a patent of innate nobleness beyond all the blazonry of the Herald College. Such an inheritance seems to have been Professor Mackimmie ' s, and his life has proved him worthy to inherit. It is Mackimmie the man whom the students honor, Mackimmie the teacher whom they revere. A log with Mark Hopkins at one end and a stu- dent at the other end is college enough for any man, said James A. Garfield. Very much the same is the feeling that our students have for Professor Mac- kimmie. Not only are his courses valued for the instruction in French or in Spanish, but for the knowledge gained of men and things, a direct result of Professor Mackimmie ' s cosmopolitan training. Said one of his stu- dents, A course with Mackimmie is better than a trip to Europe, for we see everything worth seeing and we see it witli Mackimmie ' s eyes. To him all men are brothers, and his sympathy extends from the student who needs his help to the Italian laborer who has learned to watch for the Professor and to expect his buon giorno, a welcome echo from the home country. Alike, all who know Professor Mackimmie honor him as the scholar par excellence, as the friend tried and proven. UA C Ol.-irC£ l U i K!f-t ' C

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11916 c llexander cAnderson cTVlackimmie HEN the tide of immigration in early days set toward America, the Scotchman, like many another, saw across the sea a land of greater jtromise than he had found in his native land. A pioneer, seeking in Canada or in the states a new home, he brought with him, not alone an infinite capacity for work, but he brought with him, also, a profound reverence for the wisdom found in hooks, and for his University whose scholars were leaders towards Life ' s ideals. From such an ancestry comes Alexander Anderson Mackimmie, a man who counts as his richest inheritance forbears who called the University of Edinborough Alma Mater, whose fealty was pledged to the Eraser clan, whose watchword through the years had been Toujours jiret. Studying in the public schools of Nova Scotia, under teachers whose strict rule made every lad give his best effort to each task, the boy Mackimmie counted among his treasures the leather-bound books that had been his great grandfather ' s in university days. Perhaps through these books a vision came of the city set upon a hill, whose university is its crowning glory, and of the land where the scholar is peer in his own right. Perhaps then the ambition came which has crystallized in his life, — to learn for the love of learning, counting the joy of pursuit as reward in itself. At sixteen Mr. Mackimmie began teaching in the schools of his home province, continuing in this work until 1!)0(I. An opportunity for foreign travel then presented itself, and the next three years were silent in the south of Europe. Then Mackimmie turned his face homeward, and September of 1903, found him at Princeton, a member of the Sophomore class. Princeton justified this bit of wisdom on her part three years later, conferring on Mr. Mackimmie the degree of Hachelor of Arts, magna cum laudc, and awarding him the Boudiuot fellowship in modern languages for lf)07. For the next two years Professor Mackimmie taught at Truro Academy, but in 1908 he came to the states, beginning his work as instructor in French at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, in Se} tember of that year. In 1909-10, he served as assistant to the Acting Dean and in 1911 received his ap- pointment as assistant professor of French, a position which he still holds.

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