Yale University - Banner / Pot Pourri Yearbook (New Haven, CT)

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'Hale 1iI11I11l215IfQ, IH 11- 1 H 1 2 the Sorbonne, where particular attention is given to form. From the beginning of the elective system almost to the close of Professor VVheeler's active teaching, it was a tradition with each succeeding senior class that if possible everybody must elect Professor VVheeler's course in history, and the impression made in his classroom was not mere student illusion but stood well the test of the man's maturer judgment. Nor should Professor VVheeler's services to the university outside the class- room be forgotten. Always a leader in the business of the faculty, gifted with unusual insight into the future, sometimes too far in advance of his time to carry the measure he advocated to adoption, he had more than the average share that falls to a professor in shaping the policy of the institution. His fondness for architectural work led to his superintending the building interests of the college for many years and to the saving of many thousands of dollars. He was genuinely interested in student activi- ties, especially in athletics, and he served the navy for many years officially, particu- larly in the care of its finances. The conditions of college life have so changed during the past twenty-five years that it is doubtful if there will ever again be oppor- tunity for a career of such broad and varied usefulness in a faculty position. All the more should its remembrance be preserved among the permanent traditions of Yale life. G. B. ADAMS. 8

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ifimzurr muh 1Hnt Hilnizrri PROFESSOR WHEELER T is in the University that we naturally expect to find the great teacher, the genius in that line of work. It is there that we do find him, though perhaps not as frequently as we ought. lVhcn such a teacher is found, the tradition of his work should be among the abiding and treasured possessions of his univer- sity. In the lives of those who come under its immediate influence, the remembrance and effect of it are lasting, never to be effaced by any later impression, but when the sustaining force is no longer present in contemporary student life how quickly any tradition weakens and fades away. It was thc great good fortune of Yale College during the past generation to have more than its normal share of great teachers, and nothing can be more fitting than that some account of what they did should be preserved in the more permanent records of student life. Professor Arthur Martin Wiheelcr was born in 1836, in Wieston, Conn. In 1857 he graduated from Yale in the same class witl1 Moses Coit Tyler and President Cyrus Northrup. In 1861 he was appointed a tutor and after serving thc usual term of three years, he went abroad for further study. In Europe he obtained the best that was then to be had, oying particularly thc instruction of Ranke at Berlin, then at the height of his powers and fame. In 1865 he was appointed to the newly established Durfee professorship, one of the earliest formal endowments of a chair of history in the country. In September, 1867, Professor lVheelcr took up the duties of his position, and from that time to the end of the last college year, in 1911, he fulfilled them without interruption, not even taking the now customary sabbatical furlough, Such a term of service has been exceeded in length by only two professors in the history of the college and in quality and variety of usefulness by none. In the classroom, Yale has never had a better teacher. His presentation was characterized by great clearness, by keen criticism of men and measures with no lack, however, of constructive generalization, by a plainly shown contempt for shams of all kinds and by a virile directness and vigor, all of which made it particularly attractive to advanced students. In addition Professor VVheeler's occasional formal lectures were characterized by a literary form and finish too often neglected in our college lecturing. It has been the judgment of more than one of his pupils who have afterwards listened to the best lecturing in the most famous universities of the old world that nothing better in these respects was to be found anywhere, not even in 7

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COLLEGE STREET LOOKING TOWARD CHAPEL STREET