There had come to us a stalwart, sturdy New Englander, somewhat above the usual student age, and showing considerable aptitude for studies in engineering. Various complaints were made against him; but finally he was summoned before the faculty for a very singular breach of good taste, if not of honesty. The entire instructing body of that day being gathered about the long table in the faculty room, and I being at the head of the table, the culprit was summoned, entered, and stood solemnly before us. Various questions were asked him, which he parried with great ingenuity. At last one was asked of a very peculiar sort, as follows: ``Mr. ----, did you, last month, in the village of Dundee, Yates County, pass yourself off as Professor ---- of this university, announcing a lecture and delivering it in his name?'' He answered blandly, ``Sir, I did go to Dundee in Yates County;I did deliver a lecture there; I did NOT announce myself as Professor ---- of Cornell University; what others may have done I do not know; all I know is that at the close of my lecture several leading men of the town came forward and said that they had heard a good many lectures given by college professors from all parts of the State, and that they had never had one as good as mine.'' Ithink, of all the strains upon my risible faculties during my life, this answer provoked the greatest, and the remainder of the faculty were clearly in the same condition.
I dismissed the youth at once, and hardly was he outside the door when a burst of titanic laughter shook the court and the youth was troubled no more.
Far more serious was another case. The usual good-natured bickering between classes had gone on, and as a consequence certain sophomores determined to pay off some old scores against members of the junior class, at a junior exhibition. To do this they prepared a ``mock programme,'' which, had it been merely comic, as some others had been, would have provoked no ill feeling.
Unfortunately, some miscreant succeeded in introducing into it allusions of a decidedly Rabelaisian character. The evening arrived, a large audience of ladies and gentlemen were assembled, and this programme was freely distributed.
The proceeding was felt to be an outrage; and Iserved notice on the class that the real of offender or offenders, if they wished to prevent serious consequences to all concerned, must submit themselves to the faculty and take due punishment. Unfortunately, they were not manly enough to do this. Thereupon, to my own deep regret and in obedience to my sense of justice, I suspended indefinitely from the university the four officers of the class, its president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer.
They were among the very best men in the class, all of them friends of my own; and I knew to a certainty that they had had nothing directly to do with the articles concerned, that the utmost which could be said against them was that they had been careless as to what appeared in the programme, for which they were responsible. Most bitter feeling arose, and I summoned a meeting of the entire student body. As I entered the room hisses were heard; the time had evidently come for a grapple with the whole body. I stated the case as it was: that the four officers would be suspended and must leave the university town until their return was allowed by the faculty; that such an offense against decency could not be condoned;that I had understood that the entire class proposed to make common cause with their officers and leave the university with them; that to this we interposed no objection;that it simply meant less work for the faculty during the remainder of the year; that it was far more important for the university to maintain a character for decency and good discipline than to have a large body of students; and that, if necessary to maintain such a character, we would certainly allow the whole student body in all the classes to go home and would begin anew. I then drew a picture.
I sketched a member of the class who had left the university on account of this discipline entering the paternal door, encountering a question as to the cause of his unexpected home-coming, and replying that the cause was the outrageous tyranny of the president and faculty. Ipictured, then, the father and mother of the home-coming student asking what the cause or pretext of this ``tyranny''
was, and I then said: ``I defy any one of you to show your father and mother the `mock programme' which has caused the trouble. There is not one of you here who dares do it; there is not one of you who would not be turned out of his father's door if he were thus to insult his mother.''
At this there came a round of applause. I then expressed my personal regret that the penalty must fall upon four men whom I greatly respected; but fall it must unless the offenders were manly enough to give themselves up. The result was that at the close I was greeted with a round of applause; and immediately afterward the four officers came to me, acknowledged the justice of the discipline, and expressed the hope that their suspension might not go beyond that term. It did not: at the close of the term they were allowed to return; and from that day ``mock programmes'' of the sort concerned, which in many American colleges had been a chronic evil, never reappeared at Cornell. The result of this action encouraged me greatly as to the reliance to be placed on the sense of justice in the great body of our students when directly and properly appealed to.
