A returning alumnus may tend to see the problems of college life in terms of his own day. The Rev. Dr. Dashiell came back to Dickinson after twenty-two years to continue the work of Robert Emory, whose exemplary student he had been.¹ We see him now, with his pale blue eyes and sandy hair, a handsome and successful pulpiteer eagerly confronting a situation far removed from Emory's. The fraternities had become a part of college life, the interdicts against them ignored and forgotten. His student body included older men, veterans of the war such as Jesse Bowman Young, who had risen from private to captain and was now a leader in undergraduate organizations, editor of the first yearbook.² In his faculty, too, there were new ideas and a new idealism, with Himes as their champion.

From the moment of his election he had been soliciting funds. He came to the campus with a fortune in promises, and with plans to continue the harvest. There would be new buildings, an endowed chair of Biblical Language and Literature, and, as an extension of Himes' good work, courses in engineering, mining and metallurgy.³ He began a chain of alumni clubs in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, with annual dinners to promote the fair name and prosperity of the College.⁴ He made a first move toward a reunion of the town and College churches, an objective which would relieve the financial stringency of both and make the Emory Chapel building available for educational use.⁵ Yet the golden promises given him would not be

honored. The newly-formed Central Pennsylvania Conference praised in the same breath his plans for an endowed "Biblical chair" and for reducing the costs of education.⁶ No endowed chair came his way, and at the end of four years all that had come of his building program was the so-called "pagoda," an ornamental bandstand in front of Old West, together with more practical improvements in the way of walks, gates, an extension of indoor plumbing and general repairs.⁷

Not only was the new President an alumnus, but so also all of his small faculty. There is a convenience in recruiting a professor who returns to home ground, and without the critical eye of wider experience. Himes had both the loyalty and the wider experience, Hillman and Stayman the parochial view. Through Johnson's administration, Hillman had been Treasurer of the Board of Trustees. When Hillman became Acting President in 1868, Himes succeeded him as Treasurer and at the same time succeeded Stayman as Secretary of both the Board and the faculty. This brought "Dutchy" into a position of influence, with opportunities to promote the pattern of advance he had been commending. The more modern of Dashiell's first recommendations, such as a further extension of electives, are evidence of pressure from Himes. Stayman retained only the post of Librarian he had had since 1865, and we note that within three years he had only $30 for general book purchases, while $100 had been budgeted for natural science.⁸ Himes, by his success in classroom and laboratory, by his public lectures on topics of major contemporary interest, held the academic reputation of the College in his hands. His classmate, Bowman, left the faculty in 1871 with his ambitious program in biblical studies unrealized. His place was taken by Henry Martyn Harman of the Class of 1848, coming with a solid background of teaching and scholarship in Bible, Greek and Hebrew—long a respected and beloved figure, a warm friend and ally of Himes.⁹

Himes and Harman, close as they were, are reflected in very different student attitudes. Himes' enthusiasm for his discipline as a whole, his excitement in those aspects, such as photography, where he had pioneered, his high aspirations for the College, all were contagious. So was his loyalty to his fraternity, and throughout his career he would have Phi Kappa Sigma

staunchly behind him. All this commanded respect, while Harman, a giant of a man, remote and gentle, won love. To the students' delight, he was as gullible as he was learned, and became more so through the years with the failure of his hearing and eyesight. One could always wrap up the rest of any hour by asking him the question, "What was the value of the penny in the time of Christ?"¹⁰ A student called upon to recite must sit in a chair by the Doctor's desk in the old-fashioned way, but for all that could still be coached by his "chum" at the back of the room. When George H. Bucher, '95, sitting in the chair, found himself at a loss to name the Church Fathers, Paul Appenzellar, from behind, prompted—"Athanasius."

"Yes, yes," says the Doctor. "Very good. Go on."

"Gregory," came next, Appenzellar to Bucher to the professor.

"Good. Good. Go on."

On came Arius, then Polycarp, but the line broke down and the class broke up in laughter when Dionysius came hesitantly through as "Diabetes."¹¹

Dashiell, as a student, had known only the two literary societies. Now he found around him a rising tide of undergraduate organization, with the four fraternities; two student-managed boarding clubs; their chess club; the old Shakespeare Club; two religious groups, the Society of Religious Inquiry and the Missionary Society; an Orphean Glee Club with six members; and the Dickinson Base Ball Club with twenty-three.¹² Two years after his inauguration, the boarding clubs had increased to six, including "L 'Hotel des Bons Mangeurs, " "Hotel de Boeuf, " and "Worshippers of the Fleshpots of Wetzel." With these had come a boat club, a second baseball club, the "Eclipse," and—farthest yet from Emory's time—the open practice of card-playing, a Whist Club.¹³

Dashiell had come to the campus with a determination to enforce discipline as Emory would have enforced it. His first order of business in faculty meeting was to revive the old, unpopular ritual of visiting student rooms.¹⁴ "The colleges of this country," he declared, "are passing through a severe test, the restless spirit of our young men, impatient and restive under control, the concession of parents permitting their sons to select

their own college & leave for another when things do not please them, enabling them to hold over their institutions a threat." He met "the sneer and cry of tyranny, unnecessary humiliation of students," but stood firm in his belief that "moral conduct must be given equal weight with scholarship and the two graded together."¹⁵

That sneer and cry was topped by one long-remembered crisis, "The Rebellion" of the spring of 1870. On Tuesday, April 26, Carlisle celebrated the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment with a parade, alive with color, bands of music, eloquence. Black citizens were out in full force, and one of their banners bore the legend:

IN MEMORY OF DR. McCLINTOCK,
PERSECUTED FOR OUR SAKE.¹⁶

White friends were among them as before, though the newspapers' flouting of "the darky amendment" hardly bespeaks a universal warmth of feeling. However, the Sophomore and Junior Classes wanted to be in on it, and when their request was denied, they went anyway. Faculty met, imposing five hundred minus marks on each of the absentees. With a storm of resentment taking shape, faculty met again the next day and reduced the penalties, but on a varying scale which seemed only to increase the injustice.¹⁷ The two classes informed Dashiell on April 30 that "they, to prevent all further aggravation, will absent themselves from all duties until the Faculty & Students come to an understanding."¹⁸ The stern penalty of suspension followed. The students, bitter and unrepentant, left for home. It was not until then that the faculty, faced with disaster, found a pretext to withdraw its action, issuing a printed notice of reinstatement on May 17, 1870.¹⁹

"The Rebellion" was not a solitary incident. Just before Dashiell's arrival, the two old literary societies had once more moved to obtain independent charters—with William Trickett active in the attempt.²⁰ Repulsed in this, the societies were now assailed from within as fraternity men hatched a plan to control the offices of both. The Independents responded with a scheme to make themselves dominant in U. P. at least. This brought members of Belles Lettres transferring their allegiance

en masse to the Unions, an unheard-of thing, and in the Union Hall, long dedicated to orderly debate, brawling fist fights became the last recourse.²¹ This spring, as Dashiell reported to his trustees, June 6, 1871, had been one of "more than ordinary care & anxiety."

Immediately following the election of speakers for the anniversaries of the Literary Societies, seasons always of great excitement, an unhappy difficulty arose, which very soon divided the U. P. Society into two irreconcilable parties & greatly reduced the numbers of the B. L. Society. So fierce and threatening was the attitude of these toward each other, that after repeated efforts to harmonize, the Faculty felt that the order and peace of the College demanded the suspension of the U. P. Society until these differences could be settled. Those of you who have been students will appreciate the difficulties attending these struggles, especially when you remember that since our day a new element has entered college life & association. From present indications we shall lose a part of our number. No temporary loss of students can retard the progress of this institution so much as these contentions. We hope to close the matter before your Board shall adjourn.

It was, indeed, with Harman's help, settled soon after.²² In the meantime, tempers at this commencement had been sharpened still more by the last-minute refusal of a degree to Orson D. Foulks, a Senior of low standing but high popularity, who had composed for the occasion a Class History characterized, in the official view, by "insult and defamation." This in turn brought down upon Dashiell all that the young man's father could muster by way of insult, defamation and legal threat.²³

A year later, June 25, 1872, Dr. Dashiell presented his resignation to the trustees. He had had this step in mind, he told them, for two years. "Circumstances have hastened my purpose in this matter." The Church, aware of his intention, promptly elected him Missionary Secretary, succeeding Dr. Durbin. He would live on in this office until 1880, remembered best in after years as a "dynamic" preacher and "a successful dedicator of churches."²⁴

The mantle fell, as promptly, on another alumnus of Emory's day, James Andrew McCauley. He had gone from the Class of 1847 into teaching and had risen to Principal of the

Wesleyan Female Institute at Staunton, Virginia, but had been in the ministry of the Baltimore Conference from 1854 to 1872.²⁵ The College had elected him Professor of Greek and German in 1865, but, after six months of hesitation, he had declined. A meagre face, bald, spectacled, with long nose, thin lips and pale sidewhiskers of a distinctly clerical cut, he was noted for a winning manner, scholarly tastes and kindness.²⁶ "Even an infirm body," we are told, "& certain peculiarities of utterance resulting from sickness in early manhood, could not obscure his rare powers as a preacher."²⁷

Professor Himes noted his new chief's "want of physical vigor," found his reserved manner greatly in contrast to Dashiell, "one of the most magnetic of men"—but was to be surprised by McCauley's capacity for work and his attention to detail.²⁸ The College letterhead of the coming years carries the names of "J. A. McCauley, D.D., President," and "C. F. Himes, Ph.D., Sec'y. and Treas'r.," and between them they ran the entire college operation, in addition to their teaching. It is an administration memorable for the appalling and mischievous blunders of 1874, which were to cast a shadow over all of McCauley's long presidency and echo far beyond it. In this awful brew, Himes, though not the prime mover, gave acquiescence and support and must share in the blame.

At least, in a charitable view of the matter, both were moved by a wiser primary objective than new buildings—the need for a faculty of recognized eminence. This was what Pennell Coombe had long been emphasizing as a first condition of liberal financial support. Twice Mr. Coombe had called for a meeting behind closed doors to "reconstruct" the faculty. McCauley and Himes were now using the same term and preparing their reconstruction with the secrecy of a coup d'etat. Of the teaching staff of six, three were to be removed, Hillman, Stayman and Trickett, leaving McCauley himself, Himes and Harman. That McCauley wished to replace those three with congenial clerical types more responsive to his will was undoubtedly also a motive. Hillman had been with the College for twenty-three years, and it is apparent in this chronicle that new presidents often find past administrators as well as older faculty an encumbrance. The first ten years of his tenure had been as

Principal of the Grammar School, and he had remained a competent, active teacher on that level.²⁹ Stayman, Class of 1841, had been an assistant in the Grammar School in 1845, and had been dropped on the advice of Durbin.³⁰ He lived in Carlisle, and it is obvious that his appointment as Adjunct Professor of Latin and French, 1861, had simply served to fill the place at a difficult time.

With Trickett it was quite another matter—a brilliant younger man, precise and aggressive in the new Germanic style. In class he was the direct opposite of the easygoing Stayman, a dragon figure to inattentive students and, it would seem, to McCauley as well. Trickett had been absent for two years of study in Europe when he was elected Professor of Modern Languages in 1872. The circumstances are revealing. There had been another nominee, Dr. John Moore Leonard of the Class of 1855, a man whose record in college teaching stands equal or superior to Trickett's. The trustees were equally divided between the two, with discussion centered upon "the theological soundness of Mr. T's views." After one tie vote, the matter had been decided by a trustee who had arrived late and voted entirely by happenstance.³¹

The plan to "reconstruct" must have matured early in the academic year 1873-74. Only a majority of trustees sure to favor the change would be informed. At the June meeting, all faculty seats would be declared vacant and a new faculty elected. McCauley was selecting replacements for the professorships of modern languages (ex-Trickett) and philosophy and English literature (ex-Stayman), making discreet inquiries among the clergy. To Himes he gave the freedom to choose his own man for Hillman's place. Mathematics and astronomy were closest to Himes' own field, and McCauley may have considered also that this replacement was likely to bring the strongest reaction from friends and former students of Hillman. Hillman, after all his years of service, living in West College with his wife and three children, would lose both home and livelihood.

The limitations of the two older professors were well known, but a stronger case was needed against Trickett. The faculty minutes of November 10, 1873, record that a committee of one each from the Freshman, Sophomore and Junior

Classes had been received, "saying that they wd. not hereafter recite in Prof. Trickett's recitation room." No reason is given, but Trickett's standards of promptness and performance may be inferred. The President stated that he had made "some remarks to the classes in the Chapel at Prof. Trickett's request," and the faculty took no action, trusting that this would settle the affair. So it did, the students voting by a small majority to end their strike.³² In his report to the trustees at the end of the year, however, McCauley. would enlarge darkly upon this incident as "a serious disturbance . . . in one department of the College. As this combination embraced more than ¾ of the students in College, and among them many of the most mature in years and excellent in general character, . . . it was extremely difficult to manage."³³

Professor Himes, casting about for a colleague in mathematics ready to take the post on the modest salary allowed him, $1,600, wrote on February 10, 1874, to William Righter Fisher, a young alumnus of 1870 who had just returned to Philadelphia from study at Heidelberg and Munich. Fisher had not yet fixed upon a life career, but had the law in mind, and was moved by a "dream of . . . the amelioration of the miseries of our common brotherhood."³⁴ Receiving no reply, Himes wrote again in March, in both letters discreetly saying no more than to suggest a meeting in Philadelphia. It was not until June 5, with the zero hour barely three weeks away, that he wrote again, revealing—in reiterated "Strictly Confidential" terms—precisely what was in the wind. His anticipation of commencement was, this year, he wrote,

rather tinged with sadness, for whatever may be the faults or shortcomings of the individuals mentioned we have been long associated together & our relations have at least not been unfriendly, but I cannot but feel at the same time perfectly free from any responsibility in the matter and also that it is perhaps the best thing that can be done for the college, provided that the places are filled with men calculated to impart greater strength internally & externally to the institution. I regard Dr. McCauley as a most admirable man for his position & for this crisis, as he is fully equal to it in scholarly ability, & had the fullest confidence of the friends of the college & the heart of the church with him, and with the changes indicated the college

under him may begin a new era. The selection of the individuals to fill any vacancies that may occur will be largely, indeed to a certain extent almost exclusively in his hands, as it should be. He has in mind several first class men, at least as far as endorsement by leading men in the church goes as well as his own judgment.

The chair of mathematics was one of the most difficult to fill, but he felt certain of Fisher's appointment. He lauded McCauley as "an honorable, honest, Christian gentleman," in whose belief the change could best be "accomplished quietly."³⁵

Fisher at last agreed, with assurance that he would have leisure for his study of law. But having also his own concept of honesty, he had already shown Trickett the ultra-confidential letter. The two had been warm friends since college days. From this and other leaks, the victims of the scheme became aware of the threatening storm. They alerted their friends on the Board and elsewhere. They went at once, of course, to the President of the College, who calmed their fears with assurances that "as far as he knew there was no foundation for the rumors." This was the answer given both to Hillman and his father-in-law, Dr. Wing of the First Presbyterian Church, and yet their uneasiness was kept alive by small incidents such as the young man (Fisher) spirited out of McCauley's office as Hillman came in, to prevent a meeting.³⁶

With an electric tension in the air, the trustees met in South College on the afternoon of Tuesday, June 23, 1874. They attended to routine business on the coming commencement, and heard the President's annual report, where difficulties with his faculty received only an indirect allusion. Aided by Colonel Wright, the President had been successful in quieting fears on the one hand and mustering a majority for change on the other.³⁷ Pennell Coombe could not attend, but had written McCauley urging him to "meet the case boldly."³⁸

The storm broke on the next day. A committee on lack of harmony in the faculty offered a resolution expressing confidence in McCauley, declaring all professorships vacant and naming a committee of three, with McCauley as chairman, to reconstruct. McCauley, eager to keep up some semblance of not having been concerned in the matter, asked to be included in the

resolution and excluded from presiding or discussion. This was tabled. Himes and Harman were then quickly returned to office, and the Rev. Aaron Rittenhouse, of Wesleyan's Class of 1861, elected Professor of English Literature. But things were not going as smoothly as planned. Though the approved nominee for modern languages was the Rev. Joshua Allen Lippincott, Class of 1858, General Rusling now nominated Fisher for this chair instead of for mathematics. It was a move that made Fisher, the young man who had betrayed the secret, the one who would displace his friend Trickett. James H. Lightbourne then moved the substitution of Trickett for Fisher, and a petition from forty-nine students was read, urging Trickett's retention, "believing the chair to be most acceptably and ably filled."³⁹ The Lightbourne motion was lost and Fisher elected. Hillman was then moved as a substitution for Lippincott. "On a rising vote the substitution was lost, 13 ayes, 13 nays."⁴⁰ As a sop to the loser, one quarter's salary was voted him—it would be deftly subtracted from Fisher's.⁴¹ The business ended with laudatory resolutions on those who appear in their opponents' private correspondence as "the discomfited," or "the non-elect. "

"The Board of Trustees seemed to be very much in earnest & have reconstructed," Himes wrote to Fisher, describing the events. "Their action meets with general approval," he noted in conclusion. "There was of course excitement in town but it is softening down."⁴² McCauley, trusting that it would be so, had sought rest and refuge in a tour of England, leaving Himes as Acting President to deal with whatever might arise.

Any softening the Acting President may have observed was only a lull before the storm. An article in the Shippensburg News extolling the deposed professors was echoed with heightened indignation in the Philadelphia Sunday Mercury of July 12. Dickinson College, "one of the leading educational institutions of the United States," had violated every principle of law and equity by "an intrigue to obtain position, which we had hoped would be confined to pot-house politicians." A young alumnus, "One of '73," replied, conceding the "intellectual qualifications" of the three, but stating that Hillman's "loud complaints and denunciations" had begun in Johnson's adminis-

"ration, had reached virulence in Dashiell's, and had been renewed against McCauley—echoed by Stayman and Trickett.⁴³ "Veritas," an older alumnus using pertinent lines from "The Heathen Chinee" as his text, struck back at this "bunch of abominable trash, inconsistencies and misrepresentations." Himes himself, he said, had once opposed Johnson and had consistently opposed Dashiell, while under McCauley there had been no dissension.⁴⁴

So the battle went on.⁴⁵ Early in its course, Rittenhouse had declined his appointment, frightened away by the "furious tilts" in the press.⁴⁶ Himes was able, however, to find an excellent replacement in the Methodist theologican Charles Joseph Little, a University of Pennsylvania graduate recently returned from study in Berlin. He came as Professor of Philosophy and History. The entering Freshman Class of that September, in the opinion of one of its number, James Henry Morgan, was both small and poor.⁴⁷ Yet when McCauley returned on the 20th, Himes had a "Grand Ovation" prepared, the Carlisle Brass Band to conduct him from the depot to the Chapel, speeches, applause, introduction of the new professors, handshaking all around.⁴⁸

All this, before "a fashionable and brilliant audience, " covered the now-known fact that Professor Trickett's attorneys would appear in court with a writ of quo warranto demanding that Professor Fisher be made to show by what right he occupied his friend's chair. The case was heard on October 6, and on the 17th decided in Trickett's favor.⁴⁹ The other two non-elect at once took similar action. Here was humiliation indeed for the gentlemen of the cabal, yet the College charter was explicit, authorizing only "removal for misconduct or breach of the laws of the institution."⁵⁰ Charges against the three were then prepared, but were so palpably insubstantial that the decision to pay each a year's salary in return for his resignation easily followed.⁵¹ The Board sought solace in discussing a future amendment of the charter, to erase so dangerous a provision.

Obviously, the College needed more than a grand ovation to recover from the damage that had been done. It would not now be easy to attract teachers of professional eminence who would in turn attract students and generous benefactors. The

reconstruction had at least brought in one good man. Dr. Little, brilliant and learned, would be remembered by many alumni as their most stimulating influence in college life.⁵² Himes, elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1874, expanded his plans for the future, his public lectures and his strong position in the curriculum.⁵³ The College catalogues, listing the texts for each course, show Himes as the only professor who specified also required reading in current journals.

Aaron Rittenhouse would join the faculty as Professor of English Literature and History in 1883—satisfied at last that he was not entering a nest of "pot-house politicians." A faculty of six at the beginning of McCauley's long tenure had grown to ten at its close. At the beginning only Himes had a Ph.D. (honorary, but well substantiated by graduate study and publication) while at the end there were seven, with only the Rev. Lyman J. Muchmore, the new "Director of Physical Training," without a doctorate of some sort. All but Muchmore and Harman became charter members of Pennsylvania's Alpha Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, which held its first meeting, April 13, 1887, consolidating the effort of these years in this newly-revived bastion of academic respectability. Dr. Harman, increasingly conservative in all matters, had been invited to join, but refused.⁵⁴

It had been a hard road back from the sorry events of 1874. McCauley and his trustees had been jolted into injured dignity as much as the old Board of the 1820's. Two years later, with Pennell Coombe present and active, they were discussing charter revisions, including the power to remove professors for any "cause that may seem good & sufficient to the said Board (with trial or otherwise as may by them be deemed most prudent)."⁵⁵ When it came, the revision of June 20, 1879 simply eliminated all reference to faculty tenure, while adding one useful reform, the division of trustee membership into four classes, one to be elected or reelected each year. The election of alumni trustees had been discussed in 1876, but did not come until 1891.⁵⁶

Since the "reconstruction" of 1874 had so obviously repelled rather than attracted students, more must be done. Two years later General Rusling moved that the Board waive entrance examinations and admit Freshmen and Sophomores on

certificate from the academies at Williamsport, Pennington, Wilmington and the Wyoming Seminary at Kingston, Pennsylvania. After considerable debate it was agreed to admit only Freshmen on these terms.⁵⁷ In the next year the old Grammar School; now the "Preparatory School," was reopened. The two Methodist congregations had at last been brought together, and this freed Emory Chapel for use by the School.⁵⁸ In 1877 also, a three-year "Latin-Scientific Course" was set up, leading to the Bachelor of Philosophy degree, a widening of electives which followed Wesleyan's lead as far as this smaller faculty could accomplish it.⁵⁹ By 1884, with the new Scientific Building, a Professor of Chemistry would be added, leaving the Physics Department to Himes; and in 1885 the Ph.B. course increased to a four-year program.⁶⁰ At the same time, an "English-Scientific Course," also dubbed a "Modern Language Course," marked a further retreat from the classics. Increased English studies were to be combined with German and one other modern language.⁶¹ Classics remained prominent in preparatory work, Freshman and Sophomore years, and with candidates for the B.A.

The first notable event of McCauley's administration had been the founding of the Dickinsonian, September, 1872, a joint project of the two literary societies "for the purpose of advancing the interests of the institution; and uniting more closely the Alumni to their Alma Mater j and promoting Science, Art, Literature and Religion."⁶² At the outset the monthly issues contain a large infusion of faculty and alumni productions. McCauley wrote benignly on Christian aspects of education, Himes explicitly on Herbert Spencer or the radical new ideas being tried out by Eliot at Harvard.⁶³ A year after graduation, Edwin Post of '72, who would attain eminence as a classicist at DePauw and elsewhere, was contributing a series of thoughtful pieces on "Higher Education: Results and Tendencies"—hot issues such as the elective system and coeducation.⁶⁴ A student contributor to the Dickinsonian of December 2, 1873, has his own appraisal of that perennially controversial subject, "The Marking System":

It is, perhaps, a Utopian idea to advocate an institution where no marks would be made; where no honors would be distributed, and

where one would study for the love of study. To such an institution no man would come except for the pursuit of knowledge, and to such no worthless son would be sent by an indulgent father for the mere name of going to college.... We chafe against the restrictions of a college life, because our inclinations are forced into certain paths. Hence it is that when we neglect our studies we think we injure the Professors because they hold the reins of government. Away with such nonsense! If we are men let us act like men, study for love of study, and for our own self good, leaving the marking system to take care of itself, and holding fast to the precious grains of truth.

Student contributions would soon come under the same watchful supervision as the public orations.⁶⁵ Yet the student reporting and presswork are good, while at the same time one can occasionally glimpse through the veil of dignified journalism the prevailing spirit of Gaudeamus igitur, Juvenes dum sumus.

One can admire the spirit of independence shown by the literary societies in inviting Walt Whitman to "act as poet" at their affair on the evening of June 17, 1876. The faculty must have been deeply shocked, and vastly relieved when the poet was obliged to decline. The letter of invitation had been written by Sophomore James Monroe Green, who left Dickinson at the end of that term, but went on to later eminence as an educator.⁶⁶

It is in these last years of the century that one sees the flowering of the "collegiate" way of life—four years of group rivalries, whole-souled and violent, of intense friendships hates, the union of heart in song, yells, underclass scraps and upperclass masculine elegance, all frozen into "college customs" around the slender supporting stem of the curriculum. It is the young man's introduction to both life and learning. Tobacco and alcohol are more than ever to the fore.⁶⁷ College professors everywhere might be distressed by so many anti-intellectual pre-occupations, but those with an administrative viewpoint soon learned that this was the way to make a happy, contributing alumni body, its loyalty sustained through life by the team games and commencement high jinks.

The Dickinsonian of March, 1884, announces the formation of the Dickinson College Athletic Association. Dr. Fletcher Durrell, who had come the year before as Professor of Mathe-

matics and Astronomy, was the moving spirit here, bringing with him also American rugby football as he had found it played at Princeton.⁶⁸ By 1889 football was the dominant sport, with baseball in the spring, tennis, track and gymnasium active—the College bell and the College yell signalling every jubilant hour—"Hip! Rah! Bus! Bis! Dick-in-son-i-en-sis! Tiger!"⁶⁹

Youthful high spirits made for a constant undercurrent of violence. An appalling amount of property damage was done from day to day—all recorded in the bills of Samuel J. Fells, who made a very decent living through a long life putting things together again.⁷⁰ One can tell when Carlisle had had snowballing weather by the recurrence of replaced glass. It was no doubt in part with a hope of restoring earlier concepts of discipline that Dickinson, with other colleges, introduced a Department of Military Science after the war—that, and the lure of a government-supported program.⁷¹ This came in 1879, the year of the establishment of the Indian Industrial School at Carlisle Barracks. Lieutenant E. T. C. Richmond, Second Artillery, assigned to the Dickinson College Cadet Corps, had been at the Barracks, active in turning the post over to Captain Richard H. Pratt and his young Indians.⁷² The government provided swords, muskets, two cannon, equipping two companies of Cadets in their smart gray uniforms.⁷³ The faculty, however, refused to require participation by the three lower classes, and insisted upon treating military science "in the same manner as any other elective study."⁷⁴ Richmond, unable to enforce West Point discipline under these conditions, resigned in 1881, ending the experiment.

College students, here as elsewhere, were not only often setting faculty authority at defiance, but assuming disciplinary functions of their own. The "facultyizing" of the 1850's had become a regular processing of Freshman and fraternity initiates—vainly deplored and resisted from above. An effort to stamp out the evil brought McCauley and his faculty into a hassle and humiliation very similar to that of 1874. On the night of November 9, 1886, they were meeting in the President's office, taking evidence of hazing from Freshmen, while other students, outside, expressed their indignation by hooting, jeering, shouting and rowdy song, the clamor rising at last to a

climax of flying stones. When a rock large enough to have inflicted death (in the considered opinion of the nine professors) crashed through a window and crossed the room above their heads, Morgan, the young adjunct Professor of Greek, dashed out and, among the figures fleeing before him into darkness, recognized Sophomore John Martz Hill. Questioned the next day, Mr. Hill pleaded a measure of innocence: "Well, Doctor, I threw no stones."⁷⁵ The faculty, consulting among themselves, decided on dismissal from college, and ordered him to leave Carlisle within twenty-four hours.

In this plight the young man bethought him to consult William Trickett, who had been for ten years now a member of the Cumberland County bar. On Trickett's advice he wrote to McCauley, demanding reinstatement, but refusing to be tried by the faculty, from whom he could not expect fair treatment. Only a court of law would do. To court the case came in the January term, and Judge Sadler's verdict was much the same as Judge Junkin's had been in the case of the three professors. Hill had been denied orderly presentation of evidence, the right to question witnesses; in short, as he had been punished without trial, "the court of common pleas will order his restoration by the writ of mandamus."⁷⁶ The court went on to express astonishment that men "trained in the languages and sciences" should have so imperfect a conception of the rules of evidence, citing in particular the faculty claim that Hill had acknowledged his guilt. Professor Rittenhouse, questioned as to the words of the confession, had replied that it had been without words: "He turned white."⁷⁷

Student diaries are fewer in these years, and the student albums coming in—filled with evidence of a gayer, more active social life. In the late seventies lecture rooms were still being rendered useless with grease or oil, cannon balls rolling, the walls of the privy knocked down. A decade later, games, music, dramatics (farce and mock trial prevailing at first), class fights, banquets, kidnapping of class officers, were parts of a new pattern of students' involvement with themselves, and faculty coming to be regarded with a tolerant affection rather than enmity. Regulation of this new order, or disorder, would be a first concern of student government when it came. It was a thoroughly

masculine milieu, and understandably hostile to any intrusion by the gentler sex.

The spectre of coeducation had arisen as part of the trustees' recovery effort of 1876. General Rusling had moved a committee with Colonel Wright as chairman. The committee had moved, 1877, that young ladies be admitted on the same terms as men, and the Board had promptly tossed the hot potato to the faculty for a report at its next annual meeting.⁷⁸ The faculty voted in favor (Dr. Harman dissenting), but advised delay (Professor Lippincott contra) until the buildings could be suitably renovated. "They must be protected from all that might be indelicate."⁷⁹

Coeducation was inevitable. It had ample background in the College's philosophy and experience. Rush, Neill, Caldwell and others had shared enlightened ideals of "female education," there had been and still were close ties with the young ladies' academies of Carlisle. McCauley himself had been the principal of such a school. Nearby Wilson College, Wellesley and others were setting women's education on a scholastic equality with the bastions of masculinity, though the fear of weakening standards would persist into the twentieth century. Old George Metzger, Class of 1798, died in 1879, and his will, dated January 29, 1872, left $25,000, his home and library, "for a Female College, wherein to have taught useful and ornamental branches of education." The Metzger Institute, which in 1913 would be merged with Dickinson's coeducational program, might conceivably have been a part of it from the start, had the trustees been looking to the future in a more alert and liberal fashion. Metzger classes began in September, 1881, the girls greeted soon after by a score and more of boys with the Cadet Corps cannon—a foretaste of what feminine invaders of Old West and Old East might expect.⁸⁰ Yet in 1882 the faculty voted that campus improvements had removed their only objection of 1878. Presumably by an oversight, the trustees did not give final authorization until 1884.⁸¹ Girls had already been enrolled in Preparatory School classes, but now a direct application had been made for admission to the College.

William H. Longsdorff, a physician living near Carlisle, had come to McCauley with a proposal. He was the father of four

daughters. The eldest, Zatae, was a Freshman at Wellesley. Let Dickinson come to a decision on coeducation and he would provide a vanguard of girls able to cope with male opposition in whatever form it might take. It was done, and Zatae arrived as a Sophomore in the Class of 1887. Dr. Longsdorff had fought through the whole of the Civil War as an officer of cavalry, and his daughters matched him in intrepidity and determination. "We were outdoor girls,' as Zatae's sister put it, unperturbed by finding mice or garter snakes slipped into their pockets or by the sudden appearance of any other supposed female repellent. Zatae faced open hostility, and it reached a crescendo in her Junior year when she competed for the College's most coveted honor, the Pierson Oratorical Prize, a gold medal, and won it. So much harrassment had been brought to bear before the actual event that when the night arrived her father hired special police to watch the campus. It was a tense moment as the little figure stepped up before the audience in her black silk dress with bustle and train, at her throat the pin of gold mined by her father in the West, with her little sister, Persis, standing by to turn the pages of her oration—Hand Workers versus Head Workers. Persis trembled when the hooting outside began, and then the soul-rocking tocsin of the College bell. Some pages were lost altogether when the gaslight faded and went out and had to be restored. But the Prize was fairly won. Zatae went on from graduation to the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, earning her M.D. in 1890. Through a long life in her father's profession she would seek and meet every challenge with that same verve, that same determination never to be outdone.⁸²

At Zatae's graduation, Dickinson had come a long way from the doldrums of a dozen years before. This had been an era, to be sure, of academic expansion everywhere. Former peers, such as Presbyterian Princeton or non-denominational Pennsylvania, were becoming great universities, while the campus at Carlisle remained small, compact, conservative, its growth on a far more modest scale but with a respectable academic standard and its ancient traditions somehow still intact.

McCauley had an alumni body thinly united by occasional meetings and the Dickinsonian's monthly column of alumni news. Its potential had been greatly weakened by the war. The students who had come in such numbers from the South were

now in no posture to be benefactors of education, least of all to a northern institution. At the same time, the College's appeal to its sons was still largely parochial. When one southerner, Moncure Conway of Virginia, wrote from London in 1877 to ask what service he could render "Old Mother Dickinson" he was given scant encouragement.⁸³ Conway, erstwhile Methodist, erstwhile Unitarian, now minister of an ethical society in a foreign land, was, for all his success as an author, a dangerous renegade in the sight of many. Few in Carlisle could appreciate his concern for life, his "Earthward Pilgrimage" back from the heavenly city to the human heart. In America, the churches were characterized as never before by crowded pews, increasing wealth and a deepening theological atrophy.⁸⁴ Loyalty was a first demand upon a denominational college. Dickinson, independent and nondenominational by charter, was suspect. In 1873, a move for Church control of the election of trustees was defeated.⁸⁵ In 1875, the Central Pennsylvania Conference considered removal from Carlisle to "some larger centre of Methodism," but balked at the expense.⁸⁶ The larger center must have been Williamsport, where Dickinson Seminary, without any change in curriculum, was already granting college degrees—over Professor Himes' strenuous public protest.⁸⁷ Come 1879, the Conference must needs be reassured that at Dickinson College, "though the heathen classics are read, and the researches and speculations of skeptical authors considered, the Christian dogmas are taught and the God of the Bible proclaimed and honored."⁸⁸ Five years later, the Conference was endeavoring unsuccessfully to endow a chair which it itself would fill, while on campus the Dickinsonian raised the universal student com plaint against required religious attendance—was it valid? "We think not. The majority of students before entering college are connected with the M. E. church; after entering you cannot tell where they belong."⁸⁹ Chapel was already an ebbing tide—moved from 7 A.M. to 9:15 in 1875, with evening sessions discontinued altogether in 1878. The catalogues long continue to list that "Society of Religious Inquiry" for student soul-searching, but not until the Rubendall years of the 1960's would there be a free and imaginative exploration of religious thought and practice, such as Conway could have approved.

Religionists in these years of theological stagnation reveal

unusual reverence for the magic number, and among Methodists "Centenary" held magic. England's "Centenary Fund" to mark the hundredth year since Wesley's ministry began had more than doubled its goal in 1839. Wealth had been poured out for the American fund of 1866. By 1881 the trustees were planning a financial drive to mark the centennial of the College charter. The conferences joined in, but with 1884, centennial of the organization of the American Church, as their point of emphasis.⁹⁰ It was high time to do something, since for years the reports of the United States Commissioner of Education had shown a massive flow of treasure into college coffers, with only the paltriest share for Carlisle.⁹¹ Friends and alumni responded, making possible in 1882 long overdue repairs and modernization in East and West Colleges. The centennial year brought finally that Science Building for which Himes had labored so long and which he had envisioned as carrying past traditions into a glowing future. He had launched his campaign for it in Washington, June 26, 1878, at a meeting with Spencer Baird, Ira Remsen of Johns Hopkins and other distinguished men. The building, financed by banker Jacob Tome, was a far more modest accomplishment than the domed museum and classroom complex presented at the Washington meeting by Montgomery Cunningham Meigs, architect of the Smithsonian.⁹² But it was a long step forward from the outmoded conditions in South, and at last made possible the division of "natural science" into departments of chemistry and physics. The scientific museum must needs remain in South, as did the observatory with its "excellent achromatic telescope . . . adapted to research as well as instruction."⁹³

The College centennial brought other substantial gifts, notably Thomas Beaver's of $30,000 in 1882. Moreover, funds coming in to the trustees rather than to the conferences marked an advance in responsibility and independence.⁹⁴ And inflow increased as the centennial year went by. Most notable was the gift of a library building by the widow of James Williamson Bosler, Class of 1854. As seems so often to have been the way of young men who have fallen short of a college degree, he had gone on to make a great fortune—in banking, real estate and on the cattle ranges of the Far West. Before his death he had

pledged $10,000 to the alumni working toward a McClintock memorial professorship.⁹⁵ Mrs. Bosler cancelled this obligation and agreed instead to the Library, to cost nearly seven times the sum. McCauley, eager to include other facilities in the new edifice, proposed enlarging the plan, with cheaper materials. "The lady, however, treated this suggestion with disfavor, declaring her intention to build, if at all, with material the most durable, and the least liable to fire."⁹⁶

Bosler Hall, with its tower and arched portal guarded by twin cherubs, libraries on the main floor and the large hall for chapel and assemblies above, was completed in 1885. Here was indeed a noble advance from the Reading Room in Old West which McCauley had set up in the first flush of his presidency, collecting from eight donors enough money to buy reflectors for the lamps, matting for the floor, green baize table covers, chairs, and six spittoons at $1.50 each. It had been intended for periodical literature, and proved a failure for lack of just that. Two years later, the students were suggesting that a billiard table might make it of some use.⁹⁷ The society libraries, meanwhile, were active and crowded, in their fiction sections at least, but had long outgrown their rooms.⁹⁸ The chronic situation of the College Library may be seen in a typical Librarian's report:

Gentlemen:

There is nothing special to report concerning the College Library. Only about a dozen volumes of Public Documents have been added to it.

                                    Very Respectfully,
                                                      Henry M. Harman.⁹⁹

Now the books, though still in three distinct entities, were together in one place; nearly thirty thousand volumes, or, allowing for duplication, about twenty thousand titles. Morgan, the young Adjunct in Greek, was busy with a new arrangement and catalogue—time not altogether well spent in the opinion of some trustees.¹⁰⁰

A gymnasium, for which the students had long been pleading, followed quickly, built at a modest cost of $7,000, the gift of Clemuel Ricketts Woodin of Berwick, Pennsylvania; while equipment was provided by another manufacturer connected

with railroading, William Clare Allison of Philadelphia. Soon after, South College was remodeled and enlarged for the Preparatory School. With all this, endowment was growing with some four—and even five-figure gifts, such as the $5,000 for prizes and scholarships from Delaplaine McDaniel of Philadelphia and a $10,000 memorial to Clarence Gearhart Jackson, '60, of Berwick.

The successes of the McCauley years must be credited in part to the leadership of trustees with a clear concept of educational values, and particularly to two high-ranking veterans of the war—Brigadier General James Fowler Rusling, lawyer, author and traveller;¹⁰¹ and Major General Clinton Bowen Fisk, founder of Fisk University. Rusling had been a classmate of James W. Bosler, and after graduation, while preparing for the bar, had been at Dickinson Seminary as "Professor of Natural Science and Belles Lettres."¹⁰² He had been elected to the Board in 1861, resigned in 1883, but was reelected in 1904, serving until his death in 1918. Fisk, elected in 1883, was an active participant until the year before his death in 1890.

McCauley was to learn that the successes as well as the failures of a long tenure can bring rivalry and opposition. As Treasurer and Secretary, Himes had given him strong support at the outset through his broad educational outlook, and, for instance, his promptness and energy in bringing other Pennsylvania college administrators together and securing an act of exemption from state taxation.¹⁰³ Yet Himes gradually emerges as a rival, clearly so at the Board meeting of 1881 when his friend and fraternity brother, James Hepburn Hargis, proposed "consideration of the Centennial Presidency of the college."¹⁰⁴ McCauley promptly resigned in protest to "the proceedings of today with their antecedents," gaining votes of non-acceptance and confidence.¹⁰⁵ In the next year Himes resigned as Treasurer, leaving in the following summer for the third of his five European visits.¹⁰⁶ Opposition to McCauley increased. Rumors flowed freely, some of them in print, spinning a web of financial scandal. In 1886 the Board was asked to investigate charges of "serious mismanagement and internal dissensions," hurriedly conducted a hearing, and contented itself with a resolution regretting the want of harmony.¹⁰⁷

When McCauley presented his final resignation, June 27 1888, things had come to such a pass that Thomas Green Chattle, New Jersey physician, teacher and legislator, moved to receive also "the resignation of all the members of the present faculty with a view to the reconstruction of the same." Under the revised charter it could now be done. Prudently, however, his motion was tabled and the administration of the College turned over, ad interim, to the senior professor, Himes. McCauley, wan and embittered, here leaves the field to his enemies, a man long remembered by many with affection and respect as "a Christian gentleman," and by others derided as a perversion of just that. "McCauley,~' as William Trickett put it, "has a talent for piety."¹⁰⁸

"Dutchy" would have less than a year as Acting President though long enough to prove his popularity and efficiency.¹⁰⁹ College opened with a large enrollment and the only untoward event of his administration, the riot of Halloween night, 1888, brought students and faculty into a new and rare moment of rapport. He had given permission for a campus bonfire made of the old picket fence on the north side. The event had been cleared with the town firemen, who, however, returning late and merry on the railroad from their picnic, saw fit to leap from the cars and attack both fire and students. Students were reinforced by faculty, stones flying, fence pickets dangerously wielded. At next morning's chapel, black eyes, cuts and bruises showed how they had stood together in the melee.¹¹⁰

No such healthy uproar could dissolve the factions that had been growing in trustee, faculty and alumni circles since 1874. The Board saw the need for a new president who would stand unencumbered by all that, and looked to Clinton Fisk, who had the widest connections of any, to find an answer. The General, though in ill health, was about to achieve something of a triumph in the presidential election of this year, rolling up an impressive vote as the Prohibition Party's candidate. It was at New Haven on September 8, soon after the opening of his campaign, that he met George Edward Reed, minister of Trinity Methodist Church, a vigorous, determined man in his early forties, and in their conversation remarked that he had a roving commission to find a president for Dickinson College, and, "I think I have found the man."