just prerogatives it is even yet the part of policy to let rest largely in abeyance.

With the passage of the Rollins bill for fixing its site, the drama of the University's history was opened. The following scene was one of unique and even thrilling interest, and in it the hero was again the principal actor. It was the intent of the bill to secure a central seat for the great seminary, and its location was offered openly as a prize to the "place presenting the most advantages to be derived to the said University, keeping in view the amount subscribed, and locality and general advantages"; but this generous competition was restricted expressly to the six river-counties of Cole, Cooper, Howard, Boone, Callaway, and Saline. And now began a contest that for animation might remind one of a steamboat race on the lower Mississippi, and that might have appeared to an outsider as almost ludicrous in its intensity, if the dignity and ideal character of the stakes had not lent it gravity and importance. Never in the days of chivalry was a lady wooed by knights or troubadours with more romantic devotion than the future University by the rival counties. A distinguished citizen of victorious Boone, of large reputation and of great abilities, Gen. Odon Guitar, in a happier portion of his address commemorating the Semi-Centennial of the University and published in the August number of the University Magazine (New York), has set forth the struggle in bold and striking relief. From the account given by this eye-witness it would seem that emulation glowed with a fervor far beyond that of even political animosity. Meetings were held in every church, at every crossroads, in every school-house; subscriptions were pledged and doubled and raised again; the air resounded with stirring appeals to pride of county, to glory in learning, to commercial ambition. Very eloquent; too, they must have been-at least very effective, for the people were aroused, rich and poor alike, to a veritable frenzy of liberality. Some attained and even surpassed the high-water mark set by the widow in Gospel story, giving not only all they had but even discounting largely the future. Indeed, Boone County seemed set unalterably on securing the prize at any hazard; the subscription list, which was redeemed to the last farthing, was closed only when the total of $117,900 was satisfactorily ascertained to be far in excess of the amount pledged by any rival, and was ready to be reopened in case of exigence. Rightly to appreciate

the full significance of this donation to an enterprise in which the most could have at best but a distant reversionary material interest, we must remember that the population of the county was but 13,300, so that the average subscription was nearly $9! For what conceivable undertaking promising no distinct and but little indirect financial return would it now be possible to raise an average subscription of even $3? And yet, while the population has merely doubled itself, the wealth has been multiplied in far higher ratio. No very rich man lived in the county; the wealthiest were merely well-to-do the largest subscription was of $3,000. The annual burden of $10,000 interest was then assumed by poverty cheerfully and voluntarily; now the yearly load of $300 taxation is borne by wealth reluctantly, with chafings and with many sighs. Then a population of 13,000 spontaneously endowed the University with nearly $120,000- with a yearly income of $10,000; now a population nearly two hundred times as great and individually four times as wealthy will not endow it with $1,000,000-with a yearly income of $40,000. The muscles of power are indeed enlarged eight-hundred-fold; but the nerves of will are shrunk to the onetwo-hundredth of their former dimensions.

Of all men young Rollins felt the deepest and liveliest interest in the location of the University. It was just and reasonable that he should desire to see the tender plant set out in his own vicinage, on his own commons, where, and where only, the same hand that planted might also water and prune and in every way foster. Located elsewhere than in Columbia, it was impossible that the University should enjoy the daily and hourly watch-care with which he tended it for more than a generation, and with more than paternal affection. No wonder then that in this exciting canvass the cause of his county was committed to his keeping; able, active, and honored coadjutants he had in number, whose names illumine the chronicle of the University; but it was the contagion of his own ardor that above all enkindled the zeal of others. Not only his words but equally his deeds attested his earnestness. His father, a recent immigrant, subscribed $1,500; himself, a novitiate in law with few causes and therefore presumably with not very many effects, subscribed $2,000. But it is the nature of "influence " to propagate itself outward in expanding circles; what we do immediately ourselves is at most but trivial compared with what we do mediately through others. For

months the young legislator devoted himself untiringly and almost exclusively in every honorable way, by public appeal and by private persuasion, to the magnanimous enterprise of swelling the subscription of Boone County to dimensions unattainable by any rival, so as to make assurance doubly sure and secure the coveted prize beyond all peradventure. His undisputed rank as forefighter in this generous contest was officially recognized and proclaimed when the County Court of Boone by order of May 28, 1839, appointed "Jas. S. Rollins commissioner on the part of this county to meet with the commissioners appointed to locate the State University, at the seat of government, etc.," Sinclair Kirtley being named as alternate.

Eighteen hundred and thirty-nine must always be counted as the annus mirabilis in the records of Boone County. In appreciating properly the extraordinary munificence of that year's donation, it is necessary to remember that the period was one of deep and widespread monetary depression. In 1837 a financial panic of fearful and unexampled intensity had paralyzed the commerce of the country, and in 1839 there was felt a recurrence of the shock, less severe but even more dispiriting. It was not indeed the first time that a people, from the lowest prostration of material prosperity, had roused itself to erect a fabric of immaterial greatness, less imposing to the eye of flesh, but more substantial, enduring and impregnable to the assaults of time and circumstance. It was in 1809, after the military pride of Prussia had "slipped into ashes" at Jena, and her political supremacy had vanished with the peace of Tilsit, that the Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University was founded at Berlin and forthwith began the regeneration of Germany. Highly, however, though we may honor the men of '39, the question will still recur to the cool critical mind—In what measure shall we ascribe their generosity and the zealotry of Rollins on the one hand to unselfish love of learning, veneration for culture, pride and delight in the things of mind, and on the other to calculating commercial foresight and personal ambition of success? The question is unanswerable, but no apportionment of motives need much disturb us. There is a broad and wise selfishness that almost counterfeits unselfishness itself. While some

of us may hesitate to answer yes to the poet's question:

Is selfishness,

For time a sin,— spun to eternity,
Celestial prudence?

yet certainly a simultaneous pursuit of one's own and of others' real interests along parallel lines is a high and laudable form of human action, if not the highest attainable or practicable under existing conditions. Is it not indeed a problem of civilization, of practical Christianity, to show clearly to the world that enlightened Egoism and Altruism, so far from being mutually exclusive, are in reality one?

Be all this as it may, the site was chosen, the corner-stone was laid July 4, 1840; the building began to rise; an accomplished scholar, a zealous teacher, a thoroughly excellent man, Prof. John H. Lathrop, LL. D., of Hamilton College, N. Y., was elected President; for two years the University tabernacled in a tent, but on the 4th of July, 1843, the main edifice, erected at a cost of about $80,000,a vast sum for that time and place—was impressively dedicated, and President Lathrop inaugurated his administration in great wisdom, with high aims and with genuine eloquence. But even the three years in the tent had not been spent vainly, if we may judge by the first graduates in Arts, of November 28, 1843, Robert L. Todd and Robert B. Todd: the latter on the Supreme Bench of the State of Louisiana; the former a banker, for twenty-five years Secretary, for thirteen of these years member, of the Curatorial Board of the University, her wise counsellor, her firm supporter, her devoted son at every stage of her history, a gentleman whom the multifarious cares of engrossing commercial activities have in no wise availed to divorce from intellectual interests, whose zest has never palled for "the things of mind," and who amid the deepening snows of winter yet preserves that spring-tide freshness, that summer sunshine of the breast, which is born and nurtured of love and culture of literature and the arts.

Did the seminary thus planted amid so much devotion, enthusiasm, and self-sacrifice, thus rooted and grounded in every civic virtue, thus tended to its first noble fruitage under omens so auspicious did it redeem its early promise, did it grow and flourish from season to season in perfected symmetry, in waxing beauty and strength? The unvarnished truth is, it did not. It neither withered nor died, nor ceased to grow and yield its fruit in its season. But its growth has not been rapid nor steady—above all, has not been natural and symmetric; it has not as yet lifted aloft and conspicuous from afar the straight and stately stem of learning, not deformed at base and

along the trunk by an unpruned growth of adventitious shoots, but waving at the top its wealth of foliage and of fruit. The fault, or rather the misfortune, did not lie, at least in earlier years, in any in⚫dividual, certainly not in President Lathrop nor in his constant friend, adviser, and supporter, Major Rollins, to whom he resorted for counsel and help in every matter of difficulty or delicacy, who, all along the road of his duty, was both a staff for his hand and a lamp for his feet. Nay, it was to be sought and easily found in the conditions of time and place, which were throughout the State altogether unfavorable to the success of any such lofty educational emprise. The unwearied zealotry of Rollins had for a moment and in two or three counties apparently reversed these conditions, turning the coldest apathy into the warmest sympathy. But it was impossible that this intense interest should prove more than temporary and local. The majority glowed with no native and intrinsic but only with reflected ardor, and the young enthusiast had no mission to the Gentiles, no call to preach the Gospel of culture to the outlying counties of the State. The population of the commonwealth was over 382,000; of Boone County it was 13,000. These latter had given the University about $9 apiece; had the rest been willing to give an average of but $1,-that is, taxed themselves scarcely ten cents per annum, the University would have started forth with a sufficient building and with a productive endowment of $500,000, which would have lifted it at once beyond the arrows and the tongues of men, would have launched the vessel fully manned and perfectly appointed. Such a University would have made Missouri to the South and West all and more than all that Massachusetts and Virginia and Michigan have been to the North and East; by the law of attraction, to him that hath shall be given, equally potent in the material and in the immaterial world, it would have attracted to itself larger and larger endowments, it would have given the State glory and prestige at home with honorable fame abroad, it would very possibly have saved the State, though not indeed the nation, from the disaster of internecine war. Instead of all this, however, what did the State do for the University? Simply nothing at all! So far was she from emulating the munificence of Boone County, that the unexpectedly great amount of the gift was held apparently to relieve all other counties from the duty of doing anything at all. Since