Boone has done sufficient, why should the others do any more? Such would seem to have been the reasoning. Far worse, however, than merely negative was the working of this neglect and indifference of the State at large in comparison with the eager interest, self- • ish or unselfish, of a single county. For it inevitably invested the "State University" with a certain supposed merely local character and significance that to this day it has not been able to shake off, that has fitted and cramped it like a genuine shirt of Nessus, for evil only, evil everywhere, and evil continually. The University came in fact to be regarded not as a State but as a county institution, and any favor shown it-nay, even the scantiest recognition of its constitutional rights-was held and is even yet held in many quarters to be an act of special grace and condescension to Boone!! To wrestle with such wrong-headedness is like struggling with Antæus: every fall is a source of new strength and a summons to a new encounter. But more; this pernicious misconception has borne a progeny more baneful even than itself. The facts of the case seem to have been first forgotten and then inverted. In this perverse imagination it is not the county that endowed the State University but the State that endowed a county college!! What prerogative has Boone over Pike or Clay, Phelps or Cole, Adair or Johnson? The location of a University in Columbia is looked upon as a gift of over-generous partiality, of indefensible favoritism, not as a franchise dearly bought, put up and sold for an extravagant price at public auction! So thoroughly has the virus of the "spoils system" infected all forms of our national life, so completely has the notion of public trust been displaced by that of public crib, that even a University is regarded as only secondarily an organ of general improvement, of universal benefaction, but primarily as an instrument of public plunder.

But the misconception, narrow selfishness, and short-sighted parsimony that for so many years have dwarfed, stunted, and deformed the University, and therewith the whole educational system of the State, serve only to set in clearer relief by contrast the enlightened, philanthropic, and prophetic statesmanship that presided at its planting.

Such, then, so brilliant and so beneficent, was the entrance of Rollins into public life. It was, in truth, no mere rhetoric that declared at the semi-centennial celebration of July 4, 1890, osten

sibly designed to revive the memories of '39, that the very stones in the building were stamped with the name of Rollins; certain it is that whatever else may come or go, his mystic presence will abide forever, inexpulsible as the ether, and pervade the structure. from basis to cupola.

In 1840 the services of Mr. Rollins to his county, to the State, and to education were fittingly recognized by his constituents, who returned him to the Legislature by a large and increased majority. In that, the Eleventh General Assembly, there was an unusual assemblage of talent. The compeers of Rollins numbered in their ranks not a few who attained great note and prominence in the history of the State. Such were Gen. A. W. Doniphan, D. R. Atchison, T. L. Anderson, L. V. Bogy, J. G. Miller, S. B. Churchill, Bev. Allen-nearly all of whom preceded him in joining the majority. How the young man of twenty-eight sustained himself in such presence may justly be inferred from the political eminence at which he soon afterward found himself. The University building was then in process of construction, and naturally no important University interest seems to have called for consideration. But there was ample subject for discussion and resolution. The great Whig dogma of "internal improvement came up under various forms for consideration; the ardent spirit of Rollins, full of zeal for "progress," embraced it without reserve, and its slogan resounded eloquently from his lips. Judge as we may this political and economic creed, it is impossible not to admire the courage, the energy, the earnestness, the breadth and elevation of view, as well as the vigor and plausibility of argument brought to its defense by its champion. The debates of this session confirmed and extended to the borders of the State the reputation of Rollins as a forensic disputant; but they did not associate his name with any legislation comparable in importance with that of the University Act of the previous session.

After the adjournment sine die, he returned to Columbia and resumed successfully the practice of the law. From this wise comparative retirement, where his powers were rapidly maturing, he once more emerged after three years, in 1844, as delegate to the National Whig Convention assembled in Baltimore. The nomination of his illustrious chief and admired prototype, Henry Clay,

was to him like a clarion call to battle, and in the memorable campaign of that year he canvassed the State in vigorous and effective support of his leader and in defense of the national policy of his party. The result, for a long time in doubt, is well known. The defection of the Free-Soil party in New York lost that "pivotal" State to the Whigs by the narrowest of margins and relegated Mr. Clay to private life. But the powerful political oratory of Rollins had done him much credit and had prepared his way to higher preferment. In 1846 the Whigs of Audrain and Boone counties. sent him to the State Senate by a flattering majority. And now once more did education generally, and the University especially, find their single champion in a position to serve them. For four years both, and the latter notably, had languished. The State had made no effort to meet its constitutional obligations, nor had it the feeblest disposition to do so. It had been content to send a committee biennially to look at the patient, feel his pulse, and note his temperature. The committee came, examined, looked wise, went back, and reported the apparent facts. But neither diagnosis was made nor treatment suggested. Yet the symptoms were plain and unmistakable. The University was suffering from imperfect nutrition, it was smitten with marasmus, it was dying of inanition. The mass of brick and mortar was indeed imposing, but the endowment of about $100,000 was quite unequal to the support of the Faculty, which had to eke out a precarious existence from the fees. of the students. Such was the state of the case when Senator Rollins moved the appointment of a committee to examine into the condition and prospects of the University. His able coadjutor in the House was Col. W. F. Switzler, who has faithfully and efficiently served the University in so many capacities, as legislator, as curator, as editor, and who of late years, as Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, clothed himself with distinction that made even the axe of the headsman pause and hesitate. The committee did its duty, and the report, written by Rollins, discovered the evil that afflicted the University in the utter want of support vouchsafed by the State, but more especially in the debts hanging over it that were "paralyzing its energies and lessening its means of usefulness." The remedy that he proposed was, of course, State aid, the only rational or even possible one. In amount it was entirely inadequate, and

no one knew this better than he; yet it reached or rather surpassed the full measure of liberality of which the Assembly was capable. But the report went much further: it recognized distinctly the remote as well as the proximate cause of the disorder. The schools throughout the State were unable to supply the University with students properly prepared for collegiate studies. One reason was that there was very little interest felt in education, higher or lower, generally throughout the State; the other was that the majority of the teachers were bunglers, devoid alike of professional intelligence and of professional skill. The report animadverts upon this state of the case and proposes very rational means for correcting the evil, namely, to create a class of professional teachers, appointed and sent, as candidates preparing themselves for pedagogy, to the University, there to be fitted especially for such work, under written pledge to devote themselves for a "certain specified time to teaching" after completing the prescribed course. Here, then, we have clearly expressed, not only the idea of making teaching a profession calling for careful preliminary professional training, the idea from which all of our Normal Schools have more recently sprung, but we have very feasible means proposed to reach the very desirable end. In order to secure the proper professional training at the University, the report recommends the establishment at the University of a chair of the "Theory and Practice of Teaching." The salary to go with this new chair was fixed at $1,000, to be paid out of the Common School Fund. The amount seems pitiful, at least when we consider what must be the attainments and abilities of the man who should fill and not merely occupy such a chair. He must be an almost universal scholar, a master of all knowledge; for what could he say that was worth saying about either theory or practice of teaching geometry, unless himself a geometer? or of teaching Greek, unless himself a Grecian? But mere knowledge, no matter how broad or deep or exact, could not avail. Such a professor must be a psychologist, a metaphysician as well; he should be familiar with the form as well as the content of the processes of thought with which the teacher has to deal; he must be deeply versed in pedagogic and educational theories; he must be an able expositor, an inspiring teacher, a philosophic thinker. Not even then were the services of such a man to be secured at such a

salary, unless indeed by some strange and lucky accident. But to any such criticism Rollins would doubtless have answered with good and sufficient reason: "It was on account of the hardness of their hearts that I did this thing; but in my own thought and purpose it was not so." In truth, despite his earnest advocacy, the Legislature was unwilling to do even this trifle for the University; the task of its own higher education the State was unwilling to touch even with one of its little fingers. At the next session, in an elaborate and well reasoned memorial of the Board of Curators to the General Assembly, signed by J. S. Rollins, J. H. Lathrop, W. A. Robards, committee, Major Rollins again brought forward his measure and this time secured its passage, but only in a maimed and modified form. Instead of the precise, comprehensive, and perfectly intelligible designation "Theory and Practice of Teaching," there was substituted the conventional symbolism "Normal Professorship," and the scanty Seminary Fund instead of the much larger Common School Fund was taxed with the maintenance of the chair, though it was the common schools that were to reap at least the primary benefit. What the Assembly, in fact, did was to concede the justness of Rollins's idea, and then to refuse all aid in its realization. The reasoning was very succinct, and worthy of the sepulchral logician in Hamlet: "The thing is right, and we, the State, ought to do it for you; argal, we 'll make you do it yourself for us." Such was the genial manner in which the General Assembly contrived to meet its constitutional obligation "to support a University for the promotion of literature and the arts and sciences."

It is interesting to note at this point by how many years the theory of Rollins preceded, outran the practice of the State. That was nearly half a century ago; yet even now there is no such chair, no professor of Pedagogy in the University; the subject is taught, or rather of necessity shunted, perfunctorily and under constant protest, as a trivial and irrelevant appendage to the chair of English. And yet its high importance in the college curriculum, especially for the development of primary and secondary instruction, is daily more clearly recognized. Says the Nation, whose deliverances are so apt to be significant, in an article on "Four Educational Meetings," under date of July 17, 1890: "At all these meetings the