It’s my opinion, and I have it from St. Catherine, he should have been set on the dunce block and made to study Malthus.
Two notable victims are well remembered, one a lovely blonde young girl, a beautiful singer; the other as dark as a Spaniard, with melting black eyes and raven tresses. They did not wait to graduate but named the happy day. The blonde married a Democratic editor, well known in early journalism, the other a very popular man, yet a resident of Seattle.
The whole of the second story of the University consisted of one great hall or assembly room with two small ante-rooms. Here the school exhibitions were held, lectures and entertainments given. Christmas trees, Sunday schools, political meetings and I do not know what else, although I think no balls were ever permitted in those days, a modern degeneration to my mind.
The old building has always been repainted white until within a few years and stood among the dark evergreen a thing of dignity and beauty, the tall fluted columns with Doric capitals being especially admired.
But changes will come; a magnificent, new, expensive and ornate edifice has been provided with many modern adjuncts—and the old University has been painted a grimy putty color!
The days of old, the golden days, will never be forgotten by the students of the old University, which, although perhaps not so comfortable or elegant nor of so elevated a curriculum as the new, compassed the wonderful beginnings of things intellectual, sowing the seed that others might harvest, planting the tree of knowledge from which others should gather the fruit.
CHAPTER V.
A CHEHALIS LETTER, PENNED IN ’52.
Mound Prairie, Chehalis River, near
Mr. Ford’s Tavern, Lewis County,
Oregon Territory. 14 Nov. 1852.