“Winthrop is very fond of you,” said Rutherfurd, senior, before he sailed for Europe, “and if you fail to pull him through, that will be the end of his college career. Your job is a difficult one, almost hopeless, but if you should succeed you would place me under a very great obligation.” I was already under great obligations to him, for he had disclosed a view of the world of intellect before my eyes such as nobody else ever had. New York never produced a finer type of gentleman and scholar than was Lewis Rutherfurd. His personality impressed me as Henry Ward Beecher’s had, and I could easily have persuaded myself that he was the reincarnation of Benjamin Franklin. I vowed to spare no effort in my attempts to “place” him “under a very great obligation.”
Winthrop co-operated at first. But Winthrop’s friends at the Racquet Club, at the Rockaway Hunt Club, and at Newport were puzzled, and they inquired what strange influences kept Winthrop in monastic seclusion at the Rutherfurd Stuyvesant estate in the backwoods of New Jersey. Besides, a stableful of steeplechasers, which had won many prizes, stood idle and looked in vain for their master, Winthrop, to train them. Even the servants on the estate looked puzzled and could not decipher the mysterious change that had come over their young autocrat. A foreign-born youngster, a namesake of Michael, the Irish gardener on the estate, seemed to be supreme in authority, and that puzzled the servants still more. Winthrop was making great scholastic efforts, in order to please his distinguished father, but he was a high-strung youth and after a while his behavior began to suggest the fretting of a thoroughbred protesting against the bit handled by the heavy touch of an unskilled trainer. I saw a crisis approaching, and it finally came. Winthrop suddenly refused to do another stroke of work unless the programme of work was greatly modified to permit him to make occasional trips to the Racquet Club, to the Rockaway Hunt Club, and to Newport. I knew what that meant, and promptly refused; a hot discussion followed, and some harsh words were spoken, resulting in a challenge by Winthrop; I accepted and agreed that the best man was to have his way during the remainder of the summer. Winthrop, the great racquet player of America, the famous steeplechase rider of Long Island, and the young aristocrat, kept his word, and responded eagerly to my calls for additional scholastic efforts. He was a noble, handsome, and manly American youth whose friendship I was proud to possess.
In the autumn Winthrop got rid of most of his conditions, proceeded with his class, and eventually graduated from Columbia in 1884. My imaginative chum, Winthrop’s cousin, composed a great tale describing this incident and called it: “A Serbian Peasant versus an American Aristocrat.” Those who had the good fortune to enjoy the humor of this tale (and among them was F. Marion Crawford, the novelist and cousin of my chum) pronounced it a great literary accomplishment, and they all agreed that Winthrop was the real hero of the story; he had played the game like a thoroughbred. Mr. Rutherfurd, senior, enjoyed the tale as much as anybody, and he was delighted with the result of our summer work. Winthrop’s behavior did not surprise him, because, he assured me, Winthrop played the game as every American gentleman’s son would have played it. “Every one of your classmates,” exclaimed this trustee of Columbia College, “would have done the same thing; or he would be unworthy of a Columbia degree.” The first function of the American college, according to him, was to train its students in the principles of conduct becoming an American who is loyal to the best traditions of his country.
My senior year opened even more auspiciously than my sophomore or my junior year had. Lewis Rutherfurd, trustee of Columbia College, gentleman and scholar, and famous scientist, became my mentor. Winthrop’s success was to place him under very great obligations to me, he had said before he sailed for Europe in the spring, and after his return his actions proved that he had meant even more than he had said. A father could not have been more solicitous about my future plans than he was, and his advice indicated that he understood my case much better than I did myself. At the beginning of my senior year I was still undecided as to what I was to do after graduation, and I began to feel anxious; my mentor’s advice was most welcome, and it certainly was one of the determining factors of my future plans.
In my preceding account of my preparations for college and of my life in college there is much which sounds like a glorification of muscle and of the fighting spirit. I feel almost like apologizing for it, but do I really owe an apology? My whole life up to this point of my story was steered by conditions which demanded muscle and the fighting spirit. To pass six weeks during each one of several summers as herdsman’s assistant in company with twelve other lively Serb youngsters as fellow assistants, meant violent competitions in wrestling, swimming, herdsman’s hockey, and other strenuous games for hours and hours each day, and one’s position in this lively community depended entirely upon muscle and the fighting spirit. Magyarism in Panchevo and Teutonism in Prague produced a reaction which appealed to muscle and to the fighting spirit, which finally drove me to the land of Lincoln. Muscle and the fighting spirit of the bootblacks and newsboys on Broadway met me on the very first day when I ventured to pass beyond the narrow confines of Castle Garden, in order to catch my first glimpse of the great American metropolis. No sooner had I finished serving my apprenticeship as greenhorn, and advanced to a higher civic level, than I encountered again muscle and the fighting spirit of the college boys. In the beginning of my college career I found very little difference between the pasture-lands of my native village and the campus of the American college. The spirit of playfulness and the ferment of life in the hearts of youth were the same in both, and were manifested in the same way, namely, in athletics which encourage a glorification of muscle and of the fighting spirit. This was most fortunate for me, because it offered me a wide avenue by which I could enter with perfect ease into that wonderful activity called college life. Other avenues existed, but to a Serbian youth who but a few years before had been a herdsman’s assistant these other avenues were practically closed. I have described the avenue which was open to me, but with no intention to indulge in an egotistical glorification of that avenue.
Rutherfurd, my mentor, scholar, scientist, and trustee of Columbia College, did not believe as some people do that athletics would ever cause our colleges to degenerate into gladiatorial schools. Athletics in the form of wrestling and boxing did not interfere in the least with my scholarship. Healthy young people and healthy young nations are prone to worship the heroic element in human life, thought trustee Rutherfurd, and, according to him, the Greeks, by the art of physical culture, prevented this exuberance of youth from degenerating into brutality. He was longing forty years ago, and I am still longing to-day, for the time when American colleges will have a four years’ course in physical culture, conducted by medical and athletic experts. His sons, he thought, practised this art by their devotion to the game of racquets and of steeplechase riding. They were splendid athletes, but nevertheless they were mellow-hearted and gentle youths. The fact that their scholarship was not high did not disturb their learned father, because much of his own scholarship and scientific learning, he told me, had been acquired long after he had graduated from Williams College.
Many of my fellow students were, just like myself, very fond of athletics and of other activities outside of the college curriculum, and yet we were enthusiastic students of Greek literature, of history and economics, of constitutional history of the United States, and of English literature. But here was the secret: Professor Merriam was a wonderful expounder of the great achievements of Greek civilization; Professor Monroe Smith made every one of us feel that history was an indispensable part of our daily life; Professor Richmond Mayo-Smith made us believe that political economy was one of the most important subjects in the world; and Professor Burgess’ lectures on the Constitutional History of the United States made us all imagine that we understood the spirit of 1776 just as well as Hamilton did. These professors were the great scholars of Columbia College when I was a student there, and they had most attractive personalities too. The personality of the professors, like that of the famous Van Amringe, and their learning, like that of the venerable President Barnard, were the best safeguards for students who showed a tendency to devote themselves too much to the worship of muscle and the fighting spirit, and of activities outside of the college curriculum. Fill your professorial chairs in colleges with men of broad learning, and of commanding personality, and do not worry about the alleged evil influences of athletics, and of other college activities outside of the recitation-room. That was the recommendation of trustee Rutherfurd forty years ago; to-day I add: the college needs great professors just as much as the various research departments of a university need them; perhaps even more.
Literary societies, college journalism, glee-club practice, and exercises in the dramatic art consumed, when I was a college student, just as much of the college student’s time as athletics did. They and athletics constituted the outside college activities. The recitation-room brought the student into touch with the personalities of the professors; college activities outside of the recitation-room, whether they were athletics or anything else, brought the student into touch with the personalities of his fellow students. Each one of these influences had, according to the experiences of my college life, its own great value, and contributed its distinct share to what is usually called the character-forming of the college student, but what Rutherfurd, the Columbia College trustee, called training in the principles of conduct becoming an American who is loyal to the best traditions of his country. Neither one nor the other influence can be weakened without crippling seriously that great object which trustee Rutherfurd called “the historical mission of the American college.”
There was another educational activity which should be mentioned here. My regular attendance at Plymouth Church I considered one of my most important college activities outside of the recitation-room. Beecher’s sermons and Booth’s interpretations of Shakespeare were sources of stirring inspiration. They occupied a very high place among my spiritual guides. Beecher, Booth, and several other men of genius who were active in New York in those days were, as far as my college training was concerned, members of the Columbia College faculty. This is what I probably meant when I said to my friends at the Adelphi Academy that “Columbia College in the City of New York” was the port for which I was sailing and that Beecher’s church in Brooklyn was a component part of Columbia College. Taking college activities in this broader sense I always believed that the spiritual, intellectual, and artistic activities in the city of New York were component parts of Columbia College; they certainly contributed much to the fulness of my college life. I often wondered whether this was in the minds of those who framed the official name “Columbia College in the City of New York,” when the old name “King’s College” was abandoned in 1787.