Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight;
Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
Go thou, and like an executioner
Cut off the heads of too-fast growing sprays,
That look too lofty in our commonwealth;
All must be even in our government.”
Yet after all ’tis a good world, my masters! The professor is not wholly downcast. If he does not know by name, without consulting the catalogue, a third of the members of the board of trustees that controls his academic destiny; if he does not know by sight a fourth of them, and if he has never exchanged comments on the weather with more than a fifth of them, he at least hopes that the sixth of the board who may chance, through the college catalogue, to know of his connection with the institution, may not feel unkindly toward him. He can only plead in extenuation of his rashness in suggesting a more democratic form of academic government, his strong conviction that only as all parts of the educational structure are strengthened, can the structure approach perfection, and serve the end for which it has been erected.