Word: minds
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...orator was introduced. His theme was the connection between education and agriculture, and he proved conclusively, to himself at least, that the prosperity of a country depends upon the farmers, and that the cultivation of the soil ought to go hand in hand with the cultivation of the mind. He did not close without censuring the corruption of the times. The children of the so-called old families, he said, inherit more vices than virtues, and he wished to have it clearly understood that while some more favored collegians [sic] indulge in aristocratic amusement, the boys of Orono...
Notwithstanding all this, the failure of Harvard to supply our country with prominent men is not as complete as many would have us believe. The graduates of the last twenty-five years are men who have as yet no more than entered upon that period of life when the mind is strongest, the period from forty-five to sixty; so that we are warned not to expect too much. Again, through want of perspective it is difficult to tell who are in reality prominent...
When undergraduates remind us of "the generally acknowledged value of mathematics in mental discipline," we are inclined to quote Macaulay: "'Discipline' of the mind! Say, rather, starvation, confinement, torture, annihilation! I feel myself becoming a personification of algebra, a living trigonometrical canon, a walking table of logarithms. All my perceptions of elegance and beauty gone, or at least going. At the end of the term my brain will be 'as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.'" Many, I fancy, can sympathize with him when he says he got "a headache daily, without acquiring one practical truth or beautiful...
...this year be able to properly coach their men and render them of permanent use. Moreover, as a coxswain has now become a part of the University crew, we must look to the clubs for a constant supply of light, trained steersmen; and this the captains should bear in mind when selecting their coxswains...
While in the University, knowledge is imbibed with the air one breathes, a mode of study that requires no very great labor. Vacations, which are supposed to last the greater part of the year, are spent in improving the mind by foreign travel. Dignity is given to the place by a set of men called Fellows, who, living at the expense of the College, spend the day in walking about arm in arm, looking immensely important, and occupy the evening in telling stories and drinking immense quantities of Port wine. To gain a fellowship is the aim of every undergraduate...