YALE ALUMNI wHEKLY
tongue with decent accuracy,’ OF, as
the New York Times more tersely puts
it, may be “an unlettered hind in Eng-
lish.” On the other hand, it is due to
Professor Beers that I should say I was
mistaken in saying he thought Eng-
lish could not be taught at all as an
ordinary study. I suppose I had in
mind on this point the reported opin-
ions of another Yale professor, whose
name I need not now mention. At any
rate, let the correction be made.
AS TO THE REGISTER’S CRITICISM.
Robert Toombs once gave the advice
to a young Georgia politician,—“Before
you go into a fight, kill all your fool
friends.” I have been reminded of this
advice in reading the editorial article
of the New Haven Register on this
matter, the burden of which is that I
have come to grief at the hands of Pro-
fessor Beers because of my neglect to
“know at least something of the facts
associated with the topic under consid-
eration before attempting an opinion.
If the writer of this had known me, or
especially if he had known the extent of
my first-hand information on the sub-
ject of English at Yale during the last
twenty years and particularly during
the last five years, he would have been
saved from this amusing performance.
Probably I ought to bow in submission
to this editor, who has seemed so ambi-
tious—and to be ably seconded in his
ambition by some of the Yale Faculty—
to become a reduced copy of Mr.
Depew; but as a plain tale shall put
him down, as well as Professor Beers,
I shall venture still to hold my opinions
and to defend them. .
On several occasions before my Wor-
cester speech I had called attention by
speech and pen to the low condition of
English at Yale, but not a word can
be pointed to that was extravagant,
hap-hazard, or censorious, or in any
sense personal. The sensitiveness of
Professor Beers cannot find such a
word. The evils I complained of con-
tinuing, I addressed a brief letter to
each member of the Corporation as the
governing body of the University. If
I had then known what I know now,
that they are not the jgoverning body
but only so called, I should have
spared myself this trouble. As it was,
learning that my first letter was not
rightly understood,—indeed several of
the Corporators expressed surprise that
any complaint should be made and
wished a full statement of the grounds
of complaint—I addressed a _ second
and longer letter to each member.
This is the extent of my “deluging
people in New Haven with letters on
the subject,” as Professor Beers with
fine courtesy calls it. All but one or
two of the Corporators acknowledged
receipt of my communications in most
respectful terms, expressing high appre-
ciation of my views as well as of my
interest in the subject.
Having had occasion to write to
President Dwight about this time on a
matter connected with the Lampson
bequest, I received a letter from. him
dated February 27, 1897, five pages in
length, in which he undertook in a
covert and veiled wav to discredit my
public criticisms—criticisms which up
to this time had been wholly imper-
sonal. After assuring me as usual that
everything at Yale was as it should be,
“only more so,’ President Dwight,
referring to the filling of the Sanford
chair, said: “As you seem tu have
regarded the field as richer in men
than I have been able to discover it to
be, I should be glad to know of any
available and thoroughly competent
persons of whom you have thought.”
Responding to this invitation, as well
as replying to his letter generally, I
wrote him under date of March 3, 1897.
From this letter I am now compelled
by Professor Beers, and after notice to
President Dwight, to make the follow-
ing excerpt, which will show several
things of probable interest to Professor
Beers and perhaps to his special New
Haven editorial champion; and _ will
also show on what occasion and under
what circumstances I “nominated” my
brother and Col. Sprague. (And by
the way, if it was an offense to nomi-
nate my brother, it would seem not to
be so great a one as to nominate one-
self, as Professor Beers did, in the
WEEKLY in March last.)
THE LETTER TO PRESIDENT DWIGHT.
“Let me ask,” I wrote to President
Dwight, “what I ought perhaps to
assume,—whether you are familiar with
the work of Beers and Cook in the
class-room, or out of it, in their profes-
sorial duties. I have attended two reci-
tations in Beers’s class-room and I have
induced three others—better judges
than I—to do the same at different
times. Our verdicts were the same;
namely, that in all our experience we
had never seen so great failure, so little
hold on the attention of the students,
so little attempt to hold their attention,
so little said worth attention.
“We all know Beers to be a good
scholar, a fine fellow, a conscientious
man, a fairly good writer of some
rather ephemeral matters; but all this
does not hide his conspicuous inept-
ness for teaching either rhetoric, or
English, or literature.
“With Mr. Cook, the general result is
the same. I have had the same experi-
ence with him, and so have my friends.
He fails lamentably,. grievously, to
arouse, or inspire, or even to drill his
classes. Larned, even he, 35 to 40 years
ago, did give us some very good drill,
rather mechanical, but valuable. Cook
again is a fine scholar, a learned critic
—I have read his books—but he cannot
and does not teach,.and is an eminent
Dryasdust.
“Now I do not say there is no place
for Beers and Cook, but I do say there‘
is no place for more Beerses or Cooks.
What is needed is obvious enough.
Men of power, of strong personality,
men of light and leading, masters to
some eminent degree of the art they
essay to teach, are needed.
“Are there not such men who can be
had? You think not. Here, while we
might agree in qualifications, we might
disagree on what men possess thera.
Therefore, I can only tell you whom |
consider fit to fill. the Sanford and
Iampson chairs, and this I will do with
all frankness.
“In my judgment the best man in the
country for either of these chairs is
Homer B. Sprague. What objections
there can be to him on any ground, I
cannot understand. His age is, I hbe-
lieve, about sixty-seven. If he were
forty-seven or fifty-seven, it would be
better; but you have before your eyes
daily an example of high success in
instructing, achieved, all of it, after
Sixty: to sixty-five. 1 mean Hg.
Phelps. Sprague has probably eight or
ten years of as good work in him as
at any earlier period. He could set
the pace, if he did not live to make it
familiar and permanent himself. Per-
sonally he is the most guileless, saintly
layman I know.
“The next man I name is Moses Coit
Tyler of Cornell—a fine scholar, full of
communicable enthusiasm, a charming
exemplar of the art he would teach, a
noble man.
“I name next William L. Wilson,
now Postmaster General, a_ scholar,
man of affairs, skilful and experienced
teacher, admirable writer and speaker,
overflowing with moral and intellectual
earnestness and enthusiasm. He is
understood to have been offered the
presidency of Washington and Lee, but
I am not sure he could not still be had
at Yale, if asked.
“T name now, with reluctance which
I need not explain, my own brother,
Leander.
that he would take it, if pressed upon
him; but I do know how deeply he
feels the need of better work in this
Department at Yale, and the exalted
estimate he places on the work which
might be done there.
“Another such man ‘is Professor
Ernest W. Huffcut, now of the Law
School at Cornell,—a man of most
engaging personality, of great power of
impressing himself and his teaching on
his pupils, a fine writer and speaker, a
fine scholar in present attainments, with
a scholarly spirit which will carry him
to far higher attainments and success.
He is about thirty-five years of age,
and specially well known to Andrew
D. White.
“But I should hunt first for younger
men for one of these chairs, on the
principle on which Dr. Johnson said,
“You can make a good deal even out
of a Scotchman, if you catch him
early.’ I mean the type of men so well
illustrated by your Mr. W. L. Phelps,—
the only really effective teacher you
now have in that Department.
“IT can give you some suggestions of
such men a little later, if desired. You
must bear in mind, however, how mea-
gre are my opportunities to seek out
such men, and how ample are yours.”
It is for Professor Beers, not me, to
explain, if explanation be needed, how
he came to any knowledge of the letter
from which I have now quoted, as well
as to explain, where explanation is cer-
tainly needed, how he came to state that
I “nominated my own brother, Rev.
I do not know for my life.
Leander Chamberlain, and Col. Homer
B. Sprague.” He knows, I suppose, the
sound rule both of reason and of law—
suppressio veri est suggestio falsi.
WILL CONTINUE TO AGITATE.
In conclusion, I have to remark that
this matter of English at Yale will be
kept before the public till relief comes,
be it sooner or later. Professor Beers
or others may think, or affect to think,
this is my “rhetoric,” not to be “taken
seriously.” I think they will live to
see their error.
To the President, the gentlemen of
the Corporation, the members of the
Faculty,—to them all,— let me say:
Come out into the open; recollect for
a moment you are servants, not mas-
ters; mere passing almoners, momen-
tary trustees, of a bounty not your own;
tell us in some proper and dignified
way what are your difficulties in filling
the Sanford chair, or if there are no
difficulties, why you delay; give us
surely some better reason than that
you have in three years offered it to
three persons who have declined it,
for we know it can be filled, full to
overflowing, in thirty days at any time.
If the English Department is all it
should be, prove it to our satisfaction, .
as you easily can; I am eager to put
all I have said to the test. Appoint an
able, fearless, impartial committee who
shall examine and inquire and report,
a committee necessarily not of your
number or specially connected with
those who are, not necessarily gradu-
ates of Yale, but fair-minded experts,
like the Harvard Committee,—Adams,
Godkin, Nutter. You can, if you are
right and I and. those I speak for are
wrong, put us to silence and to shame
almost as deep as is said to have been
cast on you by Professor Beer’s letter
which I have now noticed. We are not
enemies or intruders; you cannot make
us enemies of Yale. We are friends,
and we would be co-workers with you
in all fidelity to Yale. Meet us on these
terms and there shall be peace.
D. H. CHAMBERLAIN.
Elm Knoll Farm,
West Brookfield, Mass.
March 5, 1808. .
+
ome
PT teste
Athletic Calendar.
March 12.—Annual indoor games,
Second Regiment Armory, New Haven.
April 23—Annual Spring games,
open to Yale men, at Yale Field.
April 23.—University of Pennsylvania
relay races at Philadelphia.
April 30.—Invitation games, at Yale
Field.
May 14.—Dual Yale-Harvard track
games, at Cambridge.
May 27 and _ 28. — Intercollegiate
games, New York.
June 4.—Yale-Princeton baseball at
New Haven.
June 11.—Yale-Princeton baseball at
Princeton.
June 18.—Yale-Princeton baseball at
New York, if necessary in case of a tie.
June 23.—Yale-Harvard baseball at
Cambridge.
June 28.—Yale-Harvard baseball at
New Haven.
July 2—Yale-Harvard baseball at
New York, if necessary in case of a tie.
- ws
GR ail
Charles Bill Memorial.
There has recently been placed in the
Trophy Room at the Gymnasium a
large silver cup presented to the Ath-
letic Association by Mr. Ledyard Bill,
as a memorial of his brother, the late
Charles Bill, 64S. The cup is heavily
chased and is mounted on an ebony
base. On the front it bears the inscrip-
tion, ‘Presented to the Athletic Asso-
ciation of Yale University for Inter-
class Competition. Given as a Memo-
rial of the late Charles Bill, of the Class
of 1864.”
The cup will be contested for annu-
ally by the four classes of the Univer-
sity in the three branches of athletics—
football, baseball and rowing.
It will be kept in the Trophy Room
and on the back of it will be engraved
the name of the class winning it in at
least two of the three branches.
A number of men from the University
Glee and Banjo Clubs gave a concert
at the Hotchkiss School, Lakeville,
Friday, March 4. The annual concert
given at Smith College will occur on
Friday, March It.
Among the signs of
Spring carelessly over-
looked by the poets in
the March Magazines
are seven hundred ex-
quisite designs for shirts
at the store of
CHASE & COMPANY,
NEW HAVEN HOUSE BLOCK.
ae
Samples can go anywhere the
Alumni Weekly can go,
FRANK A. CORBIN,
TAILOR
TO THE
STUDENTS OF YALE
AND TO THE
GRADUATES
in all parts of the country,
Address :
1000 Chapel Street,
New Haven, Conn.
Loving Cup for Rodgers.
The 1900 Navy has presented a very
handsome loving cup to J. O. Rodgers,
98, in appreciation of his coaching the
Crew last Spring. The cup has in-
scribed on it, “J. O. Rodgers from the
Nineteen-hundred Crew.” It is of very
unique design, being of heavy cut glass
wai silver rims. and handles of buck
orn.
: 4 ‘
The hockey teams of Yale and
Columbia played a tie game last Satur-
day evening at the Clermont Avenue
Rink, Brooklyn. The tie will be
played off on Saturday, March 12th,
at the same place.
“Spring Styles Ready.”
That’s a very familiar sentence, and
often a very unsatisfactory one. It
leaves you wondering. There are
But no further
Specification is necessary, when the
styles and_ styles.
reference is to
KNOX HATS.
All the rest is implied and guaran-
teed—grace, propriety, fabric.
Full-grown Men
: —LIKE—
THE SUN.