Chapter XII: The National Research Council 349 (5)

His face looked to me like that of a lion and his long gray locks, reaching almost to his shoulders, supported this illusion. The church provided a setting worthy of his striking appearance. The grand organ behind and above the pulpit supplied a harmonious musical background to the magnificent singing of the large choir. I felt that the thrilling music was tuning me up for the sermon which the great orator was about to preach, and I was right. The sermon was free from involved theological analysis; it dealt with simple questions of human life and its determination by human habits. It was a dramatic and poetic presentation of the little sermons which Jim preached in the Cortlandt Street boiler-room, but in a very plain form of statement. The fact, however, that I found many spiritual bonds between great Plymouth Church and Jim’s humble boiler-room shows me to-day why Beecher touched the heart-strings of the plain people. He helped them to solve some of their problems of life just as Jim tried to help me solve mine. But Jim was not a cultured man and he delivered his chunks of practical wisdom in the same offhand manner in which he fed shovelfuls of coal to the busy fires under his boilers. Beecher, on the other hand, was a great orator and a great poet, and every little grain of wisdom stored up in human life was placed before his congregation with all the force of his overpowering personality and with all the embellishments with which the imagination of a poetical nature could clothe it. I felt thrills creeping over my whole body as I listened, and the effect was not only mental and spiritual, but also physical, undoubtedly because of the quickening of the blood’s circulation produced by the mental exhilaration. Bilharz, although a rigid Roman Catholic, admitted, after hearing Beecher several times, that great sermons are possible even without any theological flavoring. “But,” said he in his usual dramatic way, “everything is possible to a poetic soul which is propelled by the wings of a genius.” A remarkable concession from a man of Bilharz’s training and mental attitude!

Jim, who was a strict Presbyterian, rejoiced that I had picked out a Congregational Church for religious worship, and old Lukanitch confessed that if I persuaded his children to go with me to Plymouth Church very often they might desert the Roman Catholic faith of their ancestors. I felt assured, however, that St. Sava and the Orthodoxy of my mother would never lose me through the influence of Beecher’s genius, because Beecher was preaching to all humanity and not to a particular creed. His words were like the life-giving radiation of the sun, which shines upon all things alike. I saw in him a living example of that type of American who, like Hamilton, Jay, Livingston, and the other great men of whom I had heard at the Philadelphia exposition, were the spiritual and the intellectual giants of the Revolutionary period. My study of the history of Hamilton’s life had shown me that the number of these giants was large; many of them signed the Declaration of Independence. I did not fail to see in this a most propitious omen of a great future for the country. What a spiritual giant Lincoln must have been, I thought, when I heard Beecher refer to him with humblest veneration! Beecher was the sunrise which dispelled much of that mist which prevented my eyes, just as it prevents all foreign eyes, from seeing the clear outline of American civilization.

Four years previously I had for the first time attended an American church service in Delaware City, and had carried away the impression that in matters of public worship America was not up to the standards prescribed by the Serbian Church. Beecher and his Plymouth Church changed my judgment completely. Beecher’s congregation seemed to me like a beehive full of honey-hearted beings. Each of them reminded me of the Americans who had befriended me at the railroad-station in Vienna, and had rescued me from the official dragon who threatened to send me back to the prisons of the military frontier. I firmly believed that Beecher was preaching a new gospel, the American gospel of humanity, the same gospel which his great sister had preached. Every member of his congregation looked to me like a faithful disciple of this doctrine.

One of those honey-hearted disciples was a Doctor Charles Shepard, of Columbia Heights, Brooklyn. He and his family were Unitarians, I think, but they often attended Plymouth Church on account of their great admiration for Beecher. Doctor Shepard’s family was, in my opinion, a family of saints; generosity, refinement, and spiritual discipline filled the golden atmosphere of their home. When I disclosed my plans to the good doctor, he offered to help me carry them out. He was an ardent advocate of the curative powers of hydropathy in conjunction with proper diet and total abstinence from alcohol and tobacco. “Cleanliness is next to godliness” was his motto, and by cleanliness he meant freedom from unclean habits of every kind. His theory was successfully practised in his hydropathic establishment, and he flourished, and his institution was famous. His very old father, over eighty years of age, who managed the office of the establishment, needed assistance, and Doctor Shepard offered me the position and spoke of getting a friend of his to help me prepare for entrance to Columbia. His friend was Professor Webster, who taught Greek and Latin at the Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn. I jumped at Doctor Shepard’s offer, although the prospect of deserting Jim and Bilharz made me hesitate. But Jim applauded my decision and he recalled his prophecy that I should soon outgrow the opportunities of the New England Cracker Factory. Bilharz expressed his gratification that he had contributed to my progress, and he certainly had, both by what he praised and by what he condemned. He was sincere in both, but his praise was founded upon a rare knowledge of classical literatures, while his condemnation was due to prejudice against science and against American democracy. The real secret of his grip upon my imagination I shall disclose later.

Professor Webster was an ideal pedagogue; his pupils were boys and girls from some of the best families of Brooklyn. Their teacher was to them an apostle of classical culture, in which they were much interested, partly because of their admiration for their beloved teacher. After a few private lessons he invited me to join his classes in Greek and Latin, where I was received with many signs of cordiality from both the boys and the girls. Like myself, they were preparing for college. I attended these classes three times a week and entertained them much by my continental pronunciation of Greek and Latin, which I had learned from Bilharz, who had also taught me to recite the Greek and Latin hexameter with proper intonation. This delighted the heart of Professor Webster and of his pupils. Recitations of Greek and Latin verses with faultless rhythm were all which at first I could offer to the entertainment of my classmates. After a while I entertained some of them with Serbian poetry and also with Serbian kolo dancing. I made every effort to make them forget that I was a Balkan barbarian; but everybody, as if reading my thoughts, assured me that I was contributing more to the Adelphi Academy than I was getting in return. I knew better. I felt that the association with those splendid boys and girls and with Professor Webster contributed much more to my preparation for Columbia than all the book work which I had ever done anywhere.

Doctor Shepard and his family saw the rapid change in me, I thought, and many of their evidences of approval were very encouraging. When I first met Doctor Shepard he was strongly pro-Turkish whenever the Balkan war, which was raging at that time, was discussed. He had a notion that the Serbians were a rebellious and barbarous race. During the early part of 1879 he gradually shifted to the Serbian side, and I was bold enough to take all credit for it to myself. I considered his and his family’s approval the best test of the success of my efforts to understand the American standards of conduct. This success meant much more to me in my preparation for college than the success in my studies.

In an interscholastic athletic contest I volunteered to run in a ten-mile race without any previous training, and won. From that day on my friends at the Adelphi Academy regarded me as one of their number, and it was a liberal education to me to listen to their eulogies of _my loyalty to them and to their institution_, which, they said, I displayed when I fought under the Adelphi banner on the athletic field. Legends began to grow up among the Adelphi boys and girls about a Serbian youngster who had won the ten-mile race without previous training. When your young and enthusiastic friends begin to indulge in legends about you, be assured that you are getting on some. But legends, like nursery rhymes, will lull you to sleep if you are not very, very wide-awake. This experience made me see clearly what young Lukanitch had meant when he told me what oarsmanship might do for me at Columbia even if I did not know much Greek and Latin. I was confirmed in this when the boys of the Adelphi Academy who expected to enter Yale or Princeton used much of their persuasive powers to steer me to these colleges. It encouraged me much and diminished greatly my anxiety about “social unpreparedness.” But my answer was that the college of Hamilton, Jay, and Livingston, in the City of New York, was the port for which I was sailing, and that Beecher’s church in Brooklyn would be one of the anchors to keep me there, and that Beecher, as far as I was concerned, would be a part of Columbia College.

The summer vacation of 1879 was approaching, and I knew that all my academic friends in New York and Brooklyn would leave for the country. There was nothing to keep me in Brooklyn except my obligations to good Doctor Shepard. He excused me when I told him that I wished to devote all my time during that summer to study, so as to insure my passing with a high mark all my entrance examinations in the following autumn. A high mark would gain me freedom from all tuition fees at Columbia, a very serious consideration. Doctor Shepard approved, and I moved to what I called, jokingly, my summer “villa” on the Passaic River, near Rutherford Park, New Jersey. It was a tiny little cottage near the bank of the river; it had not been occupied for a long time, and it was looked after by an old Danish woman who lived quite near it. She kept two cows and a lot of chickens and ducks and sold butter and eggs and fowl. Her son Christopher peddled kindling-wood in Passaic, Belleville, and Newark, New Jersey. The old lady consented to let me live in the cottage until a permanent tenant should appear, and she was willing to take care of me for a certain payment per week. I accepted her terms on condition that she allow me to work off a certain part of the agreed amount by sawing kindling-wood from ten to twelve in the morning and from four to six in the afternoon. My suggestion made her thoughtful, and she finally confessed her fear that my exercises before meals might give me such an appetite that I should eat her out of house and home. We agreed to try the scheme for a week, and we were both satisfied with the result. She took good care of me, and I furnished her with more kindling-wood for her son’s trade than she had ever expected. Moreover, the regular help, who was hired for the specific purpose of cutting kindling-wood, increased his output, in order to keep up with me. I enjoyed the work hugely as means of splendid exercise, and rejoiced in making the output as large as possible. The old lady was delighted with the unexpected result. Every two-hour period of sawing and splitting of kindling-wood was followed by a dip and swim in the Passaic River, and by the end of the summer I was all muscle and could have run a race of twenty miles without any previous training. This proved a very valuable asset in the beginning of my college career; muscle and brawn are splendid things to take along when one enters college, and have while in college. Several incidents in my college career bear upon the interesting feature of athletics in American college life, and I shall describe them later even at the risk of appearing egotistical. This feature is characteristically American and is quite unknown on the continent of Europe.

Eight hours each day I devoted to study: three in the morning to Greek, three in the afternoon to Latin, and two in the evening to other studies. It was a most profitable summer outing of over three months, and it cost me only thirty dollars; the rest was paid in sawing and splitting of kindling-wood. Whenever I read now about the Kaiser’s activities at Doorn, I think of my summer activities in 1879, and I wonder who in the world suggested my scheme to William Hohenzollern!

During the last week of September of that year I presented myself at Columbia for entrance examinations. They were oral, and were conducted by the professors themselves and not by junior instructors. The first two books of the Iliad, excepting the catalogue of ships, and four orations of Cicero, I knew by heart. My leisure time at my Passaic River “villa” had permitted me these pleasant mental gymnastics; I wanted to show off before Bilharz with my Greek and Latin quotations; to say nothing of the wonderful mental exhilaration which a young student gets from reading aloud and memorizing the words of Homer and of Cicero. The professors were greatly surprised and asked me why I had taken so much trouble. I told them that it was no trouble, because Serbs delight in memorizing beautiful lines. The Serbs of Montenegro, for instance, know by heart most of the lines which their great poet Nyegosh ever wrote, and particularly his great epic “The Mountain Glory.” I told them also of illiterate Baba Batikin, the minstrel of my native village, who knew most of the old Serbian ballads by heart. Besides, I assured the professors, I wanted to do in Greek and Latin as well as I possibly could, so as to gain free tuition. For the other studies I was not afraid, I told them, and they assured me that my chances for free tuition were certainly good. The other examinations gave me no trouble, thanks to my training with Bilharz and with the lecturers in the evening classes at Cooper Union. A note from the Registrar’s office informed me a few days later that I was enrolled as a student in Columbia College with freedom from all tuition fees. There was no person in the United States on that glorious day happier than I!

The college atmosphere which I found at Columbia at that time gave me a new sensation. I did not understand it at first and misinterpreted many things. The few days preceding the opening of the college sessions I spent chasing around for a boarding-house, while my classmates were hanging around the college buildings, making arrangements to join this or that fraternity, and also solidifying the line of defense of the freshmen against the hostile sophomores. There was a lively process of organization going on under the leadership of groups of boys who came from the same preparatory schools. These groups led and the others were expected to follow without a murmur. Insubordination or even indifference was condemned as lack of college spirit. This spirit was necessary among the freshmen particularly, because, as I was informed later, there was a great common danger--the sophomores! I saw some of this feverish activity going on, but did not understand its meaning and hence remained outside of it, as if I were a stranger and not a member of the freshman class, which I heard described, by the freshmen themselves, as the best freshman class in the history of Columbia. The sophomores denied this in a most provoking manner; hence the hostility. Nobody paid any attention to me; nobody knew me, because I did not come from any of the preparatory schools which prepared boys for Columbia. One day I saw on the campus two huge waves of lively youngsters beating against each other just like inrolling waves of the sea lifting on their backs the returning waves which had been reflected from the cliffs of the shore. The freshmen were defending a cane against fierce attacks of the sophomores. It was the historic Columbia cane rush, I was told by Michael, the college janitor, who stood alongside of me as I looked on. It was not a real fight resulting in broken noses or blackened eyes, but just a most vigorous push-and-pull contest, the sophomores trying to take possession of a cane which a strong freshman, surrounded by a stalwart body-guard of freshmen, was holding and guarding just as a guard of fanatic monks would defend the sacred relics of a great saint. This freshmen group was the centre of the scrimmage and it stood there like a high rock in the midst of an angry sea. Coats and shirts were torn off the backs of the brave fighters, some attacking and others defending the central group, but not a single ugly swear-word was heard nor did I see a single sign of intentional bloodshed. Members of the junior and senior classes watched as umpires. Michael, the janitor, who knew everybody on the college campus as a shepherd knows his sheep, was not quite certain about my identity. He asked me whether I was a freshman, and when I said “yes,” he asked me why in the world I was not in the rush, defending the freshmen body-guard. He looked so anxious and worried that I felt sure of being guilty of some serious offense against old Columbia traditions. I immediately took off my coat and stiff shirt and plunged into the surging waves of sophomores and freshmen and had almost reached the central body-guard of freshmen, eager to join in its defense, when a sophomore, named Frank Henry, grabbed me and pulled me back, telling me that I had no business to cross the line of umpires at that late moment. I did not know the rules of the game and shoved him aside and we clinched. He was the strongest man in Columbia College, as I learned later, but my kindling-wood operations on the banks of the Passaic River had made me a stiff opponent. We wrestled and wrestled and would have wrestled till sunset like Prince Marco and the Arab Moussa Kessedjia in the old Serbian ballads, if the umpires had not proclaimed the cane rush a draw. The main show being over, the side show which Henry and I were keeping up had no further useful purpose to serve, and we stopped and shook hands. He was glad to stop, he admitted, and so was I, but he told my classmates that “if that terrible Turk had been selected a member of the freshmen body-guard the result of the cane rush might have been different.” I told him that I was a Serb, and not a Turk, and he apologized, saying that he could never draw very fine distinctions between the various races in the Balkans. “But, whatever race you are,” said he, “you will be a good fellow if you will learn to _play the game_.” Splendid advice from a college boy! “_Play the game_,” what a wonderful phrase! I studied it long, and the more I thought about it the more I was convinced that one aspect of the history of this country with all its traditions is summed up in these three words. No foreigner can understand this country who does not know the full meaning of this phrase, which I first heard from a Columbia College youngster. No foreign language can so translate the phrase as to reproduce its brevity and at the same time convey its full meaning. But, when I heard it, I thought of the bootblacks and newsboys who, five years previously, had acted as umpires when I defended my right to wear a red fez. To “play the game” according to the best traditions of the land which offered me all of its opportunities was always my idea of Americanization. But how many immigrants to this land can be made to understand this?

Some little time after this incident I was approached by the captain of the freshman crew, who asked me to join his crew. I remembered young Lukanitch’s opinion about oarsmanship at Columbia, and I was sorely tempted. But, unfortunately, I had only three hundred and eleven dollars when I started my college career, and I knew that if I was to retain my free tuition by high standing in scholarship and also earn further money for my living expenses I should have no time for other activities. “Study, work for a living, no participation in college activities outside of the recitation-room! Do you call that college training?” asked the captain of the freshman crew, looking perfectly surprised at my story, which, being the son of wealthy parents, he did not understand. I admitted that it was not, in the full sense of the word, but that I was not in a position to avail myself of all the opportunities which Columbia offered me, and that, in fact, I had already obtained a great deal more than an immigrant could reasonably have expected. I touched his sympathetic chord, and I felt that I had made a new friend. The result of this interview was that my classmates refrained from asking me to join any of the college activities for fear that my inability to comply with their request might make me feel badly. I had their sympathy, but I missed their fellowship, and therefore I missed in my freshman year much of that splendid training outside of the classroom which an American college offers to its students.

At the end of the freshman year I gained two prizes of one hundred dollars each, one in Greek and the other in mathematics. They were won in stiff competitive examinations and meant a considerable scholastic success, but, nevertheless, they excited little interest among my classmates. Results of examinations were considered a personal matter of the individual student himself and not of his fellow classmen. The prizes were practically the only money upon which I could rely to help carry me through my second year. The estimated budget for that year, however, was not fully provided for, and I looked for a job for the long summer vacation. I did not want a job in the city. My kindling-wood activity of the preceding summer suited me better, and after some consultation with my friend Christopher, the kindling-wood peddler of Rutherford Park, I decided to accept a job on a contract of his to mow hay during that summer in the various sections of the Hackensack lowlands. No Columbia athlete ever had a better opportunity to develop his back and biceps than I had during that summer. I made good use of it, and earned seventy-five dollars net.

When my sophomore year began I awaited the cane rush which, according to old Columbia custom, took place between the sophomores and the freshmen at the beginning of each academic year, and I was prepared for it; I knew also what it meant to “play the game.” This time my class had to do the attacking and I helped with a vengeance. The muscles which had been hardened in the Hackensack meadows proved most effective and the result was that shortly I had the freshmen’s cane on the ground, and was lying flat over it, covering it with my chest. The pressure of a score of freshmen and sophomores piled up on top of me threatened to squeeze the cane through my chest bone, which already, I imagined, was pressing against my lungs, my difficult breathing leading me to think that my last hour had come. Fortunately, the umpires cleared away the lively heap of struggling boys on top of me, and I breathed freely again. Some freshmen were found stretched alongside of me with their hands holding on to the stick. An equal number of sophomores held on, and, consequently, the umpires declared the rush a draw. Nobody was anxious to have another rush, and it was proposed by the freshmen to settle the question of class superiority by a wrestling-match, two best out of three falls, catch as catch can. They had a big fellow who had some fame as a wrestler of great strength, and they issued a defiant challenge to the sophomores. My classmates held a meeting in order to pick a match for the freshman giant, but nobody seemed to be quite up to the job. Finally I volunteered, declaring that I was not afraid to tackle the freshman giant. “Do you expect to down him with Greek verses and mathematical formulæ?” shouted some of my classmates, who had grave doubts about the muscle and the wrestling ability of a fellow who had won Greek and mathematical prizes. They knew nothing about my strenuous mowing in the Hackensack meadows during three long months of that summer. The captain of the class crew approached me, felt my biceps, my chest, and my back, and shouted, “All right!” The wrestling-match came off, and the freshman giant had no show with a boy who had learned the art of wrestling on the pasture-lands of Idvor, and had held his own against experienced mowers in the Hackensack meadows. The victory was quick and complete, and my classmates carried me in triumph to Fritz’s saloon, not far from the college, where many a toast was drunk to “Michael the Serbian.” From that day on my classmates called me by my first name and took me up as if I had been a distinguished descendant of Alexander Hamilton himself. My scholastic victory in Greek and mathematics meant nothing to my classmates, because it was a purely personal matter, but my athletic victory meant everything, because it was a victory of my whole class. Had I won my scholastic victory in competition with a representative from another college, then the matter would have had an entirely different aspect. _Esprit de corps_ is one of those splendid things which American college life cultivates, and I had the good fortune to reap many benefits from it. He who pays no attention to this _esprit de corps_ in an American college runs the risk of being dubbed a “greasy grind.”

The sophomore year opened auspiciously. Eight of my classmates formed a class, the Octagon, and invited me to coach them in Greek and in mathematics, twice a week. The captain of the class crew was a member of it. I suspected that he remembered my reasons for refusing to join the freshman crew and wanted to help. The Octagon class was a great help in more ways than one. I gave instruction in wrestling also to several classmates, in exchange for instruction in boxing. This was my physical exercise, and it was a strenuous one. Devereux Emmet, a descendant of the great Irish patriot, was one of these exchange instructors; he could stand any amount of punishment in our boxing bouts, which impressed upon my mind the truth of the saying that “blood will tell.” Before the sophomore year was over my classmates acknowledged me not only a champion in Greek and in mathematics, but also a champion in wrestling and boxing. The combination was somewhat unusual and legends began to be spun about it, but they did not turn my head, nor lull me to sleep, not even when they led to my election as class president for the junior year. This was indeed a great compliment, for, because of the junior promenade, the dance given annually by the junior class, it was customary to elect for that year a class president who was socially very prominent. A distinguished classmate, a descendant of three great American names, and a shining light in New York’s younger social set, was my chief opponent and I begged to withdraw in his favor; a descendant of Hamilton inspired awe. But my opponent would not listen to it. He was a member of the most select fraternity and not at all unpopular, but many of my classmates objected to him, although he was the grandson of a still living former Secretary of State and chairman of the board of trustees of Columbia College. They thought that he paid too much attention to the fashion-plates of London, and dressed too fashionably. There were other Columbia boys at that time who, I thought, dressed just as fashionably, and yet they were very popular; but they were fine athletes, whereas my opponent was believed to rely too much upon the history of his long name and upon his splendid appearance. He certainly was a fine example of classical repose; his classmates, however, admired action. He was like a young Alcibiades in breeding, looks, and pose, but not in action.

Some of the old American colleges have been accused from time to time of encouraging snobbery and a spirit of aristocracy which is not in harmony with American ideas of democracy. My personal experience as student at Columbia gives competency to my opinion upon that subject. Snobs will be found in every country and clime, but there were fewer snobs at Columbia in those days than in many other much less exalted places, although Columbia at that time was accused of being a nest of dudes and snobs. This was one of the arguments advanced by those friends of mine at the Adelphi Academy who tried to persuade me to go to Princeton or Yale. The spirit of aristocracy was there, but it was an aristocracy of the same kind as existed in my native peasant village. It was a spirit of unconscious reverence for the best American traditions. I say “unconscious,” and by that I mean absence of noisy chauvinism and of that racial intolerance by which the Teutonism of Austria and the Magyarism of Hungary had driven me away from Prague and from Panchevo. A name with a fine American tradition back of it attracted much attention, but it was only a letter of recommendation. He who was found wanting in his make-up and in his conduct when weighed by the best Columbia College traditions--and they were a part of American traditions--had a lonely time during his college career, in spite of his illustrious name or his family’s great wealth. Foreign-born students, like Cubans and South Americans, met with a respectful indifference so long as they remained foreigners. Needless to say, many of them adopted rapidly the attractive ways of the Columbia boys. But nobody would have resented it, or even paid any attention to it, if they had retained their foreign ways. A hopeless fellow became a member of that very small class of students known at that time as “muckers.” They complained bitterly of snobbery and of aristocracy. I do not believe that either the spirit of plutocracy, or of socialism and communism, or of any other un-American current of thought could ever start from an American college like Columbia of those days, and bore its way into American life. That type of aristocracy which made the American college immune from contagion by un-American influence existed; it was very exacting, and it was much encouraged. But when American college boys, accused of bowing to the spirit of aristocracy, have among them a Hamilton, a Livingston, a DeWitt, and several descendants of Jay, and yet elect for class president the penniless son of a Serbian peasant village, because they admire his mental and physical efforts to learn and to comply with Columbia’s traditions, one can rest assured that the spirit of American democracy was very much alive in those college boys.

My success with the Octagon class established my reputation as a doctor for “lame ducks.” This was the name of those students who failed in their college examinations, usually examinations in Greek, Latin, and mathematics. Lame ducks needed a special treatment, called coaching. I became quite an expert in it, and presently I saw a flock of lame ducks gathering around me, offering liberal rewards for a speedy cure. My summer vacations no longer called me to the Passaic River to cut kindling-wood, nor to the Hackensack meadows to strain my back to the utmost trying to keep up with experienced mowers. Coaching lame ducks was incomparably more remunerative and also left me with plenty of leisure time for tennis, horseback riding, or swimming and diving contests. During the college sessions I usually had in charge several bad cases of academic lameness, cases that could not be cured during the summer vacations, but had to be carefully nursed throughout the whole academic year. Financially I fared better than most of my young professors, and I saved, looking ahead for the realization of a pet dream of mine. My coaching experience was remunerative not only from the material but also from the cultural side; it brought me in touch with some of the best exponents of New York’s social life, where I found a hearty welcome, a friendly sympathy, and many lessons which I considered as among the most valuable acquisitions in my college life. One of them deserves special mention here.

Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, a trustee of Columbia College, was at that time the head of the famous Rutherfurd family. He was a gentleman of leisure and devoted himself to science and particularly to photographic astronomy, just as did his famous friend, Doctor John William Draper, the author of the “History of the Intellectual Development of Europe.” Rutherfurd was a pioneer worker in this field of astronomy, and his photographs of the moon and of the stars were always regarded by the scientists of the world as most valuable contributions to astronomy. The historic Rutherfurd mansion, with its astronomical observatory, was on Eleventh Street and Second Avenue. Rutherfurd’s sons, Lewis and Winthrop, were my fellow students at Columbia; Lewis was a year ahead of me and Winthrop was a year below me. Through their cousin, a chum and classmate of mine, I became acquainted with them. No handsomer boys ever sat in Hamilton Hall: tall, athletic, and graceful, just like two splendid products of the physical culture of classical Greece. One of them held the American championship in racquets, and the Long Island hunt clubs counted them among their best steeplechase riders. Lewis just squeezed his way through college, but Winthrop, owing to circumstances beyond his control, threatened to drop by the academic roadside; the load of some seven conditions was too heavy and too discouraging.

My chum, Winthrop’s cousin mentioned above, was a brilliant raconteur, and he used to spin out with wonderful skill many a funny tale about my coaching experiences, describing in a grotesque manner how an audacious youngster, straying over here from a Serbian peasant village, was bullying young aristocrats of New York, and how these aristocrats were submitting to it like little lambs. Rutherfurd, senior, who was my chum’s uncle, heard some of these humorous tales. He enjoyed them hugely, and they suggested to him a scheme for diminishing somewhat his son’s heavy load of conditions. He and his family were to spend the summer of 1882 in Europe, and he suggested that Winthrop and I go to his country place, where we could rule supreme and spend the summer preparing for Winthrop’s autumn examinations. Winthrop consented, in order to please his family, and he agreed to the definite programme of work which I prescribed. Rutherfurd, senior, was anxious that Winthrop should breathe the atmosphere of Columbia College for four years, even if he should not get the full benefit of the college curriculum. He had a view of college education which was somewhat novel to me and made me understand more clearly the question which the captain of the freshman crew had addressed to me in my freshman year: “Study, work for a living, no participation in college activities outside of the recitation rooms! Do you call that college training?” But I shall return to this a little later.

“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.

* * * * *

I have nearly finished the story of my college career, and I am aware that it is silent on a subject which was always dear to my heart; that subject is science. A young lad who was stimulated so much by the lives of the men represented in the Cooper Union library painting, entitled “Men of Progress”; by the splendid scientific exhibits in Philadelphia in 1876; by Jim’s boiler-room demonstrations supplemented by Cooper Union lectures on heat; by Tyndall’s and Hunt’s poetic descriptions of scientific achievements; and above all by his own visions concerning physical phenomena on the pasture-lands of his native village--that lad goes through college, and the story of his college career is nearly closed without saying anything about his scientific studies at Columbia College! That certainly looks strange, and suggests the inference that after all Bilharz had finally succeeded in tearing me away completely from what he called the worship of scientific materialism. Bilharz did not succeed in that, but what he actually did is worth relating here.

After my departure from Cortlandt Street, Bilharz felt quite lonesome and tried to get companionship and consolation from a Tyrolean zither which he managed well in spite of his stiff fingers. Knowing my fondness for Homer’s heroic verse and for the lyric verse in the chorus of Greek dramas, he practised reciting them with zither accompaniment. He thus imitated most successfully a Serbian guslar’s recitations of old Serbian ballads, accompanied by the single-string instrument, called _gusle_. In recognition of the success of his clever scheme, which, I was sure, he had devised for my special benefit, I called him the Greek guslar. He who has seen huge multitudes of Serbs assembled around a blind guslar in the midst of some great festive gathering, listening by the hour in spellbound silence to his recitations, will understand how Bilharz managed to attract me to many a neighborhood gathering on the top loft of the Cortlandt Street factory. Every time I listened to the zither accompanying his chanting of familiar Greek verses I imagined that Baba Batikin’s spirit was transferred from the little peasant village of Idvor to the great metropolis of America! Whenever I told him that, he seemed to be immensely pleased, because the life of a blind guslar appealed to him much. Professor Merriam was certainly a great Greek scholar, but Bilharz was a great Greek guslar, and when he chanted the verses of the Iliad with zither accompaniment I was tempted to imagine that he was a reincarnation of Homer. Between Bilharz and Merriam I could not help devoting much of my time in college to the study of Greek. I have never regretted it, but I do regret that the academic halls of the American colleges of to-day do not resound any more with that solemn Greek rhythm which I first heard on the top loft of the Cortlandt Street factory. Bilharz disappeared from Cortlandt Street a short time before I graduated, and he left me his zither as a souvenir, and also an old edition of Homer’s Iliad by the famous German philologist Dindorf. I have not seen him since that time, but I shall never forget him. He was the first to call my attention to an old and magnificent civilization, the spiritual beauty of which appealed to my young imagination with increasing force as my knowledge of it increased. I often recall his almost fanatical dislike of mechanisms, and wonder what he would say to-day if he heard the pianola, the phonograph, and some of the distortions of radio broadcasting, to say nothing of the dramatic atrocities of the kinematograph!

On the other hand, the growth of my understanding from the first day of my landing at Castle Garden was due to my feeding upon the spiritual food offered to me daily by a civilization in which I was living, and which I wished to understand but did not understand. My preparation for college lifted here and there the mist which prevented my vision from seeing the clear outline of American civilization. Columbia College brought me into touch with the college life of American boys and with men of great learning and wonderful personalities, and they helped me to dispel every particle of that mist, and there in the clear sunshine of their learning I saw the whole image of what I believed to be American civilization: a beautiful daughter of a beautiful mother, which is the Anglo-Saxon civilization. The memory of this vision always recalled to my mind the ode of Horace which opens with the line:

“O matre pulchra filia pulchrior!”

The study and the contemplation of these two civilizations, the ancient civilization of Greece and the new civilization of the Anglo-Saxons, which appealed to me as the two greatest civilizations of human history, made every other study in my college curriculum appear insignificant, although I gained several prizes in the exact sciences, and although I never gave up the idea that my future work would be in the field of science.