at his early decision
to become a mining engineer, like the wonderful man who had visited him
in Newberg, led him, when he came to the university, into the
class-rooms and laboratories of this kind and discerning scholar. Dr.
Branner quickly discovered "good material," something that he was always
looking for, in this industrious, intelligent, and ambitious Quaker
boy; and Herbert Hoover found in his major professor not only a teacher
but a friend, who, in both relations, has had a great influence, all for
the best, in his life. It is an interesting illumination of the
democracy of American education to note that while the professor became
the university's president the student became one of its trustees.

The first money-earning work that student Hoover did for Dr. Branner,
except for various little jobs about the laboratory or office, was a
summer's work on a large topographic model of Arkansas which that state
was having prepared by Dr. Branner after a new method devised by him.
Part of this summer was spent in the field in Arkansas and the rest of
it wrestling with the model in the basement of the professor's house.

Two summers were spent in work with the U. S. Geological Survey in the
California Sierras around Lake Tahoe and the American River under
Waldemar Lindgren, one of the greatest of American scientific mining
engineers. This work was on the relations of the famous Sierra placer
gold deposits to the original gold-bearing veins and lodes, and
resulted in tracing those comparatively recent placers back to the old
mountain slopes and valleys. It was a fascinating problem successfully
carried through. The young geologist's association with Lindgren, whose
standards of personal character and regard for the dignity and ethics of
his profession were of the highest, was a source of much valuable
education.

All this summer activity was of value to young Hoover not only for the
help it afforded him in his struggle for existence, and for the outdoor
exercise it involved, but for the practical experience in geological
work which it gave him to mix in with his lecture room and laboratory
acquisitions and to test them by. He seemed to have no difficulty in
getting all of this kind of work he had time to do. In fact, some of the
other students used to speak a little enviously and suggestively about
"Hoover's luck" in this connection. Dr. Branner happened to overhear
some remarks of this kind from a group around a labor