t a ten per cent increase
in expenditures and but nine more stoodents."

"Let us not wholly forget," said West, with his disarming smile, "my
hope to add substantially to the endowment."

But he marked this trustee as one likely to give trouble in the future,
and hence to be handled with care. He was a forthright, upstanding,
lantern-jawed man of the people, by the name of James E. Winter. A
contractor by profession and a former member of the city council, he
represented the city on the board of trustees. For the city appropriated
seventy-five hundred dollars a year, for the use of the college, and in
return for this munificence, reserved the right to name three members of
the board.

Nor was Mr. Winter the only man of his kidney on that directorate. From
his great friend among the trustees, Mr. Fyne, donator of the fifty
thousand dollar endowment on which Blaines College partly subsisted,
West learned that his election to the presidency had failed of being
unanimous. In fact, the vote had stood seven to five, and the meeting at
which he was chosen had at times approached violence. Of the five, two
had voted against West because they thought that old Dr. Gilfillan's
resignation did not have that purely spontaneous character so desirable
under the circumstances; two because they did not think that West had
the qualifications, or would have the right point of view, for a
people's college; and one for all these reasons, or for any other
reason, which is to say for personal reasons. This one, said Mr. Fyne,
was James E. Winter.

"I know," said West. "He's never got over the poundings we used to give
him in the _Post_ when he trained with those grafters on the Council.
He'd put poison in my tea on half a chance."

Unhappily, the sharp cleft made in the board at the time of the election
survived and deepened. The trustees developed a way of dividing seven to
five on almost all of West's recommendations which was anything but
encouraging. An obstinate, but human, pride of opinion tended to keep
the two factions facing each other intact, and matters very tiny in
themselves served, as the weeks went by, to aggravate this feeling.
Once, at least, before Christmas, it required all of West's tact and
good-humor to restore the appearance of harmony to a meeting which was
fast growing excited.

But the young president would not allow himself to become discouraged.
He earnestly intended to show James E. Winter which of the two