t the
culprit was sentenced to be hanged, shot, and burned; a decree carried
out on a gallows and bonfire previously prepared in spite of the
sophomores' best efforts.

This annual fracas assumed a particularly lurid character in 1860 and
the printed program was especially objectionable, a fault quite
characteristic of those days. The night had been a wild one and when it
became known that Dr. Tappan was to discuss the matter the next morning
in Chapel, there were many misgivings. To every one's surprise, however,
"there was no touch of reprimand in voice or word. In a sympathetic and
familiar way, he began to talk about college songs." He told how he had
once been greeted, upon opening his mail in Sweden, by a copy of the
song "Where, Oh Where, is Doctor Tappan?" an evidence of student
interest in his whereabouts which had cheered and inspired him mightily.
Then, as merely incidental, and by way of contrast, he referred in mild
tones to the obnoxious print of the night before,--"no moralizing but a
salutary and effective talk, which was greeted by hearty cheers."

Thus far we have been considering the student life of a University
which, judged by modern standards, was small and comparatively
homogeneous. The student of those days knew every one in college. The
professors were able to take a personal interest in all their pupils;
even the President made it a point to know every one by name. All this
has been changed within the last twenty-five years. Where in 1885 the
student enrolment was only about 1,300, it increased to 2,200 in 1890
and to 2,800 in 1895, and this rate of growth has continued almost
unbroken up to the present time. The result is that now there are nearly
9,000 students on the Campus during the college year, and with the
extraordinary increase which has followed the late war, there is every
prospect of this growth continuing.

In itself this is good evidence of the University's success as a center
of education; but these increasing throngs of students bring many
difficult problems, not the least of which is the necessity of finding
an adequate supply of teachers, class rooms, and laboratories. Equally,
life in the University becomes more complicated. The ideal simplicity of
academic life, the intimate contact between fellow-students and between
students and Faculties, is all too easily lost in the leveling
tendencies which numbers make inevitable. This is the great danger of
the large University--b