[355] very cheerfully. In about a year and a half, I began to find out that there was much idleness and dissipation in College, of which the resident teachers were ignorant, and I began to feel that $2,000 per annum were spent nominally to teach the French and Spanish languages and literatures, when in fact no such thing was done. I went to the President, therefore, as the head of the College, and explained my difficulties to him, in the spring of 1821. In June of that year I had several formal conversations with him. They ended in nothing. I talked, also, with Mr. Norton, Mr. Frisbie, and Dr. Ware,1 all of whom thought great changes necessary, and the two first thought the Corporation should be applied to, while the latter, Dr. Ware, thought public opinion should be brought to act on the immediate government, and compel them to a more efficient administration of the College. I then went to Mr. Prescott.2 He was so far moved with the statements I made to him—in July, 1821—that he desired me to reduce them to writing. I wrote him a letter of nearly twenty pages, much of which is in my printed ‘Remarks.’ It is dated July 31, 1821, and at his request I made copies of it, and gave one to the President, one to Mr. Lowell, and one to Judge Davis, etc. I showed it, also, to Mr. Norton, Mr. Frisbie, and Dr. Ware, who expressed themselves strongly satisfied; the first, Mr. Norton, in a long letter, and the two last verbally. Mr. Farrar thought changes unnecessary. The Corporation, in consequence of this letter, issued a circular to all the teachers, dated September 12, 1821, containing seven pages of all possible questions, to which was afterwards added a request to each teacher to suggest anything he might desire to have done, or changed at College, even if not suggested by the questions themselves. Most of the teachers answered in the course of the autumn. My answers are dated October 23, and fill thirty pages. Mr. Frisbie's were nearly as long, and are the only memorial he ever sent to the Corporation. Mr. Norton's and Mr. Farrar's were longer, and so on.
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1 All of them professors in the College.
2 Hon. William Prescott, then a member of the Corporation. The management of Harvard College was then, as now, in the hands of three separate bodies, the first of these being the Faculty, or immediate government, having the entire discipline of the students in its hands; the second being the Corporation, having the management of the funds and revenues of the College, and the appointment of instructors, with other duties exercised under the supervision of the third body, the Overseers, representing the interests of the graduates and of the public at large.
Boston, J. R. Osgood and company, 1876.
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