"Patient, Sagacious Leadership. . . ."

President Eliot has himself set forth with characteristic simplicity and clarity the facts of his own life. A bare summary is as follows:

He was born in 1834, attended private elementary school in Boston, and at ten years of age entered the Boston Public Latin School. At fifteen he went to Harvard College. In addition to the narrow classical program which he pursued in common with all boys of the Latin School, he had lessons in carpentry and wood turning which his father, whose ideas about education were as President Eliot says, "much in advance of his times," was at pains to secure for him. Although Josiah Quincy had introduced into Harvard College a certain measure of election, this had largely disappeared under the Presidency of Jared Sparks, by 1849, when President Eliot entered the College. He was enabled to give up Greek and specialize in mathematics during his Senior year, and he also "enjoyed special privileges in being admitted to the private laboratory of the young Professor of Chemistry, Josiah P. Cook." He payed special attention to declamation. In spite of difficulty with his eyes during his Junior year, he graduated the second scholar in his class.

Mr. Eliot became tutor in mathematics in the College during the winter of 1853-54, under the presidency of James Walker. With his friend and fellow-tutor, James Mills Peirce, he introduced the first written examination ever conducted for entire classes at Harvard College. In 1858, Mr. Eliot was promoted to be Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Chemistry--"the grade of Assistant Professor being then created for the first time in the University, with a definition that has remained unchanged to this day." He rowed in crews made up of graduate students and a few College officers, and in 1858 took part in a regatta in the first shell ever to appear on the Charles. The choice of crimson as the Harvard color arose out of the fact that Mr. Eliot and a fellow oarsman chose red silk handkerchiefs as the color for the Harvard crew in that regatta. He was doing full College work during this rowing period, besides superintending the construction of Appleton Chapel and a house of his own, which he occupied next fall on his marriage to Miss Ellen Derby Peabody.

Mr. Eliot's experience as tutor and Assistant Professor convinced him that under a system of prescription, work of high excellence could not be expected from the general body of undergraduates. "I saw clearly," he says, "that a prescribed system, particularly when it was conducted with all possible efficiency had a very deadening effect on scholarship and intellectual ambition in the teacher."

After a brief period in charge of the chemical laboratory of the Lawrence Scientific School and two years in Europe studying educational institutions and pursuing his work in chemistry and technology; he became Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This position he held for four years. In 1869, a few days before the death of his wife from tuberculosis, he was elected President of Harvard College. His ideas were known to be very advanced and the Board of Overseers at first rejected his election, subsequently consenting to it by divided vote. He says, "I had not taken much interest in the discussion over me and was content to find relief from the sorrow at home in strenuous labor at the Institute of Technology. When, however, my election as president had been completed--unexpectedly to me--I turned at once to the functions of the President and the needs of Harvard University, and in a few weeks had become absorbed in the new duties."

Mr. Eliot was President of Harvard College for forty years. "During this long period," he says, "the University increased greatly in size, wealth and influence. This increase was due to a great variety of causes and to the labors of a group of men in the Corporation, Overseers, and Faculties, who worked together toward common educational and ethical ideals." All who know the history of Mr. Eliot's presidency realize that it was his own strong, patient, sagacious leadership which made this expansion of the University possible.

In October, 1877, Mr. Eliot married Miss Grace Mellon Hopkinson. In the midst of his labors as President, he always found time for recreation with his family and for exercises in the open air. In the summers, especially, he took great pleasure and found much credit in cruising.

The outstanding achievements of President Eliot at Harvard were the introduction of the elective system into the College and fundamental reforms in the teaching of medicine and of the law. He built up the graduate department of the University and brought the whole institution to a position of eminence in scholarship.

On the occasion of President Eliot's eighty-eighth birthday, the present writer contributed to the CRIMSON a brief appreciation of his life and work, emphasizing his influence on the education of the country at large. During the last two years his influence, as well as President Eliot's leadership in the moulding of opinion on questions of public importance, has continued unabated. I venture to close this meager account of Mr. Eliot's life by quoting the paragraphs written for the CRIMSON two years ago.

"Few men have been honored more within their own life time than President Eliot, and few have so well deserved the honors that they have received. As a university president, he probably achieved more substantial results for the institution he served than any man in a similar position in the history of this country; but his influence has been far wider in its scope than the university, even when the influence of Harvard graduates and Harvard teachers is taken into account. President Eliot has been in a true sense an educational leader for the nation. The educational policies he introduced into Harvard College have been taken up not only by other collegiate institutions, but also by the schools and he has had a profound influence through his direct leadership in school affairs. In speeches, essays, and committee reports, his opinions have had currency among teacher and school officers and have by them been given great weight in the determination of school policies. His influence has been sought in other fields as well, but it is hardly too much to say tha this greatest service has been for the schools of America and that his best fame is due to his leadership in American education.

"Years ago, President Eliot made an address, which was subsequently printed and widely circulated, called "More Money for the Public Schools." He served as President of the National Educational Association and has given much time and attention throughout his career to the professional preparation of teachers. He was Chairman of the Committee of Ten on Secondary Education, whose report, in the early nineties, had a great influence on the high schools of the country. These are but items out of a long list which could be made of the services which President Eliot has rendered to the public schools of the country.

"It was President Eliot who called to Harvard in 1891 Professor Paul H. Hanus to serve as one of the first university professors of education ever appointed in this country. President Eliot thus initiated the development which has resulted in the establishment of the Graduate School of Education. He has always shown the keenest interest in the growth of the work Harvard has done in the technical training of teachers and superintendents and has never failed to express his belief in the future of that work. The gift of half a million dollars from the General Education Board, which forms the basis of the endowment of the Graduate School of Education, was made by the Board largely in recognition of Professor Hanus's services to education and also with an expression of special satisfaction in the fact that the fund for the School was to bear the name of the President who brought him to Harvard, Charles William Eliot.

"It was most appropriate that the fund should be thus named, and the School is honored and favored by the designation. An institution designed for the study of the complicated and difficult problems of education in a democracy and for the preparation, through the study of such problems, of those who are to administer the schools of the country and to teach in them, could go forward under no better auspices. Nor is it granted to many institutions to rejoice in the health and vigor of such a patron at eighty-eight, nor in the happy prospect of his long continued activity."