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PREFACE

THIS book was prepared by one who, not many years ago, was a good-for-nothing Freshman. I much lament now, the time and opportunity which I ignorantly and idly wasted that first year in college. I do not think, though, that I was altogether to blame, for at that time I had a very vague conception of the real meaning of a college course. I think that I now know how it was that I made so many mistakes the first year. It is in the light of these useful experiences of my own that I am now prompted to make a modest attempt to aid a new generation of Freshmen during their first months in college. For a long time, in common with many other college instructors, I have been much grieved over the needless waste of Freshman life. In many of our larger institutions a considerable percentage of the Freshman class has been sent home during the year; and in every Freshman class there are a good many students who stumble and blunder painfully through the year, and if saved are saved only as by fire. I cannot but think that, as instructors and older college men, we owe it to Freshmen, in some measure at least, to show them the way to the things that are worth while, and to set the signal lights for them along a somewhat perilous route. And surely it must somehow be possible for a boy to learn without enrolling in the school of hard knocks. It seems to me that there is almost no type of wisdom so high as that which, by anticipation, can learn from the faults and follies, from the virtues and successes of others how to choose the right course of action and how to avoid the wrong one. At any rate, it is with the

friendliest desire for the welfare of the Freshman and with the most confident belief that in the breast of the typical college youth good qualities ever predominate, that I offer my help through this book.

My own contribution to the book is small, for I have preferred to select my material mostly from the writings and the utterances of men of secure distinction. I am under obligation to these men for their generous consent to reprint what they have said or written. I therefore here record my grateful acknowledgment to President David Starr Jordan, to President William DeWitt Hyde, to President Charles William Eliot, to President Alexander Meiklejohn, and to President John Grier Hibben for the use of articles reprinted under their names. I desire, also, to express my special obligation to the various publishers who have so kindly permitted me to use material which bears their copyright, and to Mrs. Phoebe E. Johnson and Mrs. Harriet W. Thoburn for permission to reprint the addresses of their deceased husbands. I wish that I might also make due acknowledgment to the many writers whose articles or books I have read but whose names I have not been able to mention. In recognition of their aid, and as a partial guide to the student who may desire to read more on college subjects, I have included a list of a score or more of the most useful books and articles that have come under my eye. And finally, I must not fail to express my thanks to my esteemed colleagues, Professors W. A. Elliott and S. S. Swartley, and to Professor Lincoln R. Gibbs, for their valuable suggestions and their painstaking reading of my manuscript.

MEADVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA,

June 20, 1913.

F. C. L.

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