] and built their homes about on the wild prairie. It has now
twenty thousand inhabitants and is an important railroad as well as
educational centre. It was nearly fifty years old when I entered it as a
student. That I studied Greek did not keep me from knowing well a
carpenter; that in spare hours I learned a manual trade and put into type
my translation of "Prometheus Bound" did not bar me from the homes of the
richest or the most cultured. Once, when a student, because of some little
victory, I was received by the mayor and a committee of citizens, but the
men at the engines in the shops and on the engines in the yards blew their
whistles. When I went back to that college as its president it was not
remembered against me that I had sawed wood or driven a plough. I knew all
the conductors and most of the engineers on the railroads. I knew every
merchant and nearly every mechanic, as well as every lawyer, judge, and
doctor. Men had, to be sure, their preferential associations, but these
were personal and not determined of vocation or class.
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