No higher institution of learning in America is more strongly possessed by
the spirit of the ministry of scholarship directly to the people. It needs
sorely advice of the arts that centre in Paris, as most of those
universities do. It needs advice not of industry but of the indefatigable
disinterestedness of the French.
Behind the Falls of St. Anthony in the Mississippi River, first described
and named by Father Hennepin, is the University of Minnesota, with 6,642
students. The principal deity of the Sioux was supposed to live under
these falls, and Hennepin, the priest of Artois, speaks in his journal of
hearing one of the Indians at the portage around the falls, in loud and
lamenting voice haranguing the spirit to whom he had just hung a robe of
beaver-skin among the branches of a tree. The buildings that are and are
planned to be on this site would tell better than a chapter of description
what a single State has done and is purposing at this portage of St.
Anthony of Padua, where hardly more than a lifetime ago the savage was
sacrificing beaver-skins to the god of the Mississippi.
Pages:
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534