only under condition that, six weeks later, they should pass an examination in geography, full, satisfactory, and final. The young fellows now took their conditions very kindly, for they clearly saw the justice of them. One young man said to me: ``Professor, you are entirely right in conditioning me, but I was never so surprised in my life; if there was anything which I supposed I knew well it was geography; why, I have taught it, and very successfully, in a large public school.'' On my asking him how he taught a subject in which he was so deficient, he answered that he had taught his pupils to ``sing'' it. I replied that if he would sing the answers to my questions, I would admit him at once; but this he declined, saying that he much preferred to accept the conditions. In about six weeks I held the final examinations, and their success amazed us all. Not a man failed, and some really distinguished themselves. They had all gone at the work cordially and heartily, arranging themselves in squads and clubs for mutual study and examination on each physical and political map; and it is certain that by this simple, common-sense method they learned more in six weeks than they had previously learned in years of plodding along by rote, day after day through text-books. Nor was this mere ``cram.'' Their geographical knowledge lasted and was increased, as was proved at my historical examinations afterward. I soon became intensely interested in my work, and looked forward to it every day with pleasure. The first part of it was instruction in modern history as a basis for my lectures which were to follow, and for this purpose I used with the sophomores two text-books. The first of these was Robertson's ``Philosophical View of the Middle Ages,'' which forms the introduction to his ``Life of Charles the Fifth.'' Although superseded in many of its parts by modern investigation, very defective in several important matters, and in some things--as, for example, in its appreciation of medieval literature--entirely mistaken, it was, when written one hundred years ago, recognized as a classic, and it remains so to this day. It was a work of genius. Supplemented by elucidations and extensions, it served an admirable purpose in introducing my students to the things really worth knowing in modern history, without confusing them with masses of pedantic detail.