Calvin Wilson Mateer, forty-five years a missionary in Shantung, China : $b a biographyFisher, D. W. (Daniel Webster)
Religion
Calvin Wilson Mateer, forty-five years a missionary in Shantung, China : $b a biography
Fisher, D. W. (Daniel Webster)
Mateer, C. W. (Calvin Wilson), 1836-1908; Missionaries -- China -- Biography
years, but in this Mateer did not take much part. Most of us were still
immature enough to indulge in pranks that afforded us fun, but which were
more an expression of our immaturity than we then imagined; and Mateer
participated in one of these in connection with the Frémont-Buchanan
campaign in 1856. A great Republican meeting was held at Canonsburg, and
some of us students appeared in the procession as a burlesque company of
Kansas “border ruffians.” We were a sadly disgraceful-looking set. Of one
thing I am sure, that while Mateer gave himself constantly to his duties
and refrained from most of the silly things of college life, he was not
by any of us looked upon as a “stick.” He commanded our respect.
The faculty was small and the equipment of the college meager. The
attendance was nearly three hundred. As to attainments, we were a mixed
multitude. To instruct all of these there were—for both regular and
required work—only six men, including one for the preparatory department.
What could these few do to meet the needs of this miscellaneous crowd?
They did their best, and it was possible for any of us, especially
for the brighter student, to get a great deal of valuable education
even under these conditions. Mateer in later years acknowledges his
indebtedness to all of the faculty, but particularly to Dr. A. B. Brown,
who was our president up to the latter part of our senior year; to Dr.
Alden, who succeeded him; and to Professor Fraser, who held the chair
of mathematics. Dr. Brown was much admired by the students for his
rhetorical ability in the pulpit and out of it. Dr. Alden was quite
in contrast to his predecessor as to many things. He had long been a
teacher, and was clear and concise in his intellectual efforts. Mateer
said, late in life, that from his drill in moral science he “got more
good than from any other one branch in the course.” Professor Fraser
was a brilliant, all-round scholar of the best type then prevalent, and
had the enthusiastic admiration even of those students who were little
able to appreciate his teaching. In the physical sciences the course
was necessarily still limited and somewhat elementary. His classmates
remember the evident mastery which Mateer had of all that was attempted
by instruction or by experimentation in that department. It was not
possible to get much of what is called “culture” out of the curriculum,
and that through no fault of the faculty; yet for the stimulation of
the intellectual powers and the unfolding of character there was an
opportunity such as may be seriously lacking in the conditions of college
instruction in recent years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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