Herbert Hoover: The Man and His WorkKellogg, Vernon L. (Vernon Lyman)
History
Herbert Hoover: The Man and His Work
Kellogg, Vernon L. (Vernon Lyman)
Hoover, Herbert, 1874-1964; World War, 1914-1918 -- Food supply
This kind and wise examiner has described to me, recently, how he was
first attracted to the young Quaker in the group of candidates before
him by his evident strength of will. "I observed," said President Swain,
"that he put his teeth together with great decision, and his whole face
and posture showed his determination to pass the examination at any
cost. He was evidently summoning every pound of energy he possessed to
answer correctly the questions before him. I was naturally interested in
him. On inquiry I learned that he had studied only two books of Plane
Geometry, and was trying to solve an original problem based on the
fourth book. While he was unable to do this, he did much better; for the
intelligence and superior will he revealed in the attempt convinced me
that such a boy needed only to be given a chance. So although he could
not pass all of the tests, I told him to come to my rooms at the hotel
after the examinations, as I would like to talk with him. He came
promptly at the appointed hour with a friend of his, the son of a banker
in Salem, Oregon. The two boys invited me and Mrs. Swain to stop at
Salem to visit them, which we did. I learned there that Herbert Hoover,
for that was the boy's name, was an industrious, thoughtful, ambitious
boy earning his own living while he studied."
All this was enough for the wise teacher. And an arrangement was
mutually agreed on between examiner and examined to the effect that if
young Hoover would work diligently for the rest of the summer on the
literary necessities of the situation, and come on early to Stanford for
a little special coaching, he might consider his probabilities for
admission to the university so high as to be reckoned a sure thing.
Well, it all turned out as desired by both candidate and examiner. And
Herbert Hoover was enrolled the following October among the first
students, the "pioneer class" of Stanford University, and was actually
the first Stanford student to inhabit the beautiful great new dormitory
called Encina Hall. It was not only his university of dreams come true,
but it was really to be the university of his graduation, the _alma
mater_ of a boy without any other mother. And it was the university of
which he was to become, in later successful years, a patron and trustee.
Stanford did much for Herbert Hoover; but so has he done much for
Stanford.
Any university means many things, for all their lives, to those who have
come timidly and wonderingly to its doors as boys and girls, and have
gone out on that final day of happy reward and tearful good-byes as men
and women eager to try themselves against the world outside of sheltered
school-rooms. And most of these things are to most persons who have
known them, things of pleasant and loving memory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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