ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS When Dr. Alexander Mackintosh Butcher was elected to the presidency of Pluribus University ten years ago, there was general agreement that in selecting a man who was not only a distinguished educator but an executive of marked business ability the trustees had done honor to themselves and their university as well as to the new president. For Dr. Butcher had that peculiar genius which would have made him as successful in Wall Street or in a governor’s chair as in the classroom. Every alumnus of Pluribus knows the story told of the young Alexander Mackintosh Butcher, standing at the age of twenty-two at the threshold of a career. Eager, energetic, with a brilliant scholastic record behind him, it was difficult to decide into what profession he should throw his powerful talents. To his beloved and aged president the young man went for counsel. “My boy,” said the good old man, “remember that no profession offers nobler opportunities for service to humanity than that of education.” And what should he teach? “Philosophy is the noblest study of man.” And a professor of philosophy the young Butcher speedily became. Those who were so fortunate as to study philosophy under him at Pluribus will never forget how uncompromisingly he preached absolute idealism, the Good, the True and the Beautiful, or how witheringly he excoriated the mushroom philosophies which were springing up to challenge the eternal verities. I have heard his old students remark the secret anguish which must have been his when later, as president of the university, he was compelled to entertain the famous Swiss philosopher, Monsfilius, whose alluring empiricism was taking the philosophic world by storm.