“But ‘the fellows’ did me much good in the way of my education. I had a most excellent and worthy set of friends, especially in the last year of my college life. My associations with them drew me out of myself, and gave me, in the best meaning of the term, the sense and the impulse of good-fellowship. As bearing upon my preparation for my life’s work, this association did much to give me that common sense, and sympathy, and warm-heartedness, and love of young men, and comprehension of their nature and their feelings, the value of which is so great to a college teacher. The college friendships, in their best development, came to me at the most fortunate period--in the later years of the course. They came at a time when they could operate most healthfully and happily upon all that I had gained from my studies and my teachers, and rounded out for me, if I may so express it, the education which belonged to the university.” One requisite to the greater success of our higher colleges is a better class of students. When fees for matriculation and tuition formed an important part of the income from which a school had to maintain itself, an applicant’s defects of preparation or personal character were winked at; but this no longer is necessary at Yale, Harvard or any of the half dozen younger universities which have been richly endowed. No one should be received as a student who does not “mean business” and who is not quickly responsive to the influences about him. Says Prof. Shaler, of Harvard: “It is very clear that the essential aim of our higher educational establishments is to take youths who have received a considerable training in preparatory schools, who have attained the age of about eighteen years, and have begun to acquire the motives of men, and fit them for the higher walks of active life. To the youth must be given a share of learning which may serve to enlarge to the utmost his natural powers. He must be informed and disciplined in the art and habit of acquiring information. He must also be disciplined in the ways of men, in the maintenance of his moral status by the exercise of his will, in self-confidence and in the faithful performance of duty for duty’s sake. Every influence which tends to aid him in putting away the irresponsible nature of the child should be brought to bear; every condition which will lead him to send forth his expectations and ambitions from his place in the school to his place among men should surround him.