Passages in his letter of acceptance were read to my mother by my father, who had borrowed the letter from the Chancellor. “I have a family of children and as they grow older I am more and more aware of the stifling, airless stagnation of European life. I want them to know something bigger and freer than will ever come to them in this Old World of rigid caste lines and fixed ideas. My wife and I, too, wish to escape from the narrowness of this provincial town where an arrogant young lieutenant swaggering about in his gold-braided white broadcloth uniform is much higher in social rank than the most learned and renowned member of the University faculty; where a rich lumber-merchant, brutal and ignorant, can buy his way into political position and parade about with sash and gold chain and the insignia of the office of Mayor.” We were all righteously indignant over such elements of life in Europe, and quite exalted in our certainty that the distinguished immigrant would find nothing like that in our midst. The sole and only representative of the military caste was the lieutenant who drilled the university battalion, and he was a most unassuming young American who never on any occasion wore white broadcloth, put on his plain dark-blue uniform as seldom as possible, and for the most part wore a pepper-and-salt business suit and a derby hat. Since there were no trees on the Western plains, there was no equivalent to the iniquitous lumber merchant, the nearest approach being a man who had made a good deal of money out of lucky guesses in real estate. But he would have dropped dead before putting on a sash and a gold chain.