The fall of 1891 found me back at Amherst taking up my college course in earnest. Much of its social life centered around the fraternities, and although they did not leave me without an invitation to join them it was not until senior year that an opportunity came to belong to one that I wished to accept. It has been my observation in life that, if one will only exercise the patience to wait, his wants are likely to be filled. My class was rather small, not numbering more than eighty-five in a student body of about four hundred. President Julius H. Seelye, who had led the college for about twenty years with great success as an educator and inspirer of young men, had just retired. He had been succeeded by President Merrill E. Gates, a man of brilliant intellect and fascinating personality though not the equal of his predecessor in directing college policy. But the faculty as a whole was excellent, having many strong men, and some who were preeminent in the educational field. The college of that day had a very laudable desire to get students, and having admitted them, it was equally alert in striving to keep them and help them get an education, with the result that very few left of their own volition and almost none were dropped for failure in their work. There was no marked exodus at the first examination period, which was due not only to the attitude of the college but to the attitude of the students, who did not go there because they wished to experiment for a few months with college life and be able to say thereafter they had been in college, but went because they felt they had need of an education, and expected to work hard for that purpose until the course was finished. There were few triflers. A small number became what we called sports, but they were not looked on with favor, and they have not survived. While the class has lost many excellent men besides, yet it seems to be true that unless men live right they die. Things are so ordered in this world that those who violate its law cannot escape the penalty. Nature is inexorable. If men do not follow the truth they cannot live.