In the latter part of the sixties the university at Ann Arbor ranked easily as the first educational institution of the middle west. The faculty of the law department, with Thomas M. Cooley at the head, was in no wise inferior to that of Harvard and Yale. The student body was drawn from the entire Mississippi valley and beyond. The town of Ann Arbor at the time possessed the charm one likes to associate with a college town, with its pleasant homes, wide lawns, and fine old forest trees lining the streets. At the time of his matriculation young Kern, student of law, had not yet reached the age of eighteen, and here he was to spend two profitable years and receive his degree before reaching his twentieth birthday. During the two years he was compelled to economize in every possible way. In the telling of the story of his Ann Arbor days I am deeply indebted to Jackson Morrow, a boyhood friend, with whom he corresponded during the period and who has carefully preserved most of the letters written him by Kern from the university. These rather suggest a youth possessed of considerable assurance, and limited experience, inspired by much ambition, and prone to “act up” to the rôle of the embryo lawyer. In his first letter November 3, 1867, he describes his impressions of the university. “I got here early on Saturday morning and proceeded at once to the university, where I relieved myself of thirty-five dollars, and received a paper which entitles the bearer to a full course of law lectures in the University of Michigan. With a light heart and a materially lightened pocketbook, I then sought a boarding house, which we found at Mrs. Cramptons, in the east part of the city, where we now are paying $4.12½ per week, or, as the people here would term it, four dollars with a shillin’. We have a good boarding house, good rooms, good fires, good appetites, etc. “Well, the Monday following I wended my way to the Law building, where I listened to my first lecture by Hon. Thomas M. Cooley. Since then I have attended two each day, sometimes delivered by Cooley, and sometimes by one of the other professors of law--Campbell, Walker and Pond. The number of students here this winter is hardly so great as last, owing, no doubt, to the hard times, as the number of students in all the colleges of the country has materially decreased since last year. Their general library here, which is free to all, contains over 30,000 volumes and is the best place for reading I was ever in. “I received a letter from Sturgis the other day. He is, as usual, in all his glory. A short time ago he wrote me giving his views politically, and, as they did not just suit me, I sat down and gave the gentleman the benefit of sixteen pages of foolscap containing some sound old Democratic doctrine which I guess he profited by, as he has held his peace ever since.”