Dr. Burton was officially inaugurated President of the University on October 14, 1920. His formal acceptance of his office was made the occasion of a significant and stimulating educational conference, which lasted for three days. Some two hundred representatives of the leading American Universities and educational bodies listened to the discussion of vital academic and administrative problems of the modern state university during the five sessions, which covered the general topics; "Educational Readjustments," "Administrative Problems," and "Constructive Measures." The inauguration banquet was held at the Michigan Union on the evening of October 15, 1920. President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, President E.A. Birge of the University of Wisconsin, President Harry A. Garfield of Williams College, and the Hon. Thomas E. Johnson, Superintendent of Public Instruction, were the speakers on that occasion. [Illustration: MARION LEROY BURTON, LL.D. President of the University of Michigan, 1920-] CHAPTER VI LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE ARTS As the University grew, the first Faculty of two members gradually increased, though for years the roster was far from impressive. What this first Faculty lacked in numbers, however, it made up in character and ability. One has only to read the whole-hearted and loving tributes of early graduates to discern the powerful personalities which inspired them. It is true that for the most part they were scholars of an older school, content to hand on the classical learning of the contemporary college course, rather than original investigators. But how well they performed this task! They inspired a real enthusiasm and love of knowledge for its own sake in those they taught, and furnished them, as well, an ideal for right living--all for five hundred dollars a year. We of a later generation cannot honor them too much. About these men, strongly individualized in the minds of their students, have clustered stories which have become almost classic. Sharply contrasted in particular characteristics, they have lived as vivid personalities for future college generations in the memories of those students, "who studied syllogisms under the noble Whedon, who polished Greek roots for the elegant Agnew, who bungled metaphysics to the despair of the learned Ten Brook, who murdered chemistry under the careful Douglas whose experiments never failed, and who calculated eclipses of the moon from the desk of Williams, the paternal." This characterization by a member of the class of '49 is paralleled in a more caustic estimate of a somewhat later Faculty by a member of the class of '65 who speaks of "Boise the precise, Frieze the effusive, Williams the plausible, and White the thinker."