showed characteristic practicality in appraising the value of education. He pointed out that college training was only the foundation for a career and that industry, health, and common sense were equally important for success. No “ivory tower”
theorist, he urged his hearers to study human nature in life as well as in books. “Your liberal education,”
he told them, “supersedes none of the advantages common to the educated and uneducated; but it qualifies you to apply them all with superior skill and power in the discharge of your duties to God and man.”
Within two years of taking office, President Taylor suffered a severe spinal disease from which he never recovered. His fine physique was emaciated and stooped, and though his vitality ebbed he still possessed wonderful energy and an iron will which enabled him to carry on his duties to within a few weeks of his death. Emily, his pretty black-eyed daughter, was his amanuensis, and student watchers sat by his bedside during the nights of pain. He died January 7, 1856, and three days later, after a funeral service in the chapel hung with crepe, he was buried in the University cemetery.
Under Dr. Taylor the University recovered the position and strength which it had lost during the Removal Controversy. His administration demonstrated that the institution’s powers of endurance and recuperation justified public confidence in its future. In the resolutions occasioned by his death, the University Trustees mourned him as “a respected and efficient President, a successful Teacher, and able Executive Officer, a man of great promptness and energy, of large experience, of singular tact, a man of Science and of true devotion to the cause of Religion and learning.”
After Dr. Taylor’s death, Professor Eaton as senior member of the faculty served as chairman until his election to the Presidency in August 1856. He was reluctant to take the office because his chief interest was theological instruction. There was doubt, moreover, as to his qualifications. He stood in marked contrast to his predecessor who exemplified the popular conception of the time that a college president should be primarily a disciplinarian. Eaton disliked enforcing order among the students and gave them the impression that he experienced pain and distress equal to that of the culprit himself.
At the outset of the new administration the Trustees directed the faculty to select two members to act with the President as a disci-