The University and the City

Abstract

T IS a peculiar honor for one who was born in the country, who has a haunting memory of the boundless prairies and the virgin fields he plowed (his Horace strapped to the beam to read at the furrow's end while the cranes of Ibycus went cronking overhead), who is such a devotee of the open road rather than the city street that the New York Sun once called him a pulverulent vagrant with a penchant for schoolhouses -it is an honor as well as an embarrassment, having still what the psychologists call the rural complex, to speak in the city; but less difficult because the memory of James Whitcomb Riley still keeps this city of hundreds of thousands near the country. I was one time introduced at Chicago as a son of Illinois, and wishing to show them my interest in agricultural affairs I told them a story that Mr. Wiley, of the Department of Agriculture, had told me: that in one of the semiarid regions they planted onions and potatoes in alternate rows, and the onions, Samson onions, were so strong that they brought water to the eyes of the potatoes and irrigated the land about. I was referred to later as a gentleman from New York. But my roots are still out here on the prairies, in the Valley of Democracy, as Meredith Nicholson called it, taking the title which I gave himand which he admits. I have not come as the prophet Jonah to cry against the city. I have come to speak of the city's crowning glory, remembering that the apocalyptic vision of the place of ultimate happiness is pictured in the Book of Revelation not as a southern orange grove in winter, nor as a seaside resort or mountain retreat in summer, but as a city-a city, to be sure, of spotless cleanliness and extraordinary beauty,