032
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032
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Transcription
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try. In addition, for several years, he taught the classes in German and devoted his remaining spare time to the collection of an herbarium of the flora of the state. Professor Aughey was a lovable personality. He possessed a vast amount of miscellaneous knowledge; but the enormous burden laid upon his shoulders by the University did not tend to foster scientific precision.
H. E. Hitchcock, "professor of mathematics," was for his time an accomplished scholar. He was called from the same chair at Knox College where he graduated in 1846. He was a devoted teacher, a good citizen, a generous neighbor, a strong moral force in the community. "Professor Hitchcock," writes H. W. Caldwell in his excellent history, "was accurate, systematic, and always at his post;" surely a tribute of which a teacher may well be proud.
Perhaps the most interesting, not to say picturesque and eccentric, character in that little band of institution-builders was the Rev. Orsamus C. Dake, the first "professor of rhetoric and English literature" and the first dean of the Arts College. He possessed the scholarly tastes and the refined manners of a typical clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He represented the aesthetic element in the teaching force. He loved literature as a fine art; and his lofty ideals, keen sensibilities, and poetic imagination are revealed in his two volumes of verse, the Nebraska Legends and Poems (1871) and the Midland Poems (1873). These little books are the first contribution of the University to genuine literature; and they constitute a worthy monument to the great souled humanist who shed refining influence on the academic life during his brief term of service; for he died in 1875.
A remarkable personality of a quite different type was George E. Church, "principal of the Latin School" and, after 1874, first "professor of Latin language and literature." A man of powerful intellect and commanding presence, Professor Church was easily the most "modern" scholar and the best trained teacher in the University. Under his hand the foundation of the Latin department was solidly laid. After his return from Germany in 1878,
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