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135
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issues, capacity for details,—and his legal training and his earlier experience as a railway superintendent helped to make him a keen judge of human nature. To these dominant qualities of leadership were added many amiable traits that account for his wide and permanent popularity. Affable and sympathetic with all classes of people, he easily won the hearts of both the students and the general public; a vein of ready humor went along well with his cheerful optimism, and his habitual simplicity of speech and demeanor was unfeigned and convincing. He was, in the best sense, a man of the people.
The career of scholar and educator had not originally been contemplated by Dr. Canfield, but a genuine interest in young people and a deep concern for their welfare,—characteristic traits of his generous nature,—plainly pointed the way he was to go. His educational ideals were such as would naturally develop from his strongly practical and active temperament. For pure scholarship and scientific attainments he had profound esteem, but he left to others prolonged research in the laboratory and the writing of learned monographs. In fact, though master of compact and trenchant English, he wrote comparatively little. It was on the spoken word that he placed his chief reliance and in countless addresses he spread abroad the gospel of sound education as a basis for sane living, never failing to present the University as the best place to attain that end. This broad-cast seeding brought abundant harvest. His ardent enthusiasm awakened in many a Nebraska boy and girl a desire for higher education, and his practical counsel often helped to clear the way to the realization of this desire. The statistics of registration are eloquent of his zeal and success. Prior to 1891 the annual enrollment in the University had never exceeded five hundred students, and was often less; four years later it exceeded fifteen hundred.
Chancellor Canfield by happy fortune came to the University just when the special problems of the time required such special talents as were his. There was particular need of buoyant optimism and glowing prophecy during
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