Wright, D Sands

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Masthead Logo The Palimpsest
Volume 13 | Number 1 Article 4
1-1-1932
The First Decade
D Sands Wright
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Wright, D S. "The First Decade." The Palimpsest 13 (1932), 17-24.
Available at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/palimpsest/vol13/iss1/4
The First Decade
In the inauguration of his work at Cedar Falls, 
Principal Gilchrist faced appalling difficulties. 
The institution was at first half dormitory and 
half school, so that in addition to his administra­
tive duties he must needs be the director of a 
hostelry. His time was divided between educa­
tional endeavor and commissary duties.
To internal complications were added external 
perplexities. The legislative enactment that cre­
ated the school was passed by a majority of one 
in each house, and the friends and the opponents 
of the enterprise continued in much the same pro­
portions. The large minority that opposed the 
measure, and predicted the failure of the new 
educational adventure, afterward talked and 
worked and prayed that their prophecies might 
come true. Defeated candidates for faculty posi­
tions could see nothing good in their successful 
rivals, and belittled them without mercy. Even 
prominent citizens of Cedar Falls, who had 
planned other uses for the Orphans’ Home, with­
held encouragement and patronage.
And worst of all the meager legislative appro­
priation for the first biennial period for the main­
tenance of the school left it pauperized almost to
17
18 THE PALIMPSEST
helplessness. Furniture made for children had to 
be utilized by adults. Apparatus there was none, 
excepting an antiquated and wheezy air-pump and 
a device for testing the breathing power of a child. 
There were no maps or charts upon the walls, and 
no funds available to meet the need.
Corresponding to this lack of suitable appa­
ratus, there was a dearth of books. I hasten to 
add that the Normal School inherited the alleged 
library of the “Home” and that Principal Gil­
christ generously placed his large and well- 
selected personal supply of books at the disposal 
of the school. The inheritance of books from the 
orphans was a sorry collection of soiled and dog­
eared volumes, juvenile in character, and unsuited 
to the uses of a normal school. To a committee, 
of which the writer was one, the task was com­
mitted of culling from this mass of cheap and 
microbe-infected volumes such as could be ac­
counted worthy of a place upon the shelves of 
what was destined to become one of the most use­
ful libraries in the State. A baker’s dozen were 
reclaimed and the remnant shipped to the State 
Training School for Girls. Among the books re­
tained were Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Robin­
son Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson, a life of 
Daniel Boone, and The Dairyman s Daughter.
At the opening of the first session, such stand-
THE FIRST DECADE 19
ard text-books were introduced as were most in 
vogue at the time. Osgood's Readers and Har­
vey’s Grammar were adopted because both Os­
good and Harvey were intimate personal friends 
of the principal. The Fish-Robinson Arithmetics 
became the guide to instruction in what was latest 
and best in number-teaching. From Cornell’s
Geography and Atlas the students learned to 
bound the States, to name their capitals, and to 
trace the courses of the rivers from their sources to 
the sea. Cutter’s Anatomy, Physiology and Hy­
giene, Swinton’s General History, and Haven’s 
Mental Philosophy ranked high in the estimation 
of the faculty of four.
The principal, a gospel minister and a devout 
Christian, was imbued with a deep sense of his 
accountability to God and to the State for the 
moral influences that should go out into the 
schools with those who had imbibed the atmos­
phere of the Normal School. On the first Sabbath 
afternoon of the initial term, a preaching service 
was held in the assembly room at which the prin­
cipal functioned as director and minister. Inas­
much as the students housed in the building were 
two miles or more from the nearest church and the 
only way to get there was to walk, this vesper 
service became a permanent feature of the school 
and was maintained for a quarter of a century or
20 THE PALIMPSEST
more. It was only discontinued when street car 
service made the downtown churches accessible to 
the student body.
For these preaching services, ministers of prac­
tically all denominations in Cedar Falls and near­
by towns gladly rendered their services without 
money and without price. Near the middle of the 
opening term, a students’ Wednesday evening 
prayer meeting was instituted, and was main­
tained with scarcely a break far into the twentieth 
century. This service received the unqualified 
support of the principal and all his faculty. It 
was almost unanimously attended and partici­
pated in by the students, a large majority of whom 
were members of Christian churches and active 
Christian workers. There is that about the teach­
er’s calling and the responsibilities it involves, 
more perhaps than in any other profession, which 
conduces to sensing the need of guidance that is 
higher than any human help can render. The 
consecration of the faculty and the ready response 
of the student body to that which is noblest in life 
made the State institution at Cedar Falls distinc­
tively a non-denominational yet a religious school.
Upon enrolling, each student was presented 
with a term program showing the hours of recita­
tion. On the back of this sheet was printed a long 
list of “Rules” to which the recipient was expected
THE FIRST DECADE 21
to conform. The most famous of these requisi­
tions was numbered and known as Rule II — “It 
is expected that the ladies and gentlemen of the 
institution shall treat each other with politeness 
and courteous civilities; but whenever they tran­
scend the proprieties of refined society, they are 
liable to dismissal. Anything like selection is 
strictly forbidden. Private walks and rides at any 
time are not allowed. Students of the two sexes, 
by the special permission of the Principal, can 
meet privately for the transaction of business, but 
for that purpose only.”
This, though intended seriously, soon became in 
the eyes of the students a stupendous joke. “Se­
lection” became a word to conjure with. Its very 
mention was provocative of a smile. New stu­
dents were solemnly warned to beware of the 
criminality of “selection”. Notwithstanding the 
severity of the rule, its promulgation could not 
quell the mating impulse in the student’s heart. 
Over against the principal’s dictum was the de­
cree of Holy Writ, “It is not good for man to be 
alone”, and their own hearts added, “Nor woman 
either”. Will and Fanny took great delight in 
the study of botany; but it enhanced immensely 
the pleasure of the pursuit if they could stroll to­
gether in search of flowers to analyse; and it is 
said that they became so enthusiastic in the study
22 THE PALIMPSEST
of pollen grains that they both tried to look 
through the magnifying glass at the same time. 
Despite the rigidity and severity of the rule, selec­
tion among the students was the natural anticipa­
tion of matrimony.
When the first class was ready for graduation 
in June of 1877, Principal Gilchrist, doubtless fol­
lowing the practice he had pursued in his eastern 
school experiences, inaugurated a system of State 
examinations to determine the scholastic qualifi­
cations of the candidates. The committee of ex­
aminers consisted of the Superintendent of Public 
Instruction, the Principal of the State Normal 
School, the President of the State Teachers Asso­
ciation, and two county superintendents chosen 
respectively by the State Superintendent and the 
Normal School Principal.
Whatever such a system may have accom­
plished in the East and South, it proved to be ill- 
adapted to conditions in Iowa. To the candidates 
it was a nerve-wracking ordeal, to the examiners 
a jolly junket and a farce. The latter were a 
company of kindly disposed mortals, who attrib­
uted a failure in recitation to other causes than 
ignorance and graded the unfortunate reciter 
accordingly. At the end of a two days’ ordeal, 
each member of every class was duly “passed ”, 
except in some unusual cases when the candidate
THE FIRST DECADE 23
was “conditioned" but not failed". Even these 
were allowed to stand in line on commencement 
day and receive the diploma with the understand­
ing that they must return it to the principal until 
the deficiency had been remedied by further study. 
The system of State examinations was discontin­
ued after Principal Gilchrist left in 1886.
One of the principal’s antipathies was the high 
school graduate. He maintained throughout his 
administration a stolid prejudice against the city 
high school. A diploma from one of these had no 
significance in his eyes. The graduate of the 
most approved city schools of the State such as 
Des Moines, Sioux City, and Dubuque, had to 
submit, alike with the boy from the rural school, to 
a preliminary examination in the common branches 
in order to determine his status as a student.
Whatever of justice there may have been in this 
attitude of the principal toward these aspirants for 
higher learning, it was naturally resented by the 
city superintendents and high school principals. 
Their graduates, seeking preparation to be teach­
ers, were more likely to be directed to some one of 
the flourishing denominational colleges than to the 
one institution maintained by the State especially 
for the training of teachers. One of the first acts 
of President Seerley was to bid for the patronage 
of this class of students. A high school diploma
24 THE PALIMPSEST
became the passport to the best the institution 
could afford. The most honored body of students 
in the school, the ones most sought after by the 
faculty, the ones who were given uppermost seats 
at chapel, were known as the High School Gradu­
ate Class. This change of policy brought at once 
to the institution a new type of student.
Only one school building was added to the 
campus during Gilchrist s administration. It was 
originally known as South Hall, but after many 
years it was appropriately rechristened Gilchrist 
Hall by the State Board of Education.
Principal Gilchrist’s greatest work, accom­
plished in the prime of his manhood, was the lay­
ing of the foundation of Iowa’s one and only State 
Normal School. His service may be likened to 
Aesop’s story of a mother fox that chided a lioness 
for having only one offspring, and of the lioness’s 
reply: “One, but that one a lion’’.
He laid the foundation and laid it well — the 
base of a superstructure that was to become the 
pride of the State, the admiration of other Com­
monwealths. After ten years of ardent, untiring, 
and sometimes unappreciated labors, he retired, 
leaving the indelible imprint of his personality 
upon the institution.
D. Sands W right


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