Free Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor

nevertheless. The first floor was given over to a large chapel and a gallery for paintings and sculpture, the second to the college offices, a lecture hall, and two spacious classrooms. Unfortunately, a large sum of money that had been promised by an Eastern benefactor did not materialize, and so there was no dormitory or dining hall. Meals were taken in the gallery, which were simple meals pending the arrival of a cookstove, and the student body spent the first three weeks of the term constructing two log bunkhouses near the lake; meanwhile they slept in tents.
    Mr. F. B. Reithman, professor of moral psychology, supervised the project, while writing to his brother in Philadelphia:
    Our president is occupied with making great plans for us, and we are busy making a place to sleep before winter comes on. The morale of the students is very fine and would be even better were it not for daily chapel, which lasts upward of an hour. With little by way of tools, they are accomplishing heroic things worthy of Napoleon’s army. Finished a cabin of four rooms for Dr. and Mrs. Watt last week, and now we are engaged on a structure sixty by twenty feet, one of two that will be student quarters, God willing, if our hands don’t peel off. Send gloves, if you can, and some salve.
    The faculty, consisting of Mr. Reithman, Mr. Waite, and Mr. Coutts, bedded down in the attic of Main, and by the middle of October, the most urgent construction completed (that of the two bunkhouses, named Emerson House and Carlyle House), they set about teaching. The course of studies comprised Classics, Theology, and Commercial: under Classics appeared Latin, Greek, Rhetoric, Poetry, and Oratory; under Theology were Moral Psychology, Old and New Testaments, Ecclesiastical History, and Science; and under Commercial, Arithmetic, Penmanship, Bookkeeping, and Hygienics. Mrs. Watt offered lessons in music, and manual training was available anywhere on the campus. The fee was $18 per term for tuition and board, plus twenty hours of labor per week—in the afternoons and on Saturdays, the students threw themselves upon the immense unfinished tasks of the college, including:
    Felling four acres of timber and hauling the logs to town to be milled.
    Clearing two acres of tree stumps so a garden could be planted in the spring. Planting fifty apple trees. Digging a well. Digging deep pits and building privies. Cutting and splitting fifty cords of firewood. Raising a flagpole. Raising a cross. Building a cookshed behind Main. Laying a wooden walk from the Watts’ cabin.
    The work was interrupted by a tragedy October 11 when Frank Sutton was struck down and crushed by a tree. Apparently, he had cut it, then lost his footing on the slope as he attempted to run. He wasalone in the woods when this happened, and his body lay for several hours before it was discovered by the science class; meanwhile a wild beast had chewed off one arm and carried it away. The body was returned to Minar’s Grove for interment, and a memorial service held at the college the Sunday following.
    Dr. Watt inspected the work daily. He devoted his chapel sermons to the topic of building, comparing the students to the children of Israel who were delivered out of captivity in Egypt and came into the promised land of Canaan, comparing the work to the building of the temple under Solomon, leaving the students to figure out who was Solomon in the analogy. In his journal, he complained of shortness of breath and dizziness, and noted, “I am too heavy,” but the rapid progress of the college excited him:
    We are working a miracle here! Every day shows us some new success as our vision takes form—a wall rises, then four, doors and windows appear, a roof rises, a handsome building stands where once was only leaf and shadow—this amazes & inspires me to watch it! I walk around & am filled with new visions, dreams, ideas &c. of a great University that shall someday stand on this hill to rival any on the