e was a bank-vault just across the alley from his secret back room
in the real estate office, and many a night did young Herbert lie awake
in his cave hearing his imaginary bank-robbers mining their way into the
vault and escaping with much rich treasure. But mostly young Herbert
studied in that secret cave of his, and that he studied hard and to good
purpose is proved by the fact that in little more than two years he felt
himself ready to attempt the entrance examinations for college.

CHAPTER III

THE UNIVERSITY

For some time the newspapers had been full of accounts of the founding
and approaching opening of Stanford University at Palo Alto, California.
Soon after Leland Stanford, Jr., the only child of Senator and Mrs.
Leland Stanford, died in Rome in 1884, the Stanfords announced their
intention to found and endow with their great wealth a new university in
California. The romantic character of the founding and the picturesque
setting of the new university in the middle of a great ranch on the
shores of lower San Francisco Bay, with the foothills of the Santa Cruz
Mountains rising from its very campus, its generous provision for
students unable to meet the expenses of the older institutions of the
East, and the radical academic innovations and freedom of selection of
studies decided on by the Stanfords and David Starr Jordan, the eminent
scientific man selected to be the first president of the new
university--all this, together with the evident strong leaning of the
institution toward science, as revealed by the character of the
president, faculty and curriculum, combined to assure young Hoover that
this was the modern scientific university of his dream, just made to
order for him. It was exactly the place where he could become a mining
engineer like the wonderful man he had always remembered.

So when it was announced in the Portland papers that a professor from
Stanford would visit the city in the early summer of 1891, to hold
entrance examinations for the university, which was to open in the
autumn, Herbert decided to try the examinations. But when he came to
compare thoughtfully his store of knowledge with the published
requirements he would have to meet, he found that his self-preparation
had been rather one-sided. For in this preparation he had followed his
inclinations more than the prescribed schedules of college entrance
requirements. Why should one waste a lot of time, he had thought, and
be b