hematics, and with all of his savings from the
"real estate business" tucked away in an inside pocket. They amounted
in grand total to about two hundred dollars.

It was less simple getting to Stanford in those first days than it is
now. There was not even a beginning then of the beautiful thriving town
of Palo Alto that stands today with convenient railway station, just at
the entrance to the long palm-lined avenue that runs straight up to the
main university quadrangle. It was all grain field then, part of the
great Hopkins estate, where now the college town welcomes the annually
incoming Freshmen, and offers them convenient lodging places of all
grades of comfort and quick trams and motor busses to the university.

Young Hoover had to get off at Menlo Park, the station for a few great
country houses of California railway and bonanza kings, which offered no
welcome for small boys with a few saved dollars in their inside pockets.
He had to find a casual hackman to carry him and his bag and trunk to
the university a couple of miles away. But even there he found no place
yet ready to house him. So someone advised him to go to Adelanta Villa,
a mile or more back from the university, in the hills, where a number
of the early arrivals among the men of the new faculty were living. And
there he did go, and found a warm and simple welcome and hospitality. He
was soon ensconced in the old mansion and doing odd jobs about the
establishment to help pay for his board and lodging.

Between jobs he was feverishly at work on the finishing touches for his
final entrance tests, and probably quite as feverishly worrying about
them. He felt pretty safe on everything but the requirements in English
composition. As a matter of fact, when he came to that fearful test he
ignominiously failed in it, and, indeed, did not finally get the
required credit in it until nearly ready to graduate! But he was passed
in enough of the entrance requirements to be given Freshman standing,
"conditioned in English," a phrase not unfamiliar to other college
students. He had, however, added something to his score by a Hooverian
_tour de force_.

Noting that a credit was offered in physiology, about which he knew
nothing technically, he reasoned that as everyone, of course, knew
already a little something about his insides and how they worked, one
ought to be able to find out a little more from some textbook, and that
the two littles might make enough for pa