s, that Hoover's particular college experiences and
acquisitions were what I have tried to suggest, and not what you might
think they would be from your knowledge of other universities. And while
Stanford has converged somewhat with years toward the more usual
university type--colleges get more alike as they get older--it has still
an atmosphere peculiarly its own. But it was in the first days that
this atmosphere was so very distinctive. Its president and faculty and
students, all living closely together in the middle of a great ranch of
seven thousand acres of grain fields, horse paddocks, and hills where
jack rabbits roamed and coyotes howled, were thrown together into one
great family, whose members depended almost entirely on one another for
social life. And each department was a special smaller family within the
great one. Life was simple and direct and democratic. Real things
counted first and most; there was little sophistication. Work was the
order of the day; recreations were wholesome.

The geology family was an especially close and happy one. Some of Dr.
Branner's former assistants and students had followed him out to
California. They were the older members of the family. Almost all of
them are now well-known geologists and mining engineers. So also are
many of his younger ones. The family went on long tramps and camps
together. The region about Stanford is singularly interesting from a
geologist's point of view; and in those days it was a _terra_ more or
less _incognita_. Everybody was discovering things. It was real live
geology. Lectures and recitations were illustrated, not by lantern
slides, but by views out of the window and revelations in the field.

And at the same time these young geologists learned real life; they had
come to know intimately real men and women, all fired with the
enthusiasm of a new venture, new opportunities, and a high ideal. With
all this, Herbert Hoover learned, in particular, one additional very
important thing. He learned that a certain unusual girl, beautiful,
intelligent, and unspoiled, a lover of outdoors, and, as proof of her
unusualness, a "major" student in geology, was the girl for him. Having
learned this he decided to marry her. And later, she decided that he had
decided right.

And so with all his experience at earning his living by organizing
anything needing organizing, and with his stores of geological lore
gained from lecture room and textbook and field work a