faculty. Young Roosevelt found a body of eight hundred
undergraduates, the largest number up to that time. While the
Elective System had been introduced in the upper classes,
Freshmen and Sophomores were still required to take the courses
prescribed for them.

To one who looks back, after forty years, on the Harvard of that
time there was much about it, the loss of which must be
regretted. Limited in many directions it was, no doubt, but its
very limitations made for friendship and for that sense of
intimate mutual, relationship, out of which springs mutual
affection. You belonged to Harvard, and she to you. That she was
small, compared with her later magnitude, no more lessened your
love for her, than your love for your own mother could be
increased were she suddenly to become a giantess. The
undergraduate community was not exactly a large family, but it
was, nevertheless, restricted enough not only for a fellow to
know at least by sight all of his classmates, but also to have
some knowledge of what was going on in other classes as well as
in the College as a whole. Academic fame, too, had a better
chance then than it has now. There were eight or ten professors,
whom most of the fellows knew by sight, and all by reputation;
now, however, I meet intelligent students who have never heard
even the name of the head of some department who is famous
throughout the world among his colleagues, but whose courses that
student has never taken.

In spite of the simplicity and the homelikeness of the Harvard
with eight hundred undergraduates, however, it was large enough
to afford the opportunity of meeting men of many different tastes