Prof. Winchell's Personality

Coming from a small college to the University of Michigan, at the bezinning of my junior year, I was very pleasantly disappointed to find that the relation between the students and the professors was of the most cordial and personal nature, in spite of the fact that the faculty had to divide their attention among 1,500 students. (The nuniber is nearly 3,000 at present). My first few days in Ann Arbor were spent in visiting the professors for the purpose of getting credit for previous study in their branches. I found Prof. Winchell living in a commodious octagonal house across the street from the campus. An■ other member of the faculty once said of this house that it would not be wrong to worship it, for it was unlike anything in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water onder the earth. Prof. Wiuchell was a man of commanding presenee, tall, with a liijrli, broad forehead and a flowing, iron-gray beard. I rememberthat his appearance and my knowledge of his reputation inspiredme with a feeling that amounted almost to awe, but his cordial greeting and the kind manuer in which he questioned me about my studies in his favorite science pat ine quite at ease while tliey added to my respect for the man. Prof. Winchell was very popular with the students, and his courses, none of which were compulsory, were elected by large numbers. iï any criticism could be oft'ered upon his work as a teacher, it would be that his life-study was so absorbing that he was a very lax disciplinarían. The examination on one of his courses consisted in part in the presentation of a number of specimens collected by the students individually. Some of the studenta who were not sufficiently interested to take the time for field-work, would borrow the collections of others, which had already been passed upon. üccasionally the Professor would recoguize a collection when it was presented to him for the second or third time, but his unsuspecting naturp. made it comparatively easy for the'dishonest to impose upon him. The fact that Professor Winchell's connection with two denominational institutions was scvered on account of his teaching evolution and maintaining the existence of a pre-Adamite race, might give the impression that he was not a religious man. On the contrary, he was an earnest Christian, but his study of God's own writing in the rocks forced him tu a ftglrátive interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis. ?o better indicatiou of the progresa of broader-minded views can be found than the fact that in less than a decade after his forced withdrawal from Vanderbilt University, he was couducting an advanced Bible class in the Methodist church in Ann Arbor, and in this class, whose influence for good was widely feit, religious doctrine and evolution were tauglit conjointly, and, whether all who attended were won over tothe leader's belief or not, they learned that scientiiic truth was not arraigned against Christianity and they were forced to reverence the earnest liberality of Professor Winchell.