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Show Page 84 the university - in fact, he was now one of the three professors it boasted. Styled for the first time "Professor Orson Pratt" in city council notes for August 10, 1841, he was to bear this title throughout his life, and took with great seriousness his professorial standing thenceforward among the Mormon people - although the only college degree he could claim was the honorary "A.M." conferred on him September 4, 1841, by the "chancellor and board of regents." Many unrealized plans circulated in Nauvoo to build a campus for the university, however^ in practice.classes met for the most part in Masonic Hall and the unfinished temple. Although the university was an exceedingly modest institution for such a brave title, its advertisements claimed "some of the most able men the nation affords in their respective departments." Professor Pratt, the Times and Seasons read in December, 1841: "...is a self-made man, and has had to encounter great difficulties in the acquisition of an education; but he has surmounted them all. As a teacher of Mathematics and English Literature, he is equaled by few, and surpassed by none this side of the great waters; as the proficiency of the matriculates of the university now under his care abundantly testifies." 17 According to the newspapers, Orson conducted a successful curriculum with a number of students in "a general Course of Mathematics, including Arithmetic, Albegra, Geometry, Conic Sections, Plane Trigonometry, Mensuration, Surveying, Navigation, Analytical, Plane and Spherical Trigonometry, Analytical Geometry, and the Differential and Integral 18 Calculus; Philosophy; Astronomy; Chemistry; etc., etc." No mention is made of any specific courses in English literature which Orson may have taught - it can hardly be imagined that his qualifications in this area were any less modest than those he held in the area of mathematics - but he was full of brave dreams, determined that "mental culture (should) |
