Correspondence (incoming) - I-K

San Jose, Cal. May 24, 1889

Senator Stanford Dear Sir:-

I am anxious to attend your school when it opens. Ihave not been able to learn anything about it and I did not know who to apply to. Please give me necessary information. Respectively Yours Millie Keiser San Jose. Cal. Box 962

Carthage Ill. June 7th 1887 Dear Sir: Although entirely unknown to you your unprecedented liberality in the cause of education encourages me to address you. For some years I have had in mind a mode of administering money in the cause of education which if not entirely novel would yet in a practical way be a new departure in the educational method. My idea is to establish in the university curriculum a sort of roving school. The practical ay to teach the natural sciences is to bring the students face to face with nature. Nature presents so many faces in mountain and valley and sea and shore that within the [closed?] edifice no matter how well situated a great number of her most important and loveliest features must escape attention. Briefly I would propose a floating school in which nearly all the natural and physical sciences might be most successfully taught.

The ultimate outcome of this plan would be to possess a substantial steamer under command of an accomplished seaman and navigator with a small corps of adjunct professors or teachers in the several departments of mathematics, physics and the natural sciences. This would become an unrivalled seminary for practical surveying and navigation. In such a roving school geology mineralogy, botany, zoology and mining could be most rapidly and thoroughly taught. Connected with such a vessel a small steam launch of light draught would be needed capable of entering all [lagoons?] and rivers to carry classes inland to visit [mines?] and make geological, botanical and zoological explorations. For geological natural history and surveying expeditions some general camping outfit would also be needed. Such an adjunct to the university would furnish unrivalled faculties for making natural history [collection?] and laboratory stations might be established at convenient points for prosecuting biological researches. I think also such a school would be unrivalled for stimulating anew the decaying zeal for real scientific [seamanship?] [in?]

the nation. The outdoor and varied life would be a great [adjucant?] in developing a first class physique in students I think far more than equal to baseball [matches?] and rowing clubs. The old monastic method of our schools is it seems to me [illy?] [fitted?] to the needs of modern life and far in the rear of an enlightened civilization. We find in the close indoor life of scholars an explanation of the unpractical in science and the true ground of the prejudice which is [prevalent?] toward scientific agriculture, mining, engineering and seamanship. We also explain the relative success of so called self-educated men in the practical professions by the development [in?] them of common outdoor sense for the administration of business. Our roving school could regularly impact all manufacturing, engineering and [mining?] work going on in various parts of this country. By shifting about from climate to climate many dangers and rigors incident to exposure [and?] might be diminished to a [minimum?]. I doubt not very many students in other universities would be sure to be willing at the ordinary expense of college life to enroll themselves in such a floating school for a year or two.

I hope I see in your name Leland an omen of our future joint interest in educational work as we perhaps share also in a common descent from the old New England puritan Henry Leland.

I am with much regard Geo. M Kellogg. A. M. MD. [Carthage?] [Ill.?]

To the Hon. Leland Stanford San Francisco Cal