In this week’s installment of our recurring series, students prepare to go to war, a graduate sets off for the West, and more.

April 25, 1931—In London’s Saturday Review, French author Andre Maurois writes of his experience teaching French literature at Princeton as a visiting lecturer for a semester:

Most [American students] are not at all enthusiastic over the material progress of our time. They want something more; they want moral progress. … I ended by no longer considering them foreigners, quite different from French students. I never felt that they and I belonged to two different civilizations. They are relations, and good ones, younger than ourselves; but youth is not a defect.

April 26, 1861—The New York World reports that Princeton students have formed a volunteer corps, the “Old Nassau Cadets,” in case they are needed to fight against what is known in the north as “The Rebellion” and will later be known as the Civil War.

April 27, 1747—The Board of Trustees announces to the public that they have appointed Jonathan Dickinson president of the new College of New Jersey and it will open for students during the fourth week in May in Elizabethtown.

April 29, 1874—Josiah McClain, Class of 1871, sets off for the western frontier (Utah and Nevada Territories), where he will work as a missionary.

For the previous installment in this series, click here.

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