The college students of the late seventies and early eighties were serious minded and thought of questions as men and not as boys.

Though the clapper of the college bell was sometimes thrown into the well or the president's wagon was transferred to the chapel roof, these things were often done from a sort of sense of duty: college students were expected to be mischievous.

Yet the whole tone of college life was serious.

There were no organized college athletics, no musical or dramatic clubs, no other outside activities such as those to which the student of today devotes so much of his attention, except, of course, the "literary societies" for practice in declamation and debating.
Though many towns established graded schools before 1890 by means of special taxes, the condition of rural education at this time was disheartening.

The percentage of negro illiteracy was falling, because it could not easily be raised, but the reduction of white illiteracy was slow.