 | Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Volume I |  |
PART IV
AS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT
17. CHAPTER XVII
EVOLUTION OF "THE CORNELL IDEA''—1850-1865
TO Trinity Hall at Hobart College may be assigned whatever honor that shadowy personage, the future historian, shall think due the place where was conceived and quickened the germ idea of Cornell University. In that little stone barrack on the shore of Seneca Lake, rude in its architecture but lovely in its surroundings, a room was assigned me during my first year at college; and in a neighboring apartment, with charming views over the lake and distant hills, was the library of the Hermean Society. It was the largest collection of books I had ever seen,—four thousand volumes,—embracing a mass of literature from "The Pirate's Own Book'' to the works of Lord Bacon. In this paradise I reveled, browsing through it at my will. This privilege was of questionable value, since it drew me somewhat from closer study; but it was not without its uses. One day I discovered in it Huber and Newman's book on the English universities. What a new world it opened! My mind was sensitive to any impression it might make, on two accounts: first, because, on the intellectual side, I was woefully disappointed at the inadequacy of the little college as regarded its teaching force and equipment; and next, because, on the esthetic side, I lamented the absence of everything like beauty or fitness in its architecture.
As I read in this new-found book of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, and pored over the engraved views of quadrangles, halls, libraries, chapels,—of all the
The academic year of 1849-1850 having been passed at this little college in western New York, I entered Yale. This was nearer my ideal; for its professors were more distinguished, its equipment more adequate, its students
Then, too, its outward representation was sordid and poor. The long line of brick barracks, the cheapest which could be built for money, repelled me. What a contrast to Oxford and Cambridge, and, above all, to my air-castles! There were, indeed, two architectural consolations: one, the library building, which had been built just before my arrival; and the other, the Alumni Hall, begun shortly afterward. These were of stone, and I snatched an especial joy from the grotesque Gothic heads in the cornices of the library towers and from the little latticed windows at the rear of the Alumni Hall. Both seemed to me features worthy of "colleges and halls of ancient days.''
The redeeming feature of the whole was its setting, the "green,'' with superb avenues overarched by elms; and a further charm was added by East and West Rock, and by the views over New Haven Harbor into Long Island Sound. Among these scenes I erected new air-castles. First of all, a great quadrangle, not unlike that which is now developing at Yale, and, as a leading feature, a gate-tower like that since erected in memory of William Walter Phelps, but, unlike that, adorned with statues in niches and on corbels, like those on the
My general ideas on the subject were further developed by Charles Astor Bristed's book, "Five Years in an English University,'' and by sundry publications regarding student life in Germany. Still, my opinions regarding education were wretchedly imperfect, as may be judged from one circumstance. The newly established Sheffield Scientific School had just begun its career in the old president's house in front of the former Divinity Hall on the college green; and, one day in my senior year, looking toward it from my window in North College, I saw a student examining a colored liquid in a test-tube. A feeling of wonder came over me! What could it all be about? Probably not a man of us in the whole senior class had any idea of a chemical laboratory save as a sort of small kitchen back of a lecture-desk, like that in which an assistant and a colored servant prepared oxygen, hydrogen, and carbonic acid for the lectures of Professor Silliman. I was told that this new laboratory was intended for experiment, and my wonder was succeeded by disgust that any human being should give his time to pursuits so futile.
The next period in the formation of my ideas regarding a university began, after my graduation at Yale, during my first visit to Oxford. Then and at later visits, both to Oxford and Cambridge, I not only reveled in the architectural glories of those great seats of learning, but learned the advantages of college life in common—of the "halls,'' and the general social life which they promote; of
Even St. Petersburg, during my attachéship in 1854-1855, contributed to these airy structures. In my diary for that period, I find it jotted down that I observed and studied at various times the Michael Palace in that city as a very suitable structure for a university. Twenty years afterward, when I visited, as minister of the United States, the Grand Duchess Catherine, the aunt of the Emperor Alexander III, in that same palace, and mentioned to her my old admiration for it, she gave me a most interesting account of the building of it, and of the laying out of the beautiful park about it by her father, the old Grand Duke Michael, and agreed with me that it would be a noble home for an institution of learning.
My student life at Berlin, during the year following, further intensified my desire to do something for university education in the United States. There I saw my ideal of a university not only realized, but extended and glorified— with renowned professors, with ample lecture-halls, with everything possible in the way of illustrative materials, with laboratories, museums, and a concourse of youth from all parts of the world.
I have already spoken, in the chapter on my professorship
Recalled to Syracuse after five years in Michigan, my old desire to see a university rising in the State of New York was stronger than ever. Michigan had shown me some of my ideals made real; why might not our own much greater commonwealth be similarly blessed?
The first thing was to devise a plan for a suitable faculty. As I felt that this must not demand too large an outlay, I drew up a scheme providing for a few resident teachers supported by endowments, and for a body of nonresident professors or lecturers supported by fees. These lecturers were to be chosen from the most eminent professors in the existing colleges and from the best men then in the public-lecture field; and my confidant in the matter was George William Curtis, who entered into it heartily, and who afterward, in his speech at my inauguration as president of Cornell, referred to it in a way which touched me deeply.[5]
The next thing was to decide upon a site. It must naturally be in the central part of the State; and, rather
My next effort was to make a beginning of an endowment, and for this purpose I sought to convert Gerrit Smith. He was, for those days, enormously wealthy. His property, which was estimated at from two to three millions of dollars, he used munificently; and his dear friend and mine, Samuel Joseph May, had told me that it was not too much to hope that Mr. Smith might do something for the improvement of higher instruction. To him, therefore, I wrote, proposing that if he would contribute an equal sum to a university at Syracuse, I would give to it one half of my own property. In his answer he gave reasons why he could not join in the plan, and my scheme seemed no nearer reality than my former air-castles. It seemed, indeed, to have faded away like
CHAPTER XVIII
EZRA CORNELL—1864-1874
ON the first day of the year 1864, taking my seat for the first time in the State Senate at Albany, I found among my associates a tall, spare man, apparently very reserved and austere, and soon learned his name—Ezra Cornell.
Though his chair was near mine, there was at first little intercourse between us, and there seemed small chance of more. He was steadily occupied, and seemed to have no desire for new acquaintances. He was, perhaps, the oldest man in the Senate; I, the youngest: he was a man of business; I was fresh from a university professorship: and, upon the announcement of committees, our paths seemed separated entirely; for he was made chairman of the committee on agriculture, while to me fell the chairmanship of the committee on education.
Yet it was this last difference which drew us together; for among the first things referred to my committee was a bill to incorporate a public library which he proposed to found in Ithaca.
On reading this bill I was struck, not merely by his gift of one hundred thousand dollars to his townsmen, but even more by a certain breadth and largeness in his way of making it. The most striking sign of this was his mode of forming a board of trustees; for, instead of the usual effort to tie up the organization forever in some sect, party, or clique, he had named the best men of his town— his political opponents as well as his friends; and had
Our next relations were not, at first, so pleasant. The great Land Grant of 1862, from the General Government to the State, for industrial and technical education, had been turned over, at a previous session of the legislature, to an institution called the People's College, in Schuyler County; but the Agricultural College, twenty miles distant from it, was seeking to take away from it a portion of this endowment; and among the trustees of this Agricultural College was Mr. Cornell, who now introduced a bill to divide the fund between the two institutions.
On this I at once took ground against him, declaring that the fund ought to be kept together at some one institution; that on no account should it be divided; that the policy for higher education in the State of New York should be concentration; that we had already suffered sufficiently from scattering our resources; that there were already over twenty colleges in the State, and not one of them doing anything which could justly be called university work.
Mr. Cornell's first effort was to have his bill referred, not to my committee, but to his; here I resisted him, and, as a solution of the difficulty, it was finally referred to a joint committee made up of both. On this double-headed committee I deliberately thwarted his purpose throughout the entire session, delaying action and preventing any report upon his bill.
Most men would have been vexed by this; but he took my course calmly, and even kindly. He never expostulated, and always listened attentively to my arguments against his view; meanwhile I omitted no opportunity to make these arguments as strong as possible, and especially
After the close of the session, during the following summer, as it had become evident that the trustees of the People's College had no intention of raising the additional endowment and providing the equipment required by the act which gave them the land grant, there was great danger that the whole fund might be lost to the State by the lapsing of the time allowed in the congressional act for its acceptance. Just at this period Mr. Cornell invited me to attend a meeting of the State Agricultural Society, of which he was the president, at Rochester; and, when the meeting had assembled, he quietly proposed to remove the difficulty I had raised, by drawing a new bill giving the State Agricultural College half of the fund, and by inserting a clause requiring the college to provide an additional sum of three hundred thousand dollars. This sum he pledged himself to give, and, as the comptroller of the State had estimated the value of the land grant at six hundred thousand dollars, Mr. Cornell supposed that this would obviate my objection, since the fund of the Agricultural College would thus be made equal to the whole original land-grant fund as estimated, which would be equivalent to keeping the whole fund together.
The entire audience applauded, as well they might: it was a noble proposal. But, much to the disgust of the meeting, I persisted in my refusal to sanction any bill dividing the fund, declared myself now more opposed to such a division than ever; but promised that if Mr. Cornell and his friends would ask for the whole grant—keeping it together, and adding his three hundred thousand dollars, as proposed—I would support such a bill with all my might.
I was led to make this proposal by a course of circumstances which might, perhaps, be called "providential.'' For some years I had been dreaming of a university; had looked into the questions involved, at home and abroad; had approached sundry wealthy and influential men on the
Yet for some months nothing seemed to come of our conference. At the assembling of the legislature in the following year, it was more evident than ever that the trustees of the People's College intended to do nothing. During the previous session they had promised through their agents to supply the endowment required by their charter; but, though this charter obliged them, as a condition of taking the grant, to have an estate of two hundred acres, buildings for the accommodation of two hundred students, and a faculty of not less than six professors, with a sufficient library and other apparatus, yet our committee, on again taking up the subject, found hardly the faintest pretense of complying with these conditions. Moreover, their charter required that their property should be free from all encumbrance; and yet the so-called donor of it, Mr. Charles Cook, could not be induced to cancel a small mortgage which he held upon it. Still worse, before the legislature had been in session many days, it was found that his agent had introduced a bill to relieve the People 's College of all conditions, and to give it, without any pledge whatever, the whole land grant, amounting to very nearly a million of acres.
But even worse than this was another difficulty. In addition to the strong lobby sent by Mr. Cook to Albany in behalf of the People's College, there came representatives of nearly all the smaller denominational colleges in the State, men eminent and influential, clamoring for a division of the fund among their various institutions, though the fragment which would have fallen to each would not have sufficed to endow even a single professorship.
While all this was uncertain, and the fund seemed likely to be utterly frittered away, I was one day going down from the State Capitol, when Mr. Cornell joined me
On this occasion, after some little general talk, he quietly said, "I have about half a million dollars more than my family will need: what is the best thing I can do with it for the State?'' I answered: " Mr. Cornell, the two things most worthy of aid in any country are charity and education; but, in our country, the charities appeal to everybody. Any one can understand the importance of them, and the worthy poor or unfortunate are sure to be taken care of. As to education, the lower grades will always be cared for in the public schools by the State; but the institutions of the highest grade, without which the lower can never be thoroughly good, can be appreciated by only a few. The policy of our State is to leave this part of the system to individuals; it seems to me, then, that if you have half a million to give, the best thing you can do with it is to establish or strengthen some institution for higher instruction.'' I then went on to show him the need of a larger institution for such instruction than the State then had; that such a college or university worthy of the State would require far more in the way of faculty and equipment than most men supposed; that the time had come when scientific and technical education must be provided for in such an institution; and that education in history and literature should be the bloom of the whole growth.
He listened attentively, but said little. The matter seemed to end there; but not long afterward he came to me and said: "I agree with you that the land-grant fund ought to be kept together, and that there should be a new institution fitted to the present needs of the State and the country. I am ready to pledge to such an institution a site
As may well be imagined, I hailed this proposal joyfully, and soon sketched out a bill embodying his purpose so far as education was concerned. But here I wish to say that, while Mr. Cornell urged Ithaca as the site of the proposed institution, he never showed any wish to give his own name to it. The suggestion to that effect was mine. He at first doubted the policy of it; but, on my insisting that it was in accordance with time-honored American usage, as shown by the names of Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Amherst, Bowdoin, Brown, Williams, and the like, he yielded.
We now held frequent conferences as to the leading features of the institution to be created. In these I was more and more impressed by his sagacity and largeness of view; and, when the sketch of the bill was fully developed,—its financial features by him, and its educational features by me,—it was put into shape by Charles J. Folger of Geneva, then chairman of the judiciary committee of the Senate, afterward chief judge of the Court of Appeals, and finally Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. The provision forbidding any sectarian or partizan predominance in the board of trustees or faculty was proposed by me, heartily acquiesced in by Mr. Cornell, and put into shape by Judge Folger. The State-scholarship feature and the system of alumni representation on the board of trustees were also accepted by Mr. Cornell at my suggestion.
I refer to these things especially because they show one striking characteristic of the man—namely, his readiness to be advised largely by others in matters which he felt to be outside his own province, and his willingness to give the largest measure of confidence when he gave any confidence at all.
On the other hand, the whole provision for the endowment, the part relating to the land grant, and, above all,
But, while he thus left the general educational features to me, he uttered, during one of our conversations, words which showed that he had arrived at the true conception of a university. He expressed the hope that in the proposed institution every student might find instruction in whatever study interested him. Hence came the legend now surrounding his medallion portrait upon the university seal: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.''
The introduction of this new bill into the legislature was a signal for war. Nearly all the denominational colleges girded themselves for the fray, and sent their agents to fight us at Albany; they also stirred up the secular press, without distinction of party, in the regions where they were situated, and the religious organs of their various sects in the great cities.
At the center of the movement against us was the People's College; it had rallied in force and won over the chairman of the educational committee in the Assembly, so that under various pretexts he delayed considering the bill. Worst of all, there appeared against us, late in the session, a professor from the Genesee College—a man of high character and great ability; and he did his work most vigorously. He brought the whole force of his sect to bear upon the legislature, and insisted that every other college in the State had received something from the public funds, while his had received none.
As a first result came a proposal from some of his associates that twenty-five thousand dollars of the land-grant fund be paid to Genesee College; but this the friends of the Cornell bill resisted, on the ground that, if the fund were broken into in one case, it would be in others.
It was next proposed that Mr. Cornell should agree to give twenty-five thousand dollars to Genesee College on the passage of the bill. This Mr. Cornell utterly refused, saying that not for the passage of any bill would he make any private offer or have any private understanding; that every condition must be put into the bill, where all men could see it; and that he would then accept or reject it as he might think best. The result was that our opponents forced into the bill a clause requiring him to give twenty-five thousand dollars to Genesee College, before he could be allowed to give five hundred thousand dollars to the proposed university; and the friends of the bill, not feeling strong enough to resist this clause, and not being willing to see the enterprise wrecked for the want of it, allowed it to go unopposed. The whole matter was vexatious to the last degree. A man of less firmness and earnestness, thus treated, would have thrown up his munificent purpose in disgust; but Mr. Cornell quietly persevered.
Yet the troubles of the proposed university had only begun. Mr. Charles Cook, who, during his senatorship, had secured the United States land grant of 1862 for the People's College, was a man of great force, a born leader of men, anxious to build up his part of the State, and especially the town from which he came, though he had no special desire to put any considerable part of his own wealth into a public institution. He had seen the opportunities afforded by the land grant, had captured it, and was now determined to fight for it. The struggle became bitter. His emissaries, including the members of the Senate and Assembly from his part of the State, made com-mon cause with the sectarian colleges, and with various corporations and persons who, having bills of their own
The coalition of all these forces against the Cornell University bill soon became very formidable, and the committee on education in the Assembly, to which the bill had been referred, seemed more and more controlled by them. Our only hope now was to enlighten the great body of the senators and assemblymen. To this end Mr. Cornell invited them by squads, sometimes to his rooms at Congress Hall, sometimes to mine at the Delavan House. There he laid before them his general proposal and the financial side of the plan, while I dwelt upon the need of a university in the true sense of the word; upon the opportunity now offered by this great fund; upon the necessity of keeping it together; upon the need of large means to carry out any scheme of technical and general education such as was contemplated by the congressional act of 1862; showed the proofs that the People's College would and could do nothing to meet this want; that division of the fund among the existing colleges was simply the annihilation of it; and, in general, did my best to enlighten the reason and arouse the patriotism of the members on the subject of a worthy university in our State. These points and others were finally embodied in my speech before the Senate, and this having been published in the "Albany Journal,'' Mr. Cornell provided for its circulation broadcast over the State and thus aroused public opinion.
In this way we won to our support several strong friends in both Houses, among them some men of great natural force of character who had never enjoyed the privilege of much early education, but who were none the less anxious that those who came after them should have the best opportunities. Of these I may name especially Senators Cook of Saratoga and Ames of Oswego. Men of high education and culture also aided us, especially Mr. Andrews, Mr. Havens, and, finally, Judge Folger in the Senate, with Mr. Lord and Mr. Weaver in the Assembly.
While we were thus laboring with the legislature as a whole, serious work had to be done with the Assembly committee; and Mr. Cornell employed a very eminent lawyer to present his case, while Mr. Cook employed one no less noted to take the opposite side. The session of the committee was held in the Assembly chamber, and there was a large attendance of spectators; but, unfortunately, the lawyer employed by Mr. Cornell having taken little pains with the case, his speech was cold, labored, perfunctory, and fell flat. The speech on the other side was much more effective; it was thin and demagogical, but the speaker knew well the best tricks for catching the average man. He indulged in eloquent tirades against the Cornell bill as a "monopoly,'' a "wild project,'' a "selfish scheme,'' a "job,'' a "grab,'' and the like; denounced Mr. Cornell as "seeking to erect a monument to himself''; hinted that he was "planning to rob the State''; and, before he had finished, had pictured Mr. Cornell as a swindler and the rest of us as dupes or knaves.
I can never forget the quiet dignity with which Mr. Cornell took this abuse. Mrs. Cornell sat at his right, I at his left. In one of the worst tirades against him, he turned to me and said quietly, and without the slightest anger or excitement: "If I could think of any other way in which half a million of dollars would do as much good to the State, I would give the legislature no more trouble.'' Shortly afterward, when the invective was again especially bitter, he turned to me and said: "I am not sure but that it would be a good thing for me to give the half a million to old Harvard College in Massachusetts, to educate the descendants of the men who hanged my forefathers.''
There was more than his usual quaint humor in this —there was that deep reverence which he always bore toward his Quaker ancestry, and which seemed to have become part of him. I admired Mr. Cornell on many occasions, but never more than during that hour when he sat, without the slightest anger, mildly taking the abuse of
This struggle being ended, the Assembly committee could not be induced to report the bill. It was easy, after such a speech, for its members to pose as protectors of the State against a swindler and a monopoly; the chairman, who, shortly after the close of the session, was mysteriously given a position in the New York custom-house, made pretext after pretext without reporting, until it became evident that we must have a struggle in the Assembly and drag the bill out of the committee in spite of him. To do this required a two-thirds vote. All our friends were set to work, and some pains taken to scare the corporations which had allied themselves with the enemy, in regard to the fate of their own bills, by making them stand that, unless they stopped their interested opposition to the university bill in the House, a feeling would be created in the Senate very unfortunate for them. In this way their clutch upon sundry members of the Assembly was somewhat relaxed, and these were allowed to vote according to their consciences.
The Cornell bill was advocated most earnestly in the House by Mr. Henry B. Lord: in his unpretentious way he marshaled the university forces, and moved that the bill be taken from the committee and referred to the Committee of the Whole. Now came a struggle. Most of the best men in the Assembly stood by us; but the waverers —men who feared local pressure, sectarian hostility, or the opposition of Mr. Cook to measures of their own— attempted, if not to oppose the Cornell bill, at least to evade a vote upon it. In order to give them a little tone and strength, Mr. Cornell went with me to various leading editors in the city of New York, and we explained the whole matter to them, securing editorial articles favorable to the university, the most prominent among these gentlemen being Horace Greeley of the "Tribune,'' Erastus
Another long struggle now ensued, but the bill was finally passed in the Assembly and came back to the Senate. There the struggle was renewed, all kinds of delaying tactics were resorted to, but the bill was finally carried, and received the signature of Governor Fenton.
Now came a new danger. During their struggle against the bill, our enemies had been strong enough to force into it a clause enabling the People 's College to retain the land fund, provided that institution should be shown, within six months of the passage of the bill, to be in possession of a sum such as the Board of Regents should declare would enable it to comply with the conditions on which it had originally received the grant. The Board of Regents now reported that the possession of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars would be sufficient for such a compliance, and would insure the fund to the People's College. Naturally we watched, in much uneasy suspense, during those six months, to see whether Mr. Cook and the People's College authorities would raise this sum of money, so small in comparison with that which Mr. Cornell was willing to give, in order to secure the grant. But our fears were baseless; and on the fifth day of September, 1865, the trustees of Cornell University were assembled for the first time at Ithaca.
Then came to them a revelation of a quality in Mr. Cornell unknown to most of them before. In one of the petitions forwarded from Ithaca to the legislature by his fellow-citizens it had been stated that "he never did less than he promised, but generally more.'' So it was found in this case. He turned over to the trustees, not only the
Yet the services of Mr. Cornell had only begun: he at once submitted to us a plan for doing what no other citizen had done for any other State. In the other commonwealths which had received the land grant, the authorities had taken the scrip representing the land, sold it at the market price, and, as the market was thus glutted, had realized but a small sum; but Mr. Cornell, with that foresight which was his most striking characteristic, saw clearly what could be done by using the scrip to take up land for the institution. To do this he sought aid in various ways; but no one dared join him, and at last he determined to bear the whole burden himself. Scrip representing over seven hundred thousand acres still remained in the hands of the comptroller. The trustees received Mr. Cornell's plan for dealing with the scrip somewhat doubtfully, but the enabling act was passed, by which he was permitted to "locate'' this land for the benefit of the university. So earnest was he in this matter that he was anxious to take up the entire amount, but here his near friends interposed: we saw too well what a crushing load the taxes and other expenses on such a vast tract of land would become before it could be sold to advantage. Finally he yielded somewhat: it was agreed that he should take up five hundred thousand acres, and he now gave himself day and night to this great part of the enterprise, which was to provide a proper financial basis for a university such as we hoped to found.
Meanwhile, at Mr. Cornell's suggestion, I devoted myself to a more careful plan of the new institution; and, at the next meeting of the board, presented a "plan of organization,'' which sketched out the purpose and constitution of such a university as seemed needed in a great commonwealth like ours. Mr. Cornell studied it carefully, gave it his approval, and a copy of it with marginal notes in his own hand is still preserved.
I had supposed that this was to end my relations with Mr. Cornell, so far as the university was concerned. A multitude of matters seemed to forbid my taking any further care for it, and a call to another position very attractive to me drew me away from all thought of connection with it, save, perhaps, such as was involved in meeting the trustees once or twice a year.
Mr. Cornell had asked me, from time to time, whether I could suggest any person for the presidency of the university. I mentioned various persons, and presented the arguments in their favor. One day he said to me quietly that he also had a candidate; I asked him who it was, and he said that he preferred to keep the matter to himself until the next meeting of the trustees. Nothing more passed between us on that subject. I had no inkling of his purpose, but thought it most likely that his candidate was a Western gentleman whose claims had been strongly pressed upon him. When the trustees came together, and the subject was brought up, I presented the merits of various gentlemen, especially of one already at the head of an important college in the State, who, I thought, would give us success. Upon this, Mr. Cornell rose, and, in a very simple but earnest speech, presented my name. It was entirely unexpected by me, and I endeavored to show the trustees that it was impossible for me to take the place in view of other duties; that it needed a man of more robust health, of greater age, and of wider reputation in the State. But Mr. Cornell quietly persisted, our colleagues declared themselves unanimously of his opinion, and, with many misgivings, I gave a provisional acceptance.
The relation thus begun ended only with Mr. Cornell's life, and from first to last it grew more and more interesting to me. We were thrown much together at Albany, at Ithaca, and on various journeys undertaken for the university; and, the more I saw of him, the deeper became my respect for him. There were, indeed, toward the end of his life, some things trying to one of my temperament, and among these things I may mention his exceeding reticence,
His liberality was unstinted. While using his fortune in taking up the lands, he was constantly doing generous things for the university and those connected with it. One of the first of these was his gift of the library in classical literature collected by Dr. Charles Anthon of Columbia College. Nothing could apparently be more outside his sympathy than the department needing these seven thousand volumes; but he recognized its importance in the general plan of the new institution, bought the library for over twelve thousand dollars, and gave it to the university.
Then came the Jewett collection in geology, which he gave at a cost of ten thousand dollars; the Ward collection of casts, at a cost of three thousand; the Newcomb collection in conchology, at a cost of sixteen thousand; an addition to the university grounds, valued at many thousands more; and it was only the claims of a multitude of minor university matters upon his purse which prevented his carrying out a favorite plan of giving a great telescope, at a cost of fifty thousand dollars. At a later period, to extinguish the university debt, to increase the equipment, and eventually to provide free scholarships and fellowships, he made an additional gift of about eighty thousand dollars.
While doing these things, he was constantly advancing large sums in locating the university lands, and in paying university salaries, for which our funds were not yet available; while from time to time he made many gifts which, though smaller, were no less striking evidences of the largeness of his view. I may mention a few among these as typical.
Having found, in the catalogue of a London book-seller, a set of Piranesi's great work on the "Antiquities of Rome,''—a superb copy, the gift of a pope to a royal duke,—I showed it to him, when he at once ordered it for our library at a cost of about a thousand dollars. At
Characteristic of him, too, was another piece of quiet munificence. When the clause forced into the university charter, requiring him to give twenty-five thousand dollars to another institution before he could be allowed to give half a million to his own, was noised abroad through the State, there was a general feeling of disgust; and at the next session of the legislature a bill was brought in to refund the twenty-five thousand dollars to him. Upon this, he remarked that what he once gave he never took back, but that if the university trustees would accept it he had no objection. The bill was modified to this effect, and thus the wrong was righted.
During my stay in Europe, through the summer of 1868, under instructions to study various institutions for technical education, to make large purchases of books, and to secure one or two men greatly needed in special departments not then much cultivated in this country, his gen-erosity was unfailing. Large as were the purchases which I was authorized to make, the number of desirable things outside this limit steadily grew larger; but my letters to him invariably brought back the commission to secure this additional material.
During this occupation of mine in Europe, he was quite as busy in the woods of the upper Mississippi and on the plains of Kansas, selecting university lands. No fatigue or expenditure deterred him.
At various periods I passed much time with Mr. Cornell on his home farm. He lived generously, in a kind of patriarchal simplicity, and many of his conversations interested me intensely. His reticence gradually yielded, and he gave me much information regarding his earlier years: they had been full of toil and struggle, but through the whole there
Especially interesting were his references to the beginnings of American telegraphic enterprise, with which he had so much to do.
His connection with it began in a curious way. Traveling in northern New England to dispose of a plow which he had invented, he entered the office of a gentleman who had taken the contract for laying the first telegraphic wires underground between Washington and Baltimore, and found him in much doubt and trouble: the difficulty was to lay the leaden pipe containing the two insulated wires at a cost within the terms of the contract. Hearing this, Mr. Cornell said: "I will build you a machine which will dig the trench, lay the pipe and wires, and cover them with earth rapidly and cheaply.''
This proposal was at first derided; but, as Mr. Cornell insisted upon it, he was at last allowed to show what he could do. The machine having been constructed, he exhibited it to a committee; but when the long line of horses attached to it were started, it was so thrown about by the inequalities of the surface that the committee declared it a failure. Presently Mr. Cornell took them to the ground over which the machine had just passed, and, showing them a line of newly turned earth, asked them to dig in it. Having done this, they found the pipe incasing the wires, acknowledged his triumph, and immediately gave him and his machine permanent employment.
But before long he became convinced that this was not the best way. Having studied all the books on electricity that he could find in the Congressional Library, he had satisfied himself that it would be far better and cheaper to string the wires through the open air between poles. This idea the men controlling the scheme for a time resisted. Some of them regarded such interference in a scientific matter by one whom they considered a plain working-man as altogether too presuming. But one day Professor Morse came out to decide the matter. Finding Mr. Cornell at his machine, the professor explained the difficulties in the case, especially the danger of shaking the confidence of Congress, and so losing the necessary appropriation, should any change in plan be adopted, and then asked him if he could see any way out of the difficulty. Mr. Cornell answered that he could, whereupon Professor Morse expressed a wish that it might be taken. At this Mr. Cornell gave the word to his men, started up the long line of horses dragging the ponderous machine, guided it with his own hands into a boulder lying near,and thus deranged the whole machinery.
As a natural result it was announced by various journals at the national capital that the machinery for laying the wires had been broken by the carelessness of an employee, but that it would doubtless soon be repaired and the work resumed. Thanks to this stratagem, the necessary time was gained without shaking the confidence of Congress, and Mr. Cornell at once began stringing the wires upon poles: the insulation was found far better than in the underground system, and there was no more trouble.
The confidence of the promoters of the enterprise being thus gained, Mr. Cornell was employed to do their work in all parts of the country; and his sturdy honesty, energy, and persistence justified their confidence and laid the foundations of his fortune.
Very striking were the accounts of his troubles and trials during the prosecution of this telegraphic work—
Through his personal history, as I then began to learn it, ran a thread, or rather a strong cord, of stoicism. He had clung with such desperate tenacity to his faith in the future of the telegraphic system, that, sooner than part with his interest in it, even when its stock was utterly discredited, he suffered from poverty, and almost from want. While pressing on his telegraphic construction, he had been terribly wounded in a Western railroad accident, but had extricated himself from the dead and dying, and, as I learned from others, had borne his sufferings without a murmur. At another time, overtaken by ship-fever at Montreal, and thought to be beyond help, he had quietly made up his mind that, if he could reach a certain hydropathic establishment in New York, he would recover; and had dragged himself through that long journey, desperately ill as he was, in railway cars, steamers, and stages, until he reached his desired haven; and there he finally recovered, though nearly every other person attacked by the disease at his Montreal hotel had died.
Pursuing his telegraphic enterprise, he had been obliged at times to fight many strong men and great combinations of capital; but this same stoicism carried him through: he used to say laughingly that his way was to "tire them out.''
When, at last, fortune had begun to smile upon him, his public spirit began to show itself in more striking forms, though not in forms more real, than in his earlier days. Evidences of this met the eye of his visitors at once, and among these were the fine cattle, sheep, fruit-trees, and the like, which he had brought back from the London Exposition of 1851. His observations of the agricultural experiments of Lawes and Gilbert at Rothamstead in England, and his visits to various agricultural exhibitions, led him to attempt similar work at home. Everything
He never showed the slightest approach to display or vanity regarding any of these things, and most of them I heard of first, at a later period, from others.
Although his religious ideas were very far from those generally considered orthodox, he had a deep sympathy with every good effort for religion and morality, no matter by whom made; and he contributed freely to churches of every name and to good purposes of every sort. He had quaint ways at times in making such gifts, and from the many stories showing these I select one as characteristic. During the Civil War, the young women of the vil-lage held large sewing-circles, doing work for the soldiers. When Mr. Cornell was asked to contribute to their funds, he declined, to the great surprise of those who asked him, and said dryly: "Of course these women don't really come together to sew for the soldiers; they come together to gossip.'' This was said, no doubt, with that peculiar twinkle of the eye which his old friends can well remember; but, on the young ladies protesting that he did them injustice, he answered: "If you can prove that I am wrong, I will gladly contribute; if you will only sew together all one afternoon, and no one of you speak a word, I will give you a hundred dollars.'' The society met, and complete silence reigned. The young men of the community, hearing of this, and seeing an admirable chance to tease their fair friends, came in large numbers to the sewing-circle, and tried to engage them in conversation. At first their attempts were in vain; but, finally, to a question skilfully put, one of the young ladies made a reply. This broke the spell. Of course, the whole assembly were very unhappy; but, when all was told to Mr. Cornell, he said:
But I ought to say here that this little episode would be grossly misunderstood were it supposed to indicate any tendency in his heart or mind toward a cynical view of womankind. Nothing could be more manly and noble than his reference to her who had stood at his side courageously, hopefully, and cheerily during his years of struggle and want of appreciation. Well might he speak of her, as he did once in my hearing, as "the best woman that ever lived.'' And his gentle courtliness and thoughtful kindness were also deeply appreciated in other households. His earnestness, too, in behalf of the higher education of women, and of their fair treatment in various professions and occupations, showed something far deeper than conventional politeness.
From the time when I began to know him best, his main thought was concentrated upon the university. His own business interests were freely sacrificed; his time, wealth, and effort were all yielded to his work in taking up its lands, to say nothing of supplementary work which became in many ways a heavy burden to him.
During the summer preceding the opening of the university, this labor and care began to wear upon him, and he was attacked by an old malady which gave him great pain; yet his stoicism asserted itself. Through night after night, as I lay in the room next his at his farm-house, I could hear him groan, and to my natural sympathy was added a fear lest he might not live through this most critical period in the history of the new institution; but, invariably, when I met him next morning and asked how he felt, his answer was, "All right,'' or "Very well.'' I cannot remember ever hearing him make any complaint of his sufferings or even any reference to them.
Nor did pain diminish his steady serenity or generosity. I remember that on one hot afternoon of that summer, when he had come into the house thoroughly weary, a young man called upon him to ask for aid in securing
As the day approached for the formal opening of the university, he was obliged to remain in bed. Care and toil had prostrated me also; and both of us, a sorry couple indeed, had to be taken from our beds to be carried to the opening exercises.
A great crowd had assembled from all parts of the State:—many enthusiastic, more doubtful, and some decidedly inclined to scoff.
Some who were expected were not present. The Governor of the State, though he had been in Ithaca the day before, quietly left town on the eve of the opening exercises. His Excellency was a very wise man in his generation, and evidently felt that it was not best for him to have too much to do with an institution which the sectarian press had so generally condemned. I shall not soon forget the way in which Mr. Cornell broke the news to me, and the accent of calm contempt in his voice. Fortunately there remained with us the lieutenant-governor, General Stewart Lyndon Woodford. He came to the front nobly, and stood by us firmly and munificently ever afterward.
Mr. Cornell's speech on that occasion was very simple and noble; his whole position, to one who knew what he had gone through in the way of obloquy, hard work, and self-sacrifice, was touching. Worn down by illness, he was unable to stand, and he therefore read his address in a low tone from his chair. It was very impressive, almost incapacitating me from speaking after him, and I saw tears in the eyes of many in the audience. Nothing could be more simple than this speech of his; it was mainly devoted to a plain assertion of the true university theory in its most elementary form, and to a plea that women should have equal privileges with men in advanced education. In the midst of it came a touch of his quaint shrewdness; for, in replying to a recent charge that everything at the university was unfinished, he remarked in substance, "We
The opening day seemed a success, but this very success stirred up the enemy. A bitter letter from Ithaca to a leading denominational organ in New York gave the signal, and soon the whole sectarian press was in full cry, steadily pressing upon Mr. Cornell and those who stood near him. Very many of the secular presses also thought it wise to join in the attack, and it was quickly extended from his ideas to his honor, and even to his honesty. It seemed beyond the conception of many of these gentlemen that a Hicksite Quaker, who, if he gave any thought at all to this or that creed, or this or that "plan of salvation,'' passed it all by as utterly irrelevant and inadequate, could be a religious man; and a far greater number seemed to find it just as difficult to believe that a man could sacrifice his comfort and risk his fortune in managing so great a landed property for the public interest without any concealed scheme of plunder.
But he bore all this with his usual stoicism. It seemed to increase his devotion to the institution, rather than to diminish it. When the receipts from the endowment fell short or were delayed, he continued to advance money freely to meet the salaries of the professors; and for apparatus, books, and equipment of every sort his purse was constantly opened.
Yet, in those days of toil and care and obloquy, there were some things which encouraged him much. At that period all patriotic Americans felt deep gratitude to Goldwin Smith for his courage and eloquence in standing by our country during the Civil War, and great admiration for his profound and brilliant historical lectures at Oxford. Naturally, on arriving in London, I sought to engage him for the new university, and was authorized by Mr. Cornell to make him large pecuniary offers. Professor Smith entered at once into our plans heartily; wrote to encourage us; came to us; lived with us amid what, to him, must have been great privations; lectured for us year after year as
He also found especial pleasure in many of the lecture-courses established at the opening of the university. For Professor Agassiz he formed a warm friendship; and their discussions regarding geological questions were very interesting, eliciting from Agassiz a striking tribute to Mr. Cornell's closeness of observation and sagacity in reasoning. The lectures on history by Goldwin Smith, and on literature by James Russell Lowell, George William Curtis, and Bayard Taylor, he also enjoyed greatly.
The scientific collections and apparatus of various sorts gave him constant pleasure. I had sent from England, France, and Germany a large number of charts, models, and pieces of philosophical apparatus, and regarding some of them had thought it best to make careful explanations to him, in order to justify so large an expenditure; but I soon found this unnecessary. His shrewd mind enabled him to understand any piece of apparatus quickly, and to appreciate it fully. I have never had to deal with any man whose instinct in such matters was more true. If a book or scientific specimen or piece of apparatus was necessary to the proper work of a department, he could easily be made to see it; and then it must come to us, no matter at what cost. Like the great prince of navigators in the fifteenth century, he was a man "who had the taste for great things''—"qui tenia gusto en cosas grandes.'' He felt that the university was to be great, and he took his measures accordingly. His colleagues generally thought him over-sanguine; and when he declared that the university should yet have an endow-
I have never known a man more entirely unselfish. I have seen him, when his wealth was counted in millions, devote it so generously to university objects that he felt it necessary to stint himself in some matters of personal comfort. When urged to sell a portion of the university land at a sacrifice, in order to better our foundations, he answered in substance, "Don't let us do that yet; I will wear my old hat and coat a little longer, and let you have a little more money from my own pocket.''
This feeling seemed never diminished, even under the worst opposition. He "kept the faith,'' no matter who opposed him.
An eminent and justly respected president of one of the oldest Eastern universities published a treatise, which was widely circulated, to prove that the main ideas on which the new university was based were utterly impracticable; and especially that the presentation of various courses of instruction suited to young men of various aims and tastes, with liberty of choice between them, was preposterous. It is interesting to note that this same eminent gentleman was afterward led to adopt this same "impracticable'' policy at his own university. Others of almost equal eminence insisted that to give advanced scientific and technical instruction in the same institution with classical instruction was folly; and these gentlemen were probably not converted until the plan was adopted at English Cambridge. Others still insisted that an institution not belonging to any one religious sect must be "godless,'' would not be patronized, and could not succeed. Their eyes were opened later by the sight of men and women of different Christian denominations pressing forward at Cornell University to contribute sums which, in the aggregate, amounted to much more than the original endowment.
He earned the blessing of those who, not having seen, have yet believed. Though he did not live long enough to see the fundamental principles of the university thus
But the opposition to his work developed into worse shapes; many leading journals in the State, when not openly hostile to him, were cold and indifferent, and some of them were steadily abusive. This led to a rather wide-spread feeling that "where there is smoke, there must be fire''; and we who knew the purity of his purpose, his unselfishness, his sturdy honesty, labored long against this feeling.
I regret to say that some eminent men connected with important universities in the country showed far too much readiness to acquiesce in this unfavorable view of our founder. From very few of our sister institutions came any word of cheer; and from some of them came most bitter attacks, not only upon the system adopted in the new university, but upon Mr. Cornell himself. But his friends were more afflicted, by far, than he; all this opposition only served to strengthen his faith. As to this effect upon him, I recall one or two quaint examples. At the darkest period in the history of the university, I mentioned to him that a fine collection of mathematical books was offered us for five thousand dollars. Under ordinary circumstances he would have bought it for us at once; but at that moment, when any addition to his burdens would not have been advised by any of his friends, he quietly said, "Somewhere there is a man walking about who wants to give us that five thousand dollars.'' I am glad to say that his faith was soon justified; such a man appeared,—a man who was glad to give the required sum as a testimony to his belief in Mr. Cornell's integrity: William Kelly of Rhinebeck.
Another example may be given as typical. Near the close of the first celebration of Founder's Day at one of the college buildings, a pleasant social dance sprang up among the younger people—students from the university and young ladies from the village. This brought a very
To most attacks upon him in the newspapers he neither made nor suggested any reply; but one or two which were especially misleading he answered simply and conclusively. This had no effect, of course, in stopping the at-tacks; but it had one effect, at which the friends of the university rejoiced: it bound his old associates to him all the more closely, and led them to support him all the more vigorously. When a paper in one of the largest cities in western New York had been especially abusive, one of Mr. Cornell's old friends living in that city wrote: "I know that the charges recently published are utterly untrue; but I am not skilled in newspaper controversy, so I will simply add to what I have already given to the university a special gift of thirty thousand dollars, which will testify to my townsmen here, and perhaps to the public at large, my confidence in Mr. Cornell.''
Such was the way of Hiram Sibley. Upon another attack, especially violent, from the organ of one of the denominational colleges, another old friend of Mr. Cornell in the eastern part of the State, a prominent member of the religious body which this paper represented, sent his check for several thousand dollars, to be used for the purchase of books for the library, and to show confidence in Mr. Cornell by deeds as well as words.
Vile as these attacks were, worse remained behind. A local politician, who had been sent to the legislature from the district where the "People's College'' had lived its short life, prepared, with pettifogging ability, a long speech to show that the foundation of Cornell University, Mr. Cornell's endowment of it, and his contract to locate the
The enemies of the university were prompt to support the charges, and they found some echoes even among those who were benefited by his generosity—even among the students themselves. At this I felt it my duty to call the whole student body together, and, in a careful speech, to explain Mr. Cornell's transactions, answering the charges fully. This speech, though spread through the State, could evidently do but little toward righting the wrong; but it brought to me what I shall always feel a great honor—a share in the abuse showered mainly on him.
Very characteristic was Mr. Cornell's conduct under this outrage. That same faith in justice, that same patience under wrong, which he always showed, was more evident than ever.
On the morning after the attack in the legislature had been blazoned in all the leading newspapers—in the early hours, and after a sleepless night—I heard the rattle of gravel against my window-panes. On rising, I found Mr. Cornell standing below. He was serene and cheerful, and had evidently taken the long walk up the hill to quiet my irritation. His first words were a jocose prelude. The bells of the university, which were then chimed at six o'clock, were ringing merrily, and he called out, "Come down here and listen to the chimes; I have found a spot where you can hear them directly with one ear, and their echo with the other.''
When I had come down, we first investigated the echo
During the long investigation which ensued in New York and at Ithaca, he never lost his patience, though at times sorely tried. Various disappointed schemers, among these one person who had not been allowed to make an undue profit out of the university lands, and another who had been allowed to depart from a professorship on account of hopeless incompetency, were the main witnesses. The onslaught was led by the person who made the attack in the legislature, and he had raked together a mass of half-truths and surmises; but the evidence on Mr. Cornell's side consisted of a complete exhibition of all the facts and documents. The unanimous report of the committee was all that his warmest friends could desire; and its recommendations regarding the management of the fund were such as Mr. Cornell had long wished, but which he had hardly dared ask. The result was a complete triumph for him.
Yet the attacks continued. The same paper which had been so prominent in sounding them through the western part of the State continued them as before, and, almost
At the very time when these attacks were at their worst, he was giving especial thought to the problem of bringing education at the university within reach of young men of good ability and small means. I am quite within bounds in saying that he gave an hour to thought upon this for every minute he gave to thought upon the attacks of his enemies.
It was during this period that he began building his beautiful house near the university, and in this he showed some of his peculiarities. He took much pains to secure a tasteful plan, and some of the ideas embodied in it evidently resulted from his study of beautiful country-houses in England. Characteristic of him also was his way of carrying on the work. Having visited several quarries in various parts of the State, in order to choose the best possible building-stone, he employed some German stone-carvers who had recently left work upon the Cathedral of Cologne, brought them to Ithaca, and allowed them to work on with no interference save from the architect. If they gave a month or more to the carving of a single capital or corbel, he made no remonstrance. When he had thus secured the best stone-work, he selected the best seasoned oak and walnut and called skilful carpenters from England.
In thus going abroad for artisans there was no want of loyalty to his countrymen, nor was there any alloy
In connection with this, another incident throws light upon his characteristics. Above the front entrance of the house was a scroll, or ribbon, in stone, evidently intended for a name or motto. The words carved there were, "True and Firm.'' It is a curious evidence of the petty criticism which beset him in those days, that this motto was at times cited as a proof of his vainglory. It gives me pleasure to relieve any mind sensitive on this point, and to vindicate the truth of history, by saying that it was I who placed the motto there. Calling his attention one day to the scroll and to the need of an inscription, I suggested a translation of the old German motto, "Treu und Fest''; and, as he made no objection, I wrote it out for the stone-cutters, but told Mr. Cornell that there were people, perhaps, who might translate the last word "obstinate.''
The point of this lay in the fact, which Mr. Cornell knew very well, that he was frequently charged with obstinacy. Yet an obstinate man, in the evil sense of that word, he was not. For several years it fell to my lot to discuss a multitude of questions with him, and reasonableness was one of his most striking characteristics. He was one of those very rare strong men who recognize adequately their own limitations. True, when he had finally made up his mind in a matter fully within his own province, he remained firm; but I have known very few men, wealthy, strong, successful, as he was, so free from the fault of thinking that, because they are good judges of one class of questions, they are equally good in all others. One mark of an obstinate man is the announcement of opinions upon subjects regarding which his experience and previous training give him little or no means of judging. This was not at all the case with Mr. Cornell. When questions arose regarding internal university management, or courses of
During the last year or two of his life, I saw not so much of him as during several previous years. He had become greatly interested in various railway projects having as their purpose the connection of Ithaca, as a university town, with the State at large; and he threw himself into these plans with great energy. His course in this was prompted by a public spirit as large and pure as that which had led him to found the university. When, at the suggestion of sundry friends, I ventured to remonstrate with him against going so largely into these railway enterprises at his time of life, he said: "I shall live twenty years longer, and make a million of dollars more for the university endowment.'' Alas! within six months from that day he lay dead in the midst of many broken hopes. His plans, which, under other circumstances, would have been judged wise, seemed for a time wrecked by the financial crisis which had just come upon the country.
In his last hours I visited him frequently. His mind remained clear, and he showed his old freedom from any fault-finding spirit, though evidently oppressed by business cares and bodily suffering. His serenity was especially evident as I sat with him the night before his death, and I can never forget the placidity of his countenance, both then and on the next morning, when all was ended.
Something should be said regarding Mr. Cornell's political ideas. In the legislature he was a firm Republican, but as free as possible from anything like partizan bigotry. Party ties in local matters sat lightly upon him. He spoke in public very little, and took far greater interest in public improvement than in party advantage. With many of his political opponents his relations were
There was in his ordinary bearing a certain austerity and in his conversation an abruptness which interfered somewhat with his popularity. A student once said to me, "If Mr. Cornell would simply stand upon his pedestal as our `Honored Founder,' and let us hurrah for him, that would please us mightily; but when he comes into the laboratory and asks us gruffly, `What are you wasting your time at now?' we don't like him so well.'' The fact on which this remark was based was that Mr. Cornell liked greatly to walk quietly through the laboratories and drafting-rooms, to note the work. Now and then, when he saw a student doing something which especially interested him, he was evidently anxious, as he was wont to say, "to see what the fellow is made of,'' and he would frequently put some provoking question, liking nothing better than to receive a pithy answer. Of his kind feelings toward students I could say much. He was not in-clined to coddle them, but was ever ready to help any who were deserving.
Despite his apparent austerity, he was singularly free from harshness in his judgments. There were times when he would have been justified in outbursts of bitterness against those who attacked him in ways so foul and maligned him in ways so vile; but I never heard any bitter reply from him. In his politics there was never a drop of bitterness. Only once or twice did I hear him allude to any conduct which displeased him, and then
Of his intellectual characteristics, foresight was the most remarkable. Of all men in the country who had to do with the college land grant of 1862, he alone discerned the possibilities involved and had courage to make them actual.
Clearness of thought on all matters to which he gave his attention was another striking characteristic; hence, whenever he put anything on paper, it was lucid and cogent. There seems at times in his writings some of the clear, quaint shrewdness so well known in Abraham Lincoln. Very striking examples of this are to be found in his legislative speeches, in his address at the opening of the university, and in his letters.
Among his moral characteristics, his truthfulness, persistence, courage, and fortitude were most strongly marked. These qualities made him a man of peace. He regarded life as too short to be wasted in quarrels; his steady rule was never to begin a lawsuit or have anything to do with one, if it could be avoided. The joy in litigation and squabble, which has been the weakness of so many men claiming to be strong, and the especial curse of so many American churches, colleges, universities, and other public organizations, had no place in his strong, tolerant nature. He never sought to publish the sins of any one in the courts or to win the repute of an uncompromising fighter. In this peaceable disposition he was prompted not only by his greatest moral quality:— his charity toward his fellow-men, but by his greatest intellectual
There resulted from these qualities an equanimity which I have never seen equaled. When his eldest son had been elected to the highest office in the gift of the State Assembly, and had been placed, evidently, on the way to the governor 's chair,—afterward attained,—though it must have gratified such a father, he never made any reference to it in my hearing; and when the body of his favorite grandson, a most winning and promising boy, killed instantly by a terrible accident, was brought into his presence, though his heart must have bled, his calmness seemed almost superhuman.
His religious ideas were such as many excellent people would hardly approve. He had been born into the Society of Friends; and their quietness, simplicity, freedom from noisy activity, and devotion to the public good attached him to them. But his was not a bigoted attachment; he went freely to various churches, aiding them without distinction of sect, though finally he settled into a steady attendance at the Unitarian Church in Ithaca, for the pastor of which he conceived a great respect and liking. He was never inclined to say much about religion; but, in our talks, he was wont to quote with approval from Pope's "Universal Prayer''—and especially the lines:
To hide the fault I see;
The mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.''
On the mere letter of Scripture he dwelt little; and, while he never obtruded opinions that might shock any person, and was far removed from scoffing or irreverence, he did not hesitate to discriminate between parts of our Sacred Books which he considered as simply legendary and parts which were to him pregnant with eternal truth.
His religion seemed to take shape in a deeply reverent feeling toward his Creator, and in a constant desire to improve the condition of his fellow-creatures. He was never surprised or troubled by anything which any other human being believed or did not believe; of intolerance he was utterly incapable. He sought no reputation as a philanthropist, cared little for approval, and nothing for applause; but I can say of him, without reserve, that, during all the years I knew him, "he went about doing good.''
CHAPTER XIX
ORGANIZATION OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY—1865-1868
ALTHOUGH my formal election to the university presidency did not take place until 1867, the duties implied by that office had already been discharged by me during two years.
While Mr. Cornell devoted himself to the financial questions arising from the new foundation, he intrusted all other questions to me. Indeed, my duties may be said to have begun when, as chairman of the Committee on Education in the State Senate, I resisted all efforts to divide the land-grant fund between the People's College and the State Agricultural College; to have been continued when I opposed the frittering away of the entire grant among more than twenty small sectarian colleges; and to have taken a more direct form when I drafted the educational clauses of the university charter and advocated it before the legislature and in the press. This advocacy was by no means a light task. The influential men who flocked to Albany, seeking to divide the fund among various sects and localities, used arguments often plausible and sometimes forcible. These I dealt with on various occasions, but especially in a speech before the State Senate in 1865, in which was shown the character of the interested opposition, the farcical equipment of the People's College, the failure of the State Agricultural College, the inadequacy of the sectarian colleges, even though they called themselves universities; and I did all in my power to communicate to my colleagues
Three points I endeavored especially to impress upon them in this speech. First, that while, as regards primary education, the policy of the State should be diffusion of resources, it should be, as regards university education, concentration of resources. Secondly, that sectarian colleges could not do the work required. Thirdly, that any institution for higher education in the State must form an integral part of the whole system of public instruction; that the university should not be isolated from the school system, as were the existing colleges, but that it should have a living connection with the system, should push its roots down into it and through it, drawing life from it and sending life back into it. Mr. Cornell accepted this view at once. Mr. Horace Greeley, who, up to that time, had supported the People's College, was favorably impressed by it, and, more than anything else, it won for us his support. To insure this vital connection of the proposed university with the school system, I provided in the charter for four "State scholarships'' in each of the one hundred and twenty-eight Assembly districts. These scholarships were to be awarded to the best scholars in the public schools of each district, after due examination, one each year; each scholarship entitling the holder to free instruction in the university for four years. Thus the university and the schools were bound closely together by the constant and living tie of five hundred and twelve students. As the number of Assembly districts under the new constitution was made, some years later, one hundred and fifty, the number of these competitive free scholarships is now six hundred. They have served their pur-pose well. Thirty years of this connection have greatly uplifted the whole school system of the State, and made the university a life-giving power in it; while this
But during the earlier period of our plans there was one serious obstacle—Charles James Folger. He was the most powerful member of the Senate, its president, and chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He had already won wide respect as a county judge, had been longer in the Senate than any other member, and had already given ample evidence of the qualities which later in life raised him to some of the highest positions, State and National. His instincts would have brought him to our side; for he was broad-minded, enlightened, and earnestly in favor of all good legislation. He was also my personal friend, and when I privately presented my views to him he acquiesced in them. But there were two difficulties. First, he had in his own city a denominational college, his own alma mater, which, though small, was influential. Still worse for us, he had in his district the State Agricultural College, which the founding of Cornell University must necessarily wipe out of existence. He might rise above the first of these difficulties, but the second seemed insurmountable. No matter how much in sympathy with our main aim, he could not sacrifice a possession so dear to his constituency as the State College of Agriculture. He felt that he had no right to do so; he knew also that to do so would be to sacrifice his political future, and we felt, as he did, that he had no right to do this.
But here came in to help us the culmination of a series of events as unexpected as that which had placed the land-grant fund at our disposal just at the time when Mr. Cornell and myself met in the State Senate. For years a considerable body of thoughtful men throughout the State, more especially of the medical profession, had sought to remedy a great evil in the treatment of the insane. As far back as the middle of the century, Senator Bradford of Cortland had taken the lead in an investigation of the system then existing, and his report was a frightful exposure.
Both Mr. Cornell's financial plans and my educational plans in the new university charter were wrought into final shape by him. As chairman of the Judiciary Committee he reported our bill to the Senate, and at various critical periods gave us his earnest support. Quite likely doctrinaires will stigmatize our conduct in this matter as "log-rolling''; the men who always criticize but never construct may even call it a "bargain.'' There was no "bargain'' and no "log-rolling,'' but they may call it what they like; I believe that we were both of us thoroughly in the right. For our coming together in this way gave to the State the Willard Asylum and the Cornell University, and without our thus coming together neither of these would have been created.
But in spite of this happy compromise, the struggle for our university charter, as has already been seen, was long and severe. The opposition of over twenty sectarian colleges, and of active politicians from every quarter of the State where these colleges had been established, made our work difficult; but at last it was accomplished. Preparations for the new institution were now earnestly pressed on, and for a year I gave up very much of my time to them, keeping in constant communication with Mr. Cornell, frequently visiting Ithaca, and corresponding with trustees in various parts of the State and with all others at home or abroad who seemed able to throw light on any of the problems we had to solve.
The question now arose as to the presidency of the institution; and, as time passed on and duties increased, this became more and more pressing. In the previous chapter I have given some account of the circumstances attending my election and of Mr. Cornell's relation to it; but this is perhaps the place for stating one of the difficulties which stood in the way of my acceptance, and which, indeed, greatly increased my cares during all the first years of my presidency. The death of my father and uncle, who had
Just previously to my election to the university presidency I had presented a "plan of organization,'' which, having been accepted and printed by the trustees, formed the mold for the main features of the new institution; and early among my duties came the selection and nomination of professors. In these days one is able to choose from a large body of young men holding fellowships in the various larger universities of the United States; but then, with the possible exception of two or three at Harvard, there was not a fellowship, so far as I can remember, in the whole country. The choosing of professors was immeasurably more difficult than at present. With reference to this point, a very eminent graduate of Harvard then volunteered to me some advice, which at first sight looked sound, but which I soon found to be inapplicable. He said: "You must secure at any cost the foremost men in the United States in every department. In this way alone can a real university be created.'' Trying the Socratic method upon him, I asked, in reply, "How are we to get such men? The foremost man in American science is undoubtedly Agassiz, but he has refused all offers of high position at Paris made him by the French Emperor. The main objects of his life are the creation of his great museum at Harvard and his investigations and instruction in connection with it; he has declared that he has `no time to waste in making money!' What sum or what inducement of any sort can transfer him from Harvard to a new institution on the distant hills of central New York? So, too, with the most eminent men at the other universities. What sum will draw them
As to the other part of the plan, I secured Agassiz, Lowell, Curtis, Bayard Taylor, Goldwin Smith, Theodore Dwight, George W. Greene, John Stanton Gould, and at a later period Froude, Freeman, and others, as non-resident professors and lecturers. Of the final working of this system I shall speak later.
The question of buildings also arose; but, alas! I could not reproduce my air-castles. For our charter required us to have the university in operation in October, 1868, and there was no time for careful architectural preparation. Moreover, the means failed us. All that we could then do was to accept a fairly good plan for our main structures; to make them simple, substantial, and dignified; to build them of stone from our own quarries; and so to dispose them that future architects might so combine
Having called a number of professors and seen foundations laid for "Morrill Hall,'' I sailed in April of 1868 for Europe, in order to study technical institutions, to purchase needed equipment, and to secure certain professors such as could not then be found in our own country. Thus far my knowledge of higher education in Europe had been confined almost entirely to the universities; but now I went carefully through various technical institutions, among them the English Agricultural College at Cirencester, the Agricultural Experiment Station at Rothamstead, the French Agricultural College at Grignon, the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers at Paris, the Veterinary School at Alfort, the German Agricultural College at Hohenheim, the Technical School and Veterinary College at Berlin, and others. As to equipment, wherever I found valuable material I bought it. Thus were brought together for our library a very large collection of books in all the principal departments; physical and chemical apparatus from London, Paris, Heidelberg, and Berlin; chemicals from Berlin and Erfurt; the only duplicate of the royal collection of cereals and grasses and the great collection of British patent-office publications from the British imperial authorities; the Rau models of plows from Hohenheim; the Brendel plant models from Breslau; the models of machine movements from London, Darmstadt, and Berlin; the plastic models of Auzoux from Paris; and other apparatus and instruments
As to non-resident professors, I secured in London Goldwin Smith, who had recently distinguished himself by his works as a historian and as regius professor of history at Oxford; and I was successful in calling Dr. James Law, who, though a young man, had already made himself a name in veterinary science. It seemed to many a comical juxtaposition, and various witticisms were made at my expense over the statement that I had "brought back an Oxford professor and a Scotch horse-doctor.'' But never were selections more fortunate. Goldwin Smith, by his high character, his broad and deep scholarship, his devotion not only to his professorship but to the general university work, his self-denial in behalf of the university and its students, rendered priceless services. He bore all privations cheerfully and braved all discouragements manfully. Never were there better historical lectures than his. They inspired us all, and the impulse then given is still felt. So, too, Dr. Law, in his field, was invaluable, and this was soon felt throughout the State. Of him I shall speak later.
20. CHAPTER XX
THE FIRST YEARS OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY—1868-1870
ON the 7th of October, 1868, came the formal open-ing of the university. The struggle for its charter had attracted much attention in all parts of the State, and a large body of spectators, with about four hundred students, assembled at the Cornell Library Hall in Ithaca. Though the charter had required us to begin in October, there had seemed for some time very little chance of it. Mr. Cornell had been absent in the woods of the upper Mississippi and on the plains of Kansas, selecting university lands; I had been absent for some months in Europe, securing plans and equipment; and as, during our absence, the contractor for the first main building, Morrill Hall, had failed, the work was wretchedly behindhand. The direct roads to the university site were as yet impracticable, for the Cascadilla ravine and the smaller one north of it were still unbridged. The grounds were unkempt, with heaps of earth and piles of material in all directions. The great quantities of furniture, apparatus, and books which I had sent from Europe had been deposited wherever storage could be found. Typical was the case of the large Holtz electrical machine from Germany. It was in those days a novelty, and many were anxious to see it; but it could not be found, and it was only discovered several weeks later, when the last pots and pans were pulled out of the kitchen store-room in the cellar of the great stone barrack known as Cascadilla House. All sorts of greatly needed material had been delayed in steamships and on railways, or was
In conclusion, I alluded to two groups of "Eliminated Ideas,'' the first of these being the "Ideas of the Pedants,'' and the second the "Ideas of the Philistines.'' As to the former, I took pains to guard the institution from those who, in the higher education, substitute dates for history, gerund-grinding for literature, and formulas for science; as to the latter, I sought to guard it from the men to whom "Gain is God, and Gunnybags his Prophet.''
At the close, referring to Mr. Cornell, who had been too weak to stand while delivering his speech, and who was at that moment sitting near me, I alluded to his noble plans and to the opposition, misrepresentation, and obloquy he had met thus far, and in doing so turned toward him. The sight of him, as he thus sat, looking so weak, so weary, so broken, for a few moments utterly incapacitated me. I was myself, at the time, in but little better condition than he; and as there rushed into my mind memories of the previous ten days at his house, when I had heard him groan-ing in pain through almost every night, it flashed upon me how utterly hopeless was the university without his support. My voice faltered; I could for a moment say nothing;
In the afternoon came exercises at the university grounds. The chime of nine bells which Miss Jenny McGraw had presented to us had been temporarily hung in a wooden tower placed very near the spot where now stands the porch of the library; and, before the bells were rung for the first time, a presentation address was delivered by Mr. Francis Miles Finch, since justice of the Court of Appeals of the State and dean of the University Law School; and this was followed by addresses from the superintendent of public instruction, and from our non-resident professors Agassiz and George William Curtis.
Having again been taken out of bed and wrapped up carefully, I was carried up the hill to hear them. All the speeches were fine; but, just at the close, Curtis burst into a peroration which, in my weak physical condition, utterly unmanned me. He compared the new university to a newly launched ship—"all its sails set, its rigging full and complete from stem to stern, its crew embarked, its passengers on board; and,'' he added, "even while I speak to you, even while this autumn sun sets in the west, the ship begins to glide over the waves, it goes forth rejoicing, every stitch of canvas spread, all its colors flying, its
The audience applauded; the chimes burst merrily forth; but my heart sank within me. A feeling of "goneness'' came over me. Curtis's simile was so perfect that I felt myself indeed on the deck of the ship, but not so much in the character of its "chosen captain'' as of a seasick passenger. There was indeed reason for qualmish feelings. Had I drawn a picture of the ship at that moment, it would have been very different from that presented by Curtis. My mind was pervaded by our discouragements— by a realization of Mr. Cornell's condition and my own, the demands of our thoughtless friends, the attacks of our fanatical enemies, the inadequacy of our resources. The sense of all these things burst upon me, and the view about us was not reassuring. Not only were the university buildings unready and the grounds unkempt, but all that part of our domain which is now devoted to the beautiful lawns about the university chapel, Barnes Hall, Sage College, and other stately edifices, was then a ragged corn-field surrounded by rail fences. No one knew better than I the great difficulties which were sure to beset us. Probably no ship was ever launched in a condition so unfit to brave the storms. Even our lesser difficulties, though they may appear comical now, were by no means comical then. As a rule, Mr. Cornell had consulted me before making communications to the public; but during my absence in Europe he had written a letter to the "New York Tribune,'' announcing that students could support themselves, while pursuing their studies one half of each day in the university, by laboring the other half. In this he showed that sympathy with needy and meritorious young men which was one of his marked qualities, but his proclamation cost us dear. He measured the earnestness and en-durance and self-sacrifice of others by his own; he did not
Added to these were dreamers and schemers of more mature age. The mails were burdened with their letters and our offices with their presence. Some had plans for the regeneration of humanity by inventing machines which they wished us to build, some by devising philosophies which they wished us to teach, some by writing books which they wished us to print; most by taking professorships which they wished us to endow. The inevitable politician also appeared; and at the first meeting of the trustees two notorious party hacks came all the way from New York to tell us "what the people expected,''—which was the nomination of sundry friends of theirs to positions in the new institution. A severe strain was brought upon Mr. Cornell and myself in showing civility to these gentlemen; yet, as we were obliged to deny them, no suavity on our part could stay the inevitable result—their hostility. The attacks of the denominational and local presses in the interests of institutions which had failed to tear the fund in pieces and to secure scraps of it were thus largely reinforced. Ever and anon came onslaughts upon us personally and upon every feature of the institution, whether actual, probable, possible, or conceivable. One eminent editorial personage, having vainly sought to "unload'' a member of his staff into one of our professorships, howled in a long article at the turpitude of Mr. Cornell in land matters, screamed for legislative investigation, and for years afterward never neglected an opportunity to strike a blow at the new institution.
Some difficulties also showed themselves in the first working of our university machinery. In my "plan of organization,'' as well as in various addresses and reports, I had insisted that the university should present various
Yet for these difficulties in getting the student body under way there were compensations, and best of these was the character and bearing of the students. There were, of course, sundry exhibitions of boyishness, but the spirit of the whole body was better than that of any similar collection of young men I had ever seen. One reason was that we were happily spared any large proportion of rich men's sons, but the main reason was clearly the permission of choice between various courses of study in accordance with individual aims and tastes. In this way a far larger number were interested than had ever been under the old system of forcing all alike through one simple, single course, regardless of aims and tastes; and thus it came that, even from the first, the tone at Cornell was given, not by men who affected to despise study, but by men who devoted themselves to study. It evidently
As regards student discipline in the university, I had dwelt in my "plan of organization'' upon the advisability of a departure from the system inherited from the English colleges, which was still widely prevailing. It had been developed in America probably beyond anything known in Great Britain and Germany, and was far less satisfactory than in these latter countries, for the simple reason that in them the university authorities have some legal power to secure testimony and administer punishment, while in America they have virtually none. The result had been most unfortunate, as I have shown in other parts of these chapters referring to various student escapades in the older American universities, some of them having cost human life. I had therefore taken the ground that, so far as possible, students should be treated as responsible citizens; that, as citizens, they should be left to be dealt with by the constituted authorities; and that members of the faculty should no longer be considered as policemen. I had, during my college life, known sundry college tutors seriously injured while thus doing police duty; I have seen a professor driven out of a room, through the panel of a door, with books, boots, and bootjacks hurled at his head; and even the respected president of a college, a doctor of divinity, while patrolling buildings with the janitors, subjected to outrageous indignity.
Fortunately the causes already named, to which may be added athletic sports, especially boating, so greatly diminished student mischief at Cornell, that cases of discipline
There were indeed some cases requiring discipline by the faculty, and one of these will provoke a smile on the part of all who took part in it as long as they shall live. There had come to us a stalwart, sturdy New Englander, somewhat above the usual student age, and showing considerable aptitude for studies in engineering. Various complaints were made against him; but finally he was summoned before the faculty for a very singular breach of good taste, if not of honesty. The entire instructing body of that day being gathered about the long table in the faculty room, and I being at the head of the table, the culprit was summoned, entered, and stood solemnly before us. Various questions were asked him, which he parried with great ingenuity. At last one was asked of a very peculiar sort, as follows: "Mr. —, did you, last month, in the village of Dundee, Yates County, pass yourself off as Professor — of this university, announcing a lecture and delivering it in his name?'' He answered blandly, "Sir, I did go to Dundee in Yates County; I did deliver a lecture there; I did not announce myself as Professor — of Cornell University; what others may have done I do not know; all I know is that at the close of my lecture several leading men of the town came forward and said that they had heard a good many lectures given by college professors from all parts of the State, and that they had never had one as good as mine.'' I think, of all the strains upon my risible faculties during
Far more serious was another case. The usual good-natured bickering between classes had gone on, and as a consequence certain sophomores determined to pay off some old scores against members of the junior class, at a junior exhibition. To do this they prepared a "mock programme,'' which, had it been merely comic, as some others had been, would have provoked no ill feeling. Unfortunately, some miscreant succeeded in introducing into it allusions of a decidedly Rabelaisian character. The evening arrived, a large audience of ladies and gentlemen were assembled, and this programme was freely distributed. The proceeding was felt to be an outrage; and I served notice on the class that the real of offender or offenders, if they wished to prevent serious consequences to all concerned, must submit themselves to the faculty and take due punishment. Unfortunately, they were not manly enough to do this. Thereupon, to my own deep regret and in obedience to my sense of justice, I suspended indefinitely from the university the four officers of the class, its president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer. They were among the very best men in the class, all of them friends of my own; and I knew to a certainty that they had had nothing directly to do with the articles concerned, that the utmost which could be said against them was that they had been careless as to what appeared in the programme, for which they were responsible. Most bitter feeling arose, and I summoned a meeting of the entire student body. As I entered the room hisses were heard; the time had evidently come for a grapple with the whole body. I stated the case as it was: that the four officers would be suspended and must leave the university town until their return was allowed by the faculty; that such an offense against decency could not be condoned;
Still another thing which I sought to promote was a reasonable devotion to athletics. My own experience as a member of a boating-club at Yale had shown me what could be done, and I think one of the best investments I ever made was in giving a racing-boat to the Cornell crew on Cayuga Lake. The fact that there were so many students trained sturdily in rural homes in the bracing air of western New York, who on every working-day of college life tramped up the University Hill, and on other days explored the neighboring hills and vales, gave us a body of men sure to do well as athletes. At their first contest with the other universities on the Connecticut River at Springfield they were beaten, but they took their defeat manfully. Some time after this, General Grant, then President of the United States, on his visit to the university, remarked to me that he saw the race at Springfield; that our young men ought to have won it; and that, in his opinion, they would have won it if they had not been unfortunately placed in shallow water, where there were eddies making against them. This remark struck me forcibly, coming as it did from one who had so keen a judgment in every sort of contest. I bore it in mind, and was not surprised when, a year or two later (1875), the Cornell crews, having met at Saratoga Lake the crews from Harvard, Yale, and other leading universities, won both the freshman and university races. It was humorously charged against me that when the news of this reached Ithaca I rang the university bells. This was not the fact. The simple truth was that, being in the midst of a body of students when the news came, and seeing them rush toward the bell-tower, I went with them to prevent injury to the bells by careless ringing; the ringing was done by them. I will not deny that the victory pleased me, as many others since gained by the Cornell crews have done; but far more to me than the victory itself was a letter written me by a prominent graduate of Princeton who was at Saratoga during the contest. He wrote me, as he said, not merely to congratulate me on the victory, but
Nor is this happy change seen at Cornell alone. The same causes,—mainly the increase in the range of studies and freedom of choice between them, have produced similar results in all the leading institutions. Recalling the student brawl at the Harvard commons which cost the historian Prescott his sight, and the riot at the Harvard commencement which blocked the way of President Everett and the British minister; recalling the fatal wounding of Tutor Dwight, the maiming of Tutor Goodrich, and the killing of two town rioters by students at Yale; and recalling the monstrous indignities to the president and faculty at Hobart of which I was myself witness, as well as the state of things at various other colleges in my own college days, I can testify, as can so many others, to the vast improvement in the conduct and aims of American students during the latter half of the nineteenth century.
21. CHAPTER XXI
DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS AT CORNELL—1868-1872
THE first business after formally opening the university was to put in operation the various courses of instruction, and vitally connected with these were the lectures of our non-resident professors. From these I had hoped much and was not disappointed. It had long seemed to me that a great lack in our American universities was just that sort of impulse which non-resident professors or lecturers of a high order could give. At Yale there had been, in my time, very few lectures of any sort to undergraduates; the work in the various classes was carried on, as a rule, without the slightest enthusiasm, and was considered by the great body of students a bore to be abridged or avoided as far as possible. Hence such pranks as cutting out the tongue of the college bell, of which two or three tongues still preserved in university club-rooms are reminders; hence, also, the effort made by members of my own class to fill the college bell with cement, which would set in a short time, and make any call to morning prayers and recitations for a day or two impossible—a performance which caused a long suspension of several of the best young fellows that ever lived, some of them good scholars, and all of them men who would have walked miles to attend a really inspiring lecture.
And yet, one or two experiences showed me what might be done by arousing an interest in regular class work. Professor Thacher, the head of the department of Latin, who conducted my class through the "Germania'' and
Still worse was it with some of the tutors, who took us through various classical works, but never with a particle of appreciation for them as literature or philosophy. I have told elsewhere how my classmate Smalley fought it out with one of these. No instruction from outside lectures was provided; but in my senior year there came to New Haven John Lord and George William Curtis, the former giving a course on modern history, the latter one upon recent literature, and both arousing my earnest interest in their subjects. It was in view of these experiences that in my "plan of organization'' I dwelt especially upon the value of non-resident professors in bringing to us fresh life from the outside, and in thus preventing a certain provincialism and woodenness which come when there are only resident professors, and these selected mainly from graduates of the institution itself.
The result of the work done by our non-resident professors more than answered my expectations. The twenty lectures of Agassiz drew large numbers of our brightest young men, gave them higher insight into various problems of natural science, and stimulated among many a zeal for special investigation. Thus resulted an enthusiasm which developed out of our student body several scholars in natural science who have since taken rank among the foremost teachers and investigators in the United States. So, too, the lectures of Lowell on early literature and of Curtis on later literature aroused great interest among students of a more literary turn; while
The lectures of Froude were exceedingly interesting; but every day he began them with the words "Ladies and gentlemen,'' in the most comical falsetto imaginable,— a sort of Lord Dundreary manner,—so that, sitting beside him, I always noticed a ripple of laughter running
Speaking of the strength of the clan spirit, he told me a story of the late Duke of Argyll, as follows: At a banquet of the great clan of which the duke was chief, a splendid snuff-box belonging to one of the clansmen, having attracted attention, was passed round the long table for inspection. By and by it was missing. All attempts to trace it were in vain, and the party broke up in disgust and distress at the thought that one of their number must be a thief. Some days afterward, the duke, putting on his dress-coat, found the box in his pocket, and immediately sent for the owner and explained the matter. "I knew ye had it,'' said the owner. "How did ye know it?'' said the duke. "Saw ye tak' it.'' "Then why did n't ye tell me?'' asked the duke. "I thocht ye wanted it,'' was the answer.
Speaking of university life, Froude told the story of an Oxford undergraduate who, on being examined in Paley, was asked to name any instance which he had himself noticed of the goodness and forethought of the Almighty as evidenced in his works: to which the young man answered, "The formation of the head of a bulldog. Its nose is so drawn back that it can hang on the bull and yet breathe freely; but for this, the bulldog would soon have to let go for want of breath.''
Walking one day with Froude, I spoke to him regarding his "Nemesis of Faith,'' which I had read during my attachéship at St. Petersburg, and which had been greatly objected to by various Oxford dons, one of whom is said to
From the stimulus given by the non-resident professors the resident faculty reaped much advantage. It might well be said that the former shook the bush and the latter caught the birds. What is most truthfully stated on the tablet to Professor Agassiz in the Cornell Memorial Chapel of the university might, in great part, be said of all the others. It runs as follows:
"To the memory of Louis Agassiz, LL.D. In the midst of great labors for science, throughout the world, he aided in laying the foundations of instruction at Cornell University, and, by his teachings here, gave an impulse to scientific studies, which remains a precious heritage. The trustees, in gratitude for his counsels and teachings, erect this memorial. 1884.''
An incidental benefit of the system was its happy influence upon the resident professors. Coming from abroad, and of recognized high position, the non-residents brought a very happy element to our social life. No veteran of our faculty is likely to forget the charm they diffused among us. To meet Agassiz socially was a delight; nor was it less a pleasure to sit at table with Lowell or Curtis. Of the many good stories told us by Lowell, I remember one especially. During a stay in Paris he dined with Sainte-Beuve, and took occasion to ask that most eminent of French critics which he thought the greater poet, Lamartine or Victor Hugo. Sainte-Beuve, shrugging his shoulders, replied: "Eh bien, charlatan pour charlatan, je prefère Lamartine.'' This provoked another story, which was that, being asked by an American professor whether in his opinion the Empire of Napoleon III was likely to endure, Sainte-Beuve, who was a salaried senator of the Empire, answered with a shrug, "Monsieur, je suis payé pour le croire.'' Agassiz also
Another story related to Sir Allan MacNab, who, while commander of the forces in Canada, having received a card inscribed, "The MacNab,'' immediately returned the call, and left a card on which was inscribed, "The other MacNab.''
As I revise these lines, thirty-six years after his first coming, he is visiting me again to lay the corner-stone of the noble building which is to commemorate his services to Cornell. Though past his eightieth year, his memory constantly brings up new reminiscences. One of these I cannot forbear giving. He was at a party given by Lady Ashburton when Thomas Carlyle was present. During the evening, which was beautiful, the guests went out upon the lawn, and gazed at the starry heavens. All seemed
The instruction of the university was at that time divided between sundry general courses and various technical departments, the whole being somewhat tentative. These general courses were mainly three: the arts course, which embraced both Latin and Greek; the course in literature, which embraced Latin and modern languages; and the course in science, which embraced more especially modern languages in connection with a somewhat extended range of scientific studies. Of these general divisions the one most in danger of shipwreck seemed to be the first. It had been provided for in the congressional act of 1862, evidently by an afterthought, and it was generally felt that if, in the storms besetting us, anything must be thrown overboard, it would be this; but an opportunity now arose for clenching it into our system. There was offered for sale the library of Professor Charles Anthon of Columbia, probably the largest and best collection in classical philology which had then been brought together in the United States. Discussing the situation with Mr. Cornell, I showed him the danger of restricting the institution to purely scientific and technical studies, and of thus departing from the university ideal. He saw the point, and purchased the Anthon library for us. Thenceforth it was felt that, with such a means of instruction, from such a source, the classical department must stand firm; that it must on no account be sacrificed; that, by accepting this gift, we had pledged ourselves to maintain it.
Yet, curiously, one of the most bitter charges constantly reiterated against us was that we were depreciating the study of ancient classical literature. Again and again it was repeated, especially in a leading daily journal of the metropolis under the influence of a sectarian college, that I was "degrading classical studies.'' Nothing
But a second and very important point was that, in the two colleges of which I had been an undergraduate, classical studies were really hampered and discredited by the fact that the minority of students who loved them were constantly held back by a majority who disliked them; and I came to the conclusion that the true way to promote such studies in the United States was to take off this drag as much as possible, by presenting other courses of studies which would attract those who had no taste for Latin and Greek, thus leaving those who had a taste for them free to carry them much farther than had been customary in American universities up to that time. My expectations in this respect were fully met. A few years after the opening of the university, contests were arranged between several of the leading colleges and universities, the main subjects in the competition being Latin, Greek, and mathematics; and to the confusion of the gainsayers, Cornell took more first prizes in these subjects than did all the older competing institutions together. Thenceforward the talk of our "degrading classical
Besides this course in arts, in which classical studies were especially prominent, there were established courses in science, in literature, and in philosophy, differing from each other mainly in the proportion observed between ancient languages, modern languages, and studies in various sciences and other departments of thought. Each of these courses was laid down with much exactness for the first two years, with large opportunity for choice between subjects in the last two years. The system worked well,
In proposing these courses I was much influenced by an idea broached in Herbert Spencer's "Treatise on Education.'' This idea was given in his discussion of the comparative values of different studies, when he arrived at the conclusion that a subject which ought to be among those taught at the beginning of every course is human physiology,—that is to say, an account of the structure, functions, and proper management of the human body, on which so much depends for every human being. It seemed to me that not only was there great force in Spencer's argument, but that there was an additional reason for placing physiology among the early studies of most of the courses; and this was that it formed a very good beginning for scientific study in general. An observation of my own strengthened me in this view. I remembered that, during my school life, while my tastes were in the direction of classical and historical studies, the weekly visits to the school by the surgeon who lectured upon the human eye, ear, and sundry other organs, using models and preparations, interested me intensely, and were a real relief from other studies. There was still another reason. For the professorship in this department Professor Agassiz had recommended to me Dr. Burt Wilder; and I soon found him, as Agassiz had foretold, not only a thorough investigator, but an admirable teacher. His lectures were not read, but were, as regards phrasing, extemporaneous; and it seemed to me that, mingled with other studies, a course of lectures given in so good a style, by so gifted a man, could not fail to be of great use in teaching our students, incidentally, the best way of using the English language in communicating their ideas to their fellowmen. I had long deplored the rhetorical fustian and oratorical tall-talk which so greatly afflict our country, and which had been, to a considerable extent, cultivated in our colleges and universities; I determined to try, at least,
As regards the course in literature, I determined that use should be made of this to promote the general culture of students, as had been done up to that time by very few of our American universities. At Yale in my day, there was never even a single lecture on any subject in literature, either ancient or modern: everything was done by means of "recitations'' from text-books; and while young men read portions of masterpieces in Greek and Latin, their attention was hardly ever directed to these as literature. As regards the great fields of modern literature, nothing whatever was done. In the English literature and language, every man was left entirely to his own devices. One of the first professors I called to Cornell was Hiram Corson, who took charge of the department of English literature; and from that day to this he has been a center from which good culture has radiated among our students. Professor H. B. Sprague was also called; and he also did excellent work, though in a different way. I also added non-resident professors. My original scheme I still think a good one. It was to call James Russell Lowell for early English literature, Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe for the literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, Edwin Whipple for the literature of Queen Anne's time, and George William Curtis for recent and contemporary literature. Each of these men was admirable as a scholar and lecturer in the particular field named; but the restricted means of the university obliged me to cut the scheme down, so that it included simply Lowell for early and Curtis for recent literature. Other lectures
The effort to promote that element in the general culture of the student body which comes from literature, ancient and modern, gained especial strength from a source usually unpromising—the mathematical department. Two professors highly gifted in this field exercised a wide and ennobling influence outside it. First of these was Evan William Evans, who had been known to me at Yale as not only one of the best scholars in the class of 1851, but also one of its two foremost writers. Later, he developed a passion for modern literature, and his influence was strongly felt in behalf of the humanities. His successor was James Edward Oliver, a graduate of Harvard, a genius in his chosen field, but always exercising a large
The work of organizing and developing the general courses was comparatively easy, and the stimulus given at the outset by the non-resident professors rendered it all the more so. But with the technical departments and special courses there were grave difficulties. The department of civil engineering, of course, went easily enough; there were plenty of precedents for it, and the admirable professor first elected was, at his death, succeeded by another who most vigorously and wisely developed it: Estevan Fuertes, drawn from the most attractive surroundings in the island of Porto Rico to the United States by a deep love of science, and retained here during the rest of his life by a love, no less sincere, for American liberty—a rare combination of the virtues and capabilities of the Latin races with the best results of an American environment. I may mention, in passing, that this combination came out curiously in his views of American citizenship. He was wont to marvel at the indifference of the average American to his privileges and duties, and especially at the lack of a proper estimate of his function at elections. I have heard him say: "When I vote, I put on my best clothes and my top hat, go to the polls, salute the officers, take off my hat, and cast my ballot.''
It may be worth mentioning here that, at the election of the first professor in this department, a curious question arose. Among the candidates was one from Harvard, whose testimonials showed him to be an admirable acquisition; and among these testimonials was one from an eminent bishop, who spoke in high terms of the scientific qualifications of the candidate, but added that he felt it his duty to warn me that the young man was a Unitarian. At this I wrote the bishop, thanking him, and saying that the only question with me was as to the moral and intellectual qualifications of the candidate; and that if these were superior to those of other candidates, I would nominate
The technical department which caused me the most anxiety was that of agriculture. It had been given the most prominent place in the Congressional act of 1862, and in our charter from the State in 1865. But how should agriculture be taught; what proportion should we observe between theory and practice; and what should the practice be? These questions elicited all sorts of answers. Some eminent agriculturists insisted that the farm should be conducted purely as a business operation; others that it should be a "model farm''—regardless of balance sheets; others still that it should be wholly experimental. Our decision was to combine what was best in all these views; and several men attempted this as resident professors, but with small success. One day, after a series of such failures, when we were almost desperate, there appeared a candidate from an agricultural college in Ireland. He bore a letter from an eminent clergyman in New York, was of pleasing appearance and manners, gave glowing accounts of the courses he had followed, expatiated on the means by which farming had been carried to a high point in Scotland, and ventured suggestions as to what might be done in America. I had many misgivings. His experience was very remote from ours, and he seemed to me altogether too elegant for the work in hand; but Mr. Cornell had visited English farms, was greatly impressed by their excellence, and urged a trial of the new-comer. He was duly called; and, that he might begin his courses of instruction, an order was given for a considerable collection of English agricultural implements and for the
All this took time—much time. At first great things were expected by the farmers of the State, but gradually their confidence waned. As they saw the new professor walking over the farm in a dilettantish way, superintending operations with gloved hands, and never touching any implement, doubts arose which soon ripened into skepticism. Typical were the utterances of our farm manager. He was a plain, practical farmer, who had taken the first prize of the State Agricultural Society for the excellence of his own farm; and, though he at first indulged in high hopes regarding the new professor, he soon had misgivings, and felt it his duty to warn me. He said: "Yew kin depend on 't, he ain't a-goin' to do nothin'; he don't know nothin' about corn, and he don't want to know nothin' about corn; and he don't believe in punkins! Depend on 't, as soon as his new barn is finished and all his new British tackle is brought together, he'll quit the job.'' I reasoned that, to a farmer brought up among the glorious fields of Indian corn in western New York, and accustomed to rejoice in the sight of golden pumpkins, diffusion of other cultures must seem like treason; but, alas! he was right. As soon as the new buildings and arrangements were ready for our trial of British scientific agriculture, the young foreign professor notified me that he had accepted the headship of an agricultural college in Canada. Still, he met with no greater success there than with us; nor was his reputation increased when, after the foul attacks made upon Mr. Cornell in the legislature, he volunteered to come to the investigation and testify that Mr. Cornell was "not a practical man.'' In this the career of the young agriculturist culminated. Having lost his professorship in Canada, he undertook the management of a grocery in the oil-regions of western Pennsylvania; and scientific British agriculture still awaits among us a special representative. Happily, since that day, men trained practically in the agriculture of the
Fortunately I had found three men who enabled us to tide our agricultural department over those dark days, in which we seemed to be playing "Hamlet'' with Hamlet left out. The first of these was the Hon. John Stanton Gould, whom I called as a lecturer upon agriculture. He had been president of the State Agricultural Society, and was eminent, not only for his knowledge of his subject, but for his power of making it interesting. Men came away from Mr. Gould's lectures filled with intense desire to get hold of a spade or hoe and to begin turning the soil.
So, also, the steady work of Professor George C. Caldwell, whom I had called from the State College of Pennsylvania to take charge of the department of agricultural chemistry, won the respect of all leaders in agriculture throughout the State, and, indeed, throughout the country. And with especial gratitude should be named Dr. James Law of the British Royal Veterinary College, whom I had found in London, and called to our veterinary professorship. Never was there a more happy selection. From that day to this, thirty-six years, he has been a tower of strength to the university, and has rendered incalculable services to the State and Nation. His quiet, thorough work impressed every one most favorably. The rudest of the surrounding farmers learned more and more to regard him with respect and admiration, and the State has recently recognized his services by establishing in connection with the university a State veterinary college under his control.
The work of these three men saved us. Apart from it, the agricultural department long remained a sort of slough of despond; but at last a brighter day dawned. From the far-off State Agricultural College of Iowa came tidings of a professor—Mr. J. I. P. Roberts—who united the practical and theoretical qualities desired. I secured him, and thenceforward there was no more difficulty. For more than twenty years, as professor and lecturer, he has
Of the two technical departments referred to in the original
New questions now opened as to this "Department of Mechanic Arts.'' It was clear to me, from what I had seen abroad, that not all the models I had sent from Europe would be sufficient to give the practical character
I felt that there was truth in this, but, as things were, hardly dared tell this to the trustees. It would have scared them, for it seemed to open the door to great expenditures demanded by a mere theory; but I laid my views before Mr. Cornell, and he agreed with me so far as to send to us from his agricultural works at Albany sundry large pieces of old machinery, which he thought might be rebuilt for our purposes. But this turned out to be hardly practicable. I dared not, at that stage of the proceedings, bring into the board of trustees a proposal to buy machinery and establish a machine-shop; the whole would have a chimerical look, and was sure to repel them. Therefore it was that, at my own expense, I bought a power-lathe and other pieces of machinery; and, through the active efforts of Professor John L. Morris, my steadfast supporter in the whole matter, these were set up in our temporary wooden laboratory. A few students began using them, and to good purpose. Mr. Cornell was greatly pleased. Other trustees of a practical turn visited the place, and the result was that opinion in the governing board soon favored a large practical equipment for the department.
On this I prepared a report, taking up the whole subject with great care, and brought it before them, my main suggestion being that a practical beginning of the department should be made by the erection and equipment of a
At the outset a question arose, seemingly trivial, but really serious. Mr. Sibley had gone far beyond his original proposals; and when the lecture-rooms, drafting-rooms, modeling-rooms, foundries, shops for ironwork, woodwork, and the like, had been finished, the question came up: Shall our aim be to produce things having a pecuniary value, or shall we produce simply samples of the most highly finished workmanship, having, generally, no value? Fortunately, Professors Morris and Sweet were able to combine both these purposes, and to employ a considerable number of students in the very best of work which had a market value. The whole thing was thereby made a success, but it waited long for recognition. A result followed not unlike some which have occurred in other fields in our country. At the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, an exhibit was made of the work done by students in Sibley College, including a steam-engine, power-lathes, face-plates, and various tools of precision, admirably finished
At a later period I had occasion to make a final comment on all this. Both as commissioner at the Paris Exhibition and as minister to Russia, I came to know intimately Wischniegradsky, who had been the head of the Moscow School of Technology and afterward Russian minister of finance. He spoke to me in the highest terms of what original American methods had done for railways; and the climax was reached when the Moscow methods, so highly praised by Boston critics, proved to be utterly inadequate in training mechanical engineers to furnish the machinery needed in Russia, and men from the American schools, trained in the methods of Cornell, sent over locomotives and machinery of all sorts for the new Trans-Siberian Railway, of which the eastern terminus was that very city of Moscow which enjoyed the privileges so lauded and magnified by the Boston critics! Time has reversed their judgment: the combination of the two systems, so ably and patiently developed by Director Thurston, is the one which has happily prevailed.
Few days in the history of Cornell University have been so fraught with good as that on which Thurston accepted my call to the headship of Sibley College. At the very outset he gained the confidence and gratitude of trustees, professors, students, and, indeed, of his profession throughout the country, by his amazing success as professor, as author, and as organizer and administrator of that department, which he made not only one of the largest, but one of the best of its kind in the world. The rapidity and wisdom of his decisions, the extent and excellence of his work, his skill in attracting the best men, his ability in quieting rivalries and—animosities, and the kindly firmness of his whole policy were a source of wonder to all who knew him. And, at his lamented death in 1903, it was found that he had rendered another service of a sort which such strong men as he are often incapable of rendering— he had trained a body of assistants and students worthy to take up his work.
Another department which I had long wished to see established in our country now began to take shape. From my boyhood I had a love for architecture. In my young manhood this had been developed by readings in Ruskin, and later by architectural excursions in Europe; and the time had now arrived when it seemed possible to do something for it. I had collected what, at that period, was certainly one of the largest, if not the largest, of the architectural libraries in the United States, besides several thousand large architectural photographs, drawings, casts, models, and other material from every country in Europe. This had been, in fact, my pet extravagance; and a propitious time seeming now to arrive, I proposed to the trustees that if they would establish a department of architecture and call a professor to it, I would transfer to it my special library and collections. This offer was accepted; and thus was founded this additional department, which began its good career under Professor Charles Babcock, who, at this present writing, is enjoying, as professor emeritus, the respect and gratitude of a long
As regards this illustrative material, I recall one curious experience. While on one of my architectural excursions through the great towns of eastern France, I arrived at Troyes. On visiting the government agent for photographing public monuments, I noticed in his rooms some admirably executed pieces of stone carving,—capitals, corbels, and the like,—and on my asking him whence these came, he told me that they had been recently taken out of the cathedral by the architect who was "restoring'' it. After my purchases were made, he went with me to this great edifice, one of the finest in Europe; and there I found that, on each side of the high altar, the architect had taken out several brackets, or corbels, of the best mediæval work, and substituted new ones designed by himself. One of these corbels thus taken out the government photographer had in his possession. It was very striking, representing the grotesque face of a monk in the midst of a mass of foliage supporting the base of a statue, all being carved with great spirit. Apart from its architectural value, it had a historical interest, since it must have witnessed the famous betrothal of the son and daughter of the English and French kings mentioned in Shakspere, to say nothing of many other mediæval pageants.
On my making known to the photographer the fact that I was engaged in founding a school of architecture in the United States, and was especially anxious to secure a good specimen of French work, he sold me this example, which is now in the museum of the Architectural Department at Cornell. I allude to this, in passing, as showing what monstrous iniquities (and I could name many others) are committed in the great mediæval buildings of Europe under pretense of "restoration.''
22. CHAPTER XXII
FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF UNIVERSITY
COURSES—1870-1872
IN close connection with the technical departments were various laboratories. For these, place was at first made here and there in cellars and sheds; but at last we were able to erect for them buildings large and complete, and to the opening of the first of these came Mr. Cleveland, then Governor of New York, and later President of the United States. Having laid the corner-stone of the Memorial Chapel and made an excellent speech, which encouraged us all, he accompanied me to the new building devoted to chemistry and physics, which was then opened for the first time. On entering it, he expressed his surprise at its equipment, and showed that he had seen nothing of the kind before. I learned afterward that he had received a thorough preparation in classics and mathematics for college, but that, on account of the insufficient means of his father, he was obliged to give up his university course; and it was evident, from his utterances at this time, as well as when visiting other colleges and universities, that he lamented this.
Out of this laboratory thus opened was developed, later, a new technical department. Among my happiest hours were those spent in visiting the various buildings, collections, and lecture-rooms, after my morning's work, to see how all were going on; and, during various visits to the new laboratory I noticed that the majority of the students were, in one way or another, giving attention to matters connected with electricity. There had already
But while we thus strove to be loyal to those parts of our charter which established technical instruction, there were other parts in which I personally felt even a deeper interest. In my political reminiscences I have acknowledged the want of preparation in regard to practical matters of public concern which had hampered me as a member of the State Senate. Having revolved this subject in my mind for a considerable time, I made, while commissioner to the Paris Exposition of 1878, a careful examination of the courses of study in political and economic science established in European universities, and on my return devoted to this subject my official report. Like such reports generally, it was delayed a long time in the Government Printing-office, was then damned with
Closely connected with this instruction was that in political economy and history. As to the first of these, I had, some years before, seen reason to believe that my strong, and perhaps bigoted free-trade ideas were at least
At the opening of the university there was but little instruction in political economy, that little being mainly
The second of these departments—history—was the one for which I cared most. I believed then, and later experience has strengthened my conviction, that the best of all methods in presenting every subject bearing on political and social life is the historical. My own studies had been mainly in this field, and I did what I could to establish historical courses in the university. The lectures which I had given at the University of Michigan were now developed more fully and again presented; but to these I constantly added new lectures and, indeed, new courses, though at a great disadvantage, since my administrative duties stood constantly in the way of my pro-fessorial work. At the same time I went on collecting my historical library until it became, in its way, probably the largest and most complete of its kind in the possession of any individual in the United States. Gradually strong men were drawn into the department, and finally there came one on whom I could lay a large portion of the work.
The story is somewhat curious. During the year 1877-1878, in Germany and France, I had prepared a short
In some of these departments to which I have referred there were occasionally difficulties requiring much tact in handling. During my professorial days at the University of Michigan I once heard an eminent divine deliver an admirable address on what he called "The Oscillatory Law of Human Progress''—that is, upon the tendency of human society, when reacting from one evil, to swing to another almost as serious in the opposite direction. In swinging away from the old cast-iron course of instruction, and from the text-book recitation of the mere dry bones of literature, there may be seen at this hour some tendency to excessive reaction. When I note in sundry university registers courses of instruction offered in some of the most evanescent and worthless developments of contemporary literature,—some of them, indeed, worse than worthless,—I think of a remark made to me by a college friend of mine who will be remembered by the Yale men of the fifties for his keen and pithy judgments of men and things. Being one day in New Haven looking for assistant professors and instructors, I met him; and, on my answering his question as to what had brought me, he said, "If at any time you want a professor of horse sense, call me.'' I have often thought of this proposal since, and have at times regretted that some of our institutions of learning had not availed themselves of his services. The fact is that, under the new system, "horse sense'' is especially called for to prevent a too extreme reaction from the evils which afflicted university instruction during my student days.
While it rejoices my heart to see the splendid courses in modern literature now offered at our larger universities, some of them arouse misgivings. Reflecting upon the shortness of human life and the vast mass of really great literature, I see with regret courses offered dealing
I would as soon think of endowing restaurants to enable young men to appreciate caviar, or old Gorgonzola, or game of a peculiarly "high'' character, as of establishing courses dealing with Villon, Baudelaire, Swinburne, and the like; and when I hear of second-rate critics summoned across the ocean to present to universities which have heard Emerson, Longfellow, Henry Reed, Lowell, Whipple, and Curtis the coagulated nastiness of Verlaine, Mallarmé, and their compeers, I expect next to hear of courses introducing young men to the beauties of absinthe, Turkish cigarettes, and stimulants unspeakable. Doubtless these things are all due to the "oscillatory law of human progress,'' which professors of "horse sense'' like my friend Joe Sheldon will gradually do away with.
As time went on, buildings of various sorts rose around the university grounds, and, almost without exception, as gifts from men attracted by the plan of the institution. At the annual commencement in 1869 was laid the cornerstone of an edifice devoted especially to lecture-rooms and museums of natural science. It was a noble gift by Mr. John McGraw; and amid the cares and discouragements of that period it gave us new heart, and strengthened the institution especially on the scientific side. In order to do honor to this occasion, it was decided to invite leading men from all parts of the State, and, above all, to request the governor, Mr. Fenton, to lay the corner-stone. But it was soon evident that his excellency's old fear of offending the sectarian schools still controlled him. He made excuse, and we then called on the Freemasons to take charge of the ceremony. They came in full regalia, bringing their own orators; and, on the appointed day, a great body of spectators was grouped about the foundations of the new building on the beautiful knoll in front of the upper quadrangle. It was an ideal afternoon in June, and the panorama before and around
In reference to this occasion I may put on record Lowell's quatrain above referred to, which is cast upon the great clock-bell of the university. It runs as follows:
Futile as air, or strong as fate to make
Your lives of sand or granite. Awful powers,
Even as men choose, they either give or take.
There was also cast upon it the following, from the Psalter version of Psalm xcii:
To tell of thy loving-kindness early in the morning: and of thy truth in the night season.
While various departments were thus developed, there was going on a steady evolution in the general conception of the university. In the Congressional act of 1862 was a vague provision for military instruction in the institutions which might be created under it. The cause of this was evident. The bill was passed during one of the most critical periods in the history of the Civil War, and in my inaugural address I had alluded to this as most honorable to Senator Morrill and to the Congress which had adopted his proposals. It was at perhaps the darkest moment in the history of the United States that this provision was made, in this Morrill Act, for a great system of classical, scientific, and technical instruction in every State and Territory of the Union; and I compared this enactment, at so trying a period, to the conduct of the Romans in buying and selling the lands on which the Carthaginians were encamped after their victory at Cannæ. The provision for military instruction had been inserted in this act of 1862 because Senator Morrill and others saw clearly the advantage which had accrued to the States then in rebellion from their military schools; but the act had left military instruction optional with the institutions securing the national endowment, and, so far as I could learn, none of those already created had taken the clause very seriously. I proposed that we should accept it fully and fairly, not according to the letter of the act, but to the spirit of those who had passed it; indeed, that we should go further than any other institution had dreamed of going, so that every undergraduate not excused on the ground of conscientious scruples, or for some other adequate cause, should be required to take a thorough course of military drill; and to this end I supported a plan,
Among the matters which our board of trustees and faculty had to decide upon at an early day was the conferring of degrees. It had become, and indeed has remained in many of our colleges down to the present day, an abuse, and a comical abuse. Almost more than any other thing, it tends to lower respect for many American colleges and universities among thinking men. The older and stronger universities are free from it; but many of the newer ones, especially various little sectarian colleges, some of them calling themselves "universities,'' have abused and are abusing beyond measure their privilege of conferring degrees. Every one knows individuals in the community whose degrees, so far from adorning them, really render them ridiculous; and every one knows colleges and "universities'' made ridiculous by the conferring of such pretended honors.
At the outset I proposed to our trustees that Cornell University should confer no honorary degrees of any sort, and a law was passed to that effect. This was observed faithfully during my entire presidency; then the policy was temporarily changed, and two honorary doctorates were conferred; but this was immediately followed by a renewal of the old law, and Cornell has conferred no honorary degrees since.
But it is a question whether the time has not arrived for some relaxation of this policy. The argument I used in proposing the law that no honorary degree should be conferred was that we had not yet built up an institution whose degrees could be justly considered as of any value. That argument is no longer valid, and possibly some departure
As to regular and ordinary degrees, I had, in my plan of organization, recommended that there should be but one degree for all courses, whether in arts, science, or literature. I argued that, as all our courses required an equal amount of intellectual exertion, one simple degree should be granted alike to all who had passed the required examination at the close of their chosen course. This view the faculty did not accept. They adopted the policy of establishing several degrees: as, for example, for the course in arts, the degree of A.B.; for the course in science, the degree of B.S.; for the course in literature, the degree of B.L.; and so on. The reason given for this was that it was important in each case to know what the training of the individual graduate had been; and that the true way to obviate invidious distinctions is so to perfect the newer courses that all the degrees shall finally be considered as of equal value and honor. This argument converted me: it seemed to me just, and my experience in calling men to professorships led me more and more to see that I had been wrong and that the faculty was right; for it was a matter of the greatest importance to me, in deciding on the qualifications of candidates for professorships, to know, not only their special fitness, but what their general education had been.
But, curiously enough, within the last few years the Cornell faculty, under the lead of its present admirable president, has reverted to my old argument, accepted it, and established a single degree for all courses. I bow respectfully to their judgment, but my conversion by the same faculty from my own original ideas was so complete that I cannot now agree to the wisdom of the change. It is a curious case of cross-conversion, I having been and remaining converted to the ideas of the faculty, and they having been converted to my original idea. As to the whole matter, I have the faith of an optimist that eventually,
Another question which at that time occupied me much was that of scholarships and fellowships awarded by competitive examinations versus general gratuitous instruction. During the formation of my plans for the univer-sity, a number of excellent men urged upon me that all our instruction should be thrown open to all mankind free of charge; that there should be no payment of instruction fees of any kind; that the policy which prevails in the public schools of the State should be carried out in the new institution at the summit of the system. This demand was plausible, but the more I thought upon it the more illogical, fallacious, and injurious it seemed; and, in spite of some hard knocks in consequence, I have continued to dissent from it, and feel that events have justified me.
Since this view of mine largely influenced the plan of the university, this is perhaps as good a place as any to sketch its development. In the first place, I soon saw that the analogy between free education in the public schools and in the university is delusive, the conditions of the two being entirely dissimilar. In a republic like ours primary education of the voters is a practical necessity. No republic of real weight in the world, except Switzerland and the United States, has proved permanent; and the only difference between the many republics which have failed and these two, which, we hope, have succeeded, is that in the former the great body of the citizens were illiterate, while in the latter the great body of voters have had some general education. Without this education, sufficient for an understanding of the main questions involved, no real republic or democracy can endure. With general primary education up to a point necessary for the intelligent exercise of the suffrage, one may have hopes for the continuance and development of a democratic republic. On this account primary education should be made free: it is part of our political system; it is the essential condition of its existence.
The purpose of university education is totally different. The interest of the Republic is, indeed, that it should maintain the very highest and best provision for advanced instruction, general, scientific, and technical; and it is also in the highest interest of the Republic that its fittest young men and women should secure such instruction. No republic, no nation in fact, possesses any other treasure comparable to its young citizens of active mind and earnest purpose. This is felt at the present time by all the great nations of the world, and consequently provision is made in almost all of them for the highest education of such men and women. Next to the general primary education of all voters, the most important duty of our Re-public is to develop the best minds it possesses for the best service in all its fields of high intellectual activity. To do this it must supply the best university education, and must smooth the way for those to acquire it who are best fitted for it, no matter how oppressive their poverty.
Now, my first objection to gratuitous university instruction to all students alike is that it stands in the way of this most important consummation; that it not only does not accomplish the end which is desirable, but that it does accomplish another which is exceedingly undesirable. For the real problem to be solved is this: How shall the higher education in different fields be brought within reach of the young men and women best fitted to acquire it, to profit by it, and to use it to best advantage? Any one acquainted with American schools and universities knows that the vast majority of these young people best fitted to profit by higher education come from the families of small means. What does gratuitous instruction in the university offer them? Merely a remission of instruction fees, which, after all, are but a small part of the necessary expenses of a university course. With many of these young persons—probably with most—a mere remission of instruction fees is utterly insufficient to enable them to secure advanced education. I have alluded to the case of President Cleveland, who, having been well fitted
It would not have been at all difficult for him to secure a remission of instruction fees at various American colleges and universities; but the great difficulty was that he could not secure the means necessary for his board, for his clothing, for his traveling expenses, for his books, for all the other things that go to make up the real cost of life at a university. I can think of but one way, and that is, as a rule, to charge instruction fees upon the great body of the students, but both to remit instruction fees and to give scholarships and fellowships to those who, in competitive examinations and otherwise, show themselves especially worthy of such privileges. This is in conformity to the system of nature; it is the survival of the fittest. This was the main reason which led me to insert in the charter of Cornell University the provision by which at present six hundred students from the State of New York are selected by competitive examinations out of the mass of scholars in the public schools, and to provide that each of these best scholars shall have free instruction for four years.
But this was only a part of the system. From the first I have
urged the fact above mentioned, namely, that while remission of
instruction fees is a step in the right direction, it is not
sufficient; and I have always desired to see some university recognize
the true and sound principle of free instruction in universities by
consecrating all moneys received from instruction
fees to the creation of competitive scholarships and fellowships, each
of which
On the other hand, the system of gratuitous remission of instruction fees to all students alike, whether rich or poor, I believe to be injurious to the country, for the following reasons: First, it generally cripples the institution
But my main objection to the system of indiscriminate gratuitous instruction is that it does the country a positive injury in drawing away from the farms, workshops, and stores large numbers of young persons who would better have been allowed to remain there; that it tends to crowd what have been called "the learned professions'' with men not really fitted for them; that it draws masses of men whose good right arms would be of great value in the rural districts, and makes them parasites in the cities. The farmers and the artisans complain of the lack of young men and women for their work; the professional men complain that the cities are overstocked with young men calling themselves lawyers, doctors, engineers, and the like, but really unworthy to exercise either profession, who live on the body politic as parasites more or less hurtful. This has certainly become an evil in other countries: every enlightened traveler knows that the ranks of the anarchists in Russia are swollen by what are called "fruits secs''—that is, by young men and young women tempted away from manual labor and avocations for which they are fit into "professions'' for which they are unfit. The more first-rate young men and young women our universities and technical schools educate the better; but the more young men and women of mediocre minds and weak purpose whom they push into the ranks of poor lawyers, poor doctors, poor engineers, and the like, the more injury they do to the country.
As I now approach the end of life and look back over
23. CHAPTER XXIII
"COEDUCATION'' AND AN UNSECTARIAN
PULPIT—1871-1904
STILL another new departure was in some respects bolder than any of those already mentioned. For some years before the organization of Cornell, I had thought much upon the education of women, and had gradually arrived at the conclusion that they might well be admitted to some of the universities established for young men. Yet, at the same time, Herbert Spencer's argument as to the importance of avoiding everything like "mandarinism''—the attempt to force all educational institutions into the same mold—prevented my urging this admission of women upon all universities alike. I recognized obstacles to it in the older institutions which did not exist in the newer; but I had come to believe that where no special difficulties existed, women might well be admitted to university privileges. To this view I had been led by my own observation even in my boyhood. At Cortland Academy I had seen young men and women assembled in the classrooms without difficulty or embarrassment, and at Yale I had seen that the two or three lecture-rooms which admitted women were the most orderly and decent of all; but perhaps the strongest influence in this matter was exercised upon me by my mother. She was one of the most conservative of women, a High-church Episcopalian, and gen-erally averse to modern reforms; but on my talking over with her some of my plans for Cornell University, she said: "I am not so sure about your other ideas, but as to the admission of women you are right. My main education
A conference with Dr. Woolworth, a teacher of the very largest experience, showed me that none of the evil results which were prophesied had resulted. He solemnly assured me that, during his long experiences as principal of two or three large academies, and, as secretary of the Board of Regents, in close contact with all the academies and high schools of the State, he had never known of a serious scandal arising between students of different sexes.
As I drafted the main features of the university charter these statements were in my mind, but I knew well that it would be premature to press the matter at the outset. It would certainly have cost us the support of the more conservative men in the legislature. All that I could do at that time I did; and this was to keep out of the charter anything which could embarrass us regarding the question in the future, steadily avoiding in every clause relating to students the word "man,'' and as steadily using the word "person.'' In conversations between Mr. Cornell and myself on this subject, I found that we agreed; and in our addresses at the opening of the university we both alluded to it, he favoring it in general terms, and I developing sundry arguments calculated to prepare the way for future action upon it. At the close of the exercises Mr. John McGraw, who was afterward so munificent toward us, came to me and said: "My old business partner, Henry
The following year came the first application of a young woman for admission. Her case was strong, for she presented a certificate showing that she had passed the best examination for the State scholarship in Cortland County; and on this I admitted her. Under the scholarship clause in the charter I could not do otherwise. On reporting the case to the trustees, they supported me unanimously, though some of them reluctantly. The lady student proved excellent from every point of view, and her admission made a mere temporary ripple on the surface of our affairs; but soon came a peculiar difficulty. The only rooms for students in those days on the University Hill were in the barracks filled with young men; and therefore the young woman took rooms in town, coming up to lectures two or three times a day. It was a hard struggle; for the paths and roads leading to the university grounds, four hundred feet above the valley, were not as in these days, and the electric trolley had not been invented. She bore the fatigue patiently until winter set in; then she came to me, expressing regret at her inability to toil up the icy steep, and left us. On my reporting this to the trustees, Mr. Sage made his proposal. I had expected from him a professorship or a fellowship; but to my amazement he offered to erect and endow a separate college for young women in the university, and for this purpose to give us two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. A committee of trustees having been appointed to examine and report upon this proposal, I was made its chairman; and,
Very striking testimony was also given at the University of Michigan. Ten years earlier I had known that institution well, and my professorship there, which lasted six years, had made me well acquainted with the character and spirit of its students; but, since my day, women had been admitted, and some of the results of this change surprised me much. Formerly a professor's lecture-or recitation-room had been decidedly a roughish place. The men had often been slouchy and unkempt. Now all was quiet and orderly, the dress of the students much neater; in fact, it was the usual difference between assemblages of men alone and of men and women together, or, as I afterward phrased it, "between the smoking-car and the car back of it.'' Perhaps the most convincing piece of testimony came from an old janitor. As I met him I said: "Well, J—, do the students still make life a burden to you?'' "Oh, no,'' he answered; "that is all gone by. They can't rush each
My report went fully into the matter, favored the admission of women, and was adopted by the trustees unani-mously— a thing which surprised me somewhat, since two of them, Judge Folger and Mr. Erastus Brooks, were among the most conservative men I have ever known. The general results were certainly fortunate; though one or two minor consequences were, for a year or two, somewhat disappointing. Two or three of the faculty and a considerable number of the students were greatly opposed to the admission of women, a main cause of this being the fear that it would discredit the institution in the eyes of members of other universities, and the number of the whole student body was consequently somewhat diminished; but that feeling died away, the numbers became larger than ever, and the system proved a blessing, not only to the university, but to the State at large. None of the prophecies of evil so freely made by the opponents of the measure have ever been fulfilled. Every arrangement was made in Mr. Sage's building to guard the health of the young women; and no one will say that the manliness of men or the womanliness of women has ever suffered in consequence of the meeting of the two sexes in classrooms, laboratories, chapel, or elsewhere. From one evil which was freely prophesied the university has been singularly free. It was declared that a great deal of "spooning'' would result. This has not been the case. Both sexes seem to have been on their guard against it; and, although pleasant receptions have, as a rule, taken place weekly at Sage College, and visits to its residents have been permitted at suitable times, no embarrassing attachments have resulted.
The main difficulties arose from a cause which proved very short-lived. Several of the young women who first applied for admission held high ideas as to their rights. To them Sage College was an offense. Its beautiful parlors, conservatories, library, lecture-rooms, and lawns,
Closely connected with the erection of Sage College was the establishment of Sage Chapel. From the first I had desired to have every working-day begun with a simple religious service at which attendance should be voluntary, and was glad to see that in the cheerless lecture-room where this service was held there usually assembled a goodly number of professors and students, in spite of the early hour and long walk from town. But for Sunday there was no provision; and one day, on my discussing the matter with Mr. Sage, he said that he would be glad to establish a chapel on the university grounds for the general use of professors and students, if I saw no objection. This proposal I heartily welcomed, but on two conditions: first, that the chapel should never be delivered over to any one sect; secondly, that students should be attracted, but not coerced into it. To these conditions Mr. Sage agreed, and the building was erected.
As it approached completion there came a proposal which opened a new era in our university life. Mr. Dean
The first of these university preachers was Phillips Brooks, and he made a very deep impression. An interesting material result of his first sermon was that Mr. William Sage, the second son of our benefactor, came forward at the close of the service, and authorized me to
My selections for the preachership during the years of my presidency were made with great care. So far as possible, I kept out all "sensational preaching.'' I had no wish to make the chapel a place for amusement or for ground and lofty tumbling by clerical performers, and the result was that its ennobling influence was steadily maintained.
Some other pulpits in the university town were not so well guarded. A revivalist, having been admitted to one of them, attempted to make a sensation in various ways— and one evening laid great stress on the declaration that she was herself a brand plucked from the burning, and that her parents were undoubtedly lost. A few minutes afterward, one of the Cornell students present, thinking doubtless, that his time would be better employed upon his studies, arose and walked down the aisle to the door. At this the preacher called out, "There goes a young man straight down to hell.'' Thereupon the student turned instantly toward the preacher and asked quietly, "Have you any message to send to your father and mother?''
Our list of university preachers, both from our own and other countries, as I look back upon it, is wonderful to me. Becoming acquainted with them, I have learned to love very many men whom I previously distrusted, and have come to see more and more the force of the saying, "The man I don't like is the man I don't know.'' Many of their arguments have not appealed to me, but some from which I have entirely dissented, have suggested trains of profitable thought; in fact, no services have ever
In connection with the chapel may be mentioned the development of various religious associations, the first of these being the Young Men's Christian Association. Feeling the importance of this, although never a member of it, I entered heartily into its plan, and fitted up a hall for its purposes. As this hall had to serve also, during certain evenings in the week, for literary societies, I took pains to secure a series of large and fine historical engravings from England, France, and Germany, among them some of a decidedly religious cast, brought together after a decidedly Broad-church fashion. Of these, two, adjoining each other, represented—the one, Luther discussing with his associates his translation of the Bible, and the other, St. Vincent de Paul comforting the poor and the afflicted; and it was my hope that the juxtaposition of these two pictures might suggest ideas of toleration in its best sense to the young men and women who were to sit beneath them. About the room, between these engravings, I placed some bronze statuettes, obtained in Europe, representing men who had done noble work in the world; so that it was for some years one of the attractions of the university.
Some years later came a gift very advantageous to this side of university life. A gentleman whom I had known but slightly-Mr. Alfred S. Barnes of Brooklyn, a trustee of the university—dropped in at my house one morning, and seemed to have something on his mind. By and by he very modestly asked what I thought of his putting up a building for the religious purposes of the students. I welcomed the idea joyfully; only expressing the hope that it would not be tied up in any way, but open to all forms of religious effort. In this idea he heartily concurred, and the beautiful building which bears his honored name was the result,—one of the most perfect for its purposes that can be imagined,—and as he asked me to write an inscription for the corner-stone, I placed on it the words: "For
It has been, and is, a great pleasure to me to see young men joining in religious effort; and I feel proud of the fact that from this association at Cornell many strong and earnest men have gone forth to good work as clergymen in our own country and in others.
In the erection of the new group of buildings south of the upper university quadrangle, as well as in building the president's house hard by, an opportunity was offered for the development of some minor ideas regarding the evolution of university life at Cornell which I had deeply at heart. During my life at Yale, as well as during visits to various other American colleges, I had been painfully impressed by the lack of any development of that which may be called the commemorative or poetical element. In the long row of barracks at Yale one longed for some little bit of beauty, and hungered and thirsted for something which connected the present with the past; but, with the exception of the portraits in the Alumni Hall, there was little more to feed the sense of beauty or to meet one 's craving for commemoration of the past than in a cotton-factory. One might frequent the buildings at Yale or Harvard or Brown, as they then were, for years, and see nothing of an architectural sort which had been put in its place for any other reason than bare utility.
Hence came an effort to promote at Cornell some development of a better kind. Among the first things I ordered were portraits by competent artists of the leading non-resident professors, Agassiz, Lowell, Curtis, and Goldwin Smith. This example was, from time to time, followed by the faculty and trustees, the former commemorating by portraits some of their more eminent members, and the latter ordering portraits of some of those who had connected their names with the university by benefactions or otherwise, such as Mr. Cornell, Senator Morrill, Mr. Sage, Mr. McGraw, and others. The alumni and undergraduduates
But the erection of these new buildings—Sage College, Sage Chapel, Barnes Hall, and, finally, the university library—afforded an opportunity to do something of a different sort. There was a chance for some effort to promote beauty of detail in construction, and, fortunately, the forethought of Goldwin Smith helped us greatly in this. On his arrival in Ithaca, just after the opening of the university, he had seen that we especially needed thoroughly trained artisans; and he had written to his friend Auberon Herbert, asking him to select and send from England a number of the best he could find. Nearly all proved of value, and one of them gave himself to the work in a way which won my heart. This was Robert Richardson, a stone-carver. I at first employed him to carve sundry capitals, corbels, and spandrels for the president's house, which I was then building on the university grounds; and this work was so beautifully done that, in the erection of Sage College, another opportunity was given him. Any one who, to-day, studies the capitals of the various columns, especially those in the porch, in the loggia of the northern tower, and in some of the front windows, will feel that he put his heart into the work. He wrought the flora of the region into these creations of his, and most beautifully. But best of all was his work in the chapel. The tracery of the windows, the capitals of the columns, and the corbels supporting the beams of the roof were masterpieces; and, in my opinion, no investment of equal amount has proved to be of more value to us, even for the moral and intellectual instruction of our students, than these examples of a conscientious devotion of genius and talent which he thus gave us.
The death of Mr. Cornell afforded an opportunity for a further development in the same direction. It was felt
So, too, upon the grounds, some effort was made to connect the present with the past. Here, as elsewhere in our work, it seemed to me well to impress, upon the more thinking students at least, the idea that all they saw had not "happened so,'' without the earnest agency of human beings; but that it had been the result of the earnest life-work of men and women, and that no life-work to which a student might aspire could be more worthy. In carrying out this idea upon the "campus'' Goldwin Smith took the lead by erecting the stone seat which has now stood there for over thirty years. Other memorials followed, among them a drinking-fountain, the stone bridge across the Cascadilla, the memorial seat back of the library, the entrance gateway, and the like; and, at the lamented death of Richardson, another English stone
Meanwhile, the grounds themselves became more and more beautiful. There was indeed one sad mistake; and I feel bound, in self-defense, to state that it was made during an absence of mine in Europe: this was the erection of the chemical laboratory upon the promontory northwest of the upper quadrangle. That site afforded one of the most beautiful views in our own or any other country. A very eminent American man of letters, who had traveled much in other countries, said to me, as we stood upon it, "I have traveled hundreds of miles in Europe to obtain views not half so beautiful as this.'' It was the place to which Mr. Cornell took the trustees at their first meeting in Ithaca, when their view from it led them to choose the upper site for the university buildings rather than the lower. On this spot I remember once seeing Phillips Brooks evidently overawed by the amazing beauty of the scene spread out at his feet—the great amphitheater to the south and southwest, the hills beyond, and Cayuga Lake stretching to the north and northwest. But though this part of the grounds has been covered by a laboratory which might better have been placed elsewhere, much is still left, and this has been treated so as to add to the natural charm of the surroundings. With the exception of the grounds of the State University of Wisconsin and of the State University and Stanford University in California, I know of none approaching in beauty those of Cornell. I feel bound to say, however, that there is a danger. Thus far, though mistakes have been made here and there, little harm has been done which is irremediable. But this may not always be the case. In my view, one of the most important things to be done by the trustees is to have a general plan most carefully decided upon which shall be strictly conformed to in the erection of all future buildings, no matter what their size or character may be. This has been urged from time to time, but
24. CHAPTER XXIV
ROCKS, STORMS, AND PERIL—1868-1874
THUS far I have dwelt especially upon the steady development of the university in its general system of instruction, its faculty, its equipment, and its daily life; but it must not be supposed that all was plain sailing. On the contrary, there were many difficulties, some discouragements, and at times we passed through very deep waters. There were periods when ruin stared us in the face—when I feared that my next move must be to close our doors and announce the suspension of instruction. The most serious of these difficulties were financial. Mr. Cornell had indeed endowed the institution munificently, and others followed his example: the number of men and women who came forward to do something for it was astonishing. In addition to the great endowments made by Mr. Cornell, Mr. Sage, Mr. McGraw, Mr. Sibley, and others, which aggregated millions, there were smaller gifts no less encouraging: Goldwin Smith's gift of his services, of his library, and of various sums to increase it, rejoiced us all; and many other evidences of confidence, in the shape of large collections of books and material, cheered us in that darkest period; and from that day to this such gifts have continued.
Some of the minor gifts were especially inspiring, as showing the breadth of interest in our work. One of them warmed my heart when it was made, and for many years afterward cheered me amid many cares. As Mr. Sage and myself were one day looking over matters upon the
But while all this encouraged us, there were things of a very different sort. Could the university have been developed gradually, normally, and in obedience to a policy determined solely by its president, trustees, and faculty all would have gone easily. But our charter made this impossible. Many departments must be put into operation speedily, each one of them demanding large outlay for buildings, equipment, and instruction. From all parts of the State came demands—some from friends, some from enemies—urging us to do this, blaming us for not doing that, and these utterances were echoed in various presses, and reêchoed from the State legislature. Every nerve had to be strained to meet these demands. I remember well that when a committee of the Johns Hopkins trustees, just before the organization of that university, visited Cornell and looked over our work, one of them said to me: "We at least have this in our favor: we can follow out our own conceptions and convictions of what is best; we have no need of obeying the injunctions of any legislature, the beliefs of any religious body, or the clamors of any press; we are free to do what we really believe best, as slowly, and in such manner, as we see fit.'' As this was said a feeling of deep envy came over me: our condition was the
In this condition of things Mr. Cornell had installed, as "business manager,'' a gentleman supposed to be of wide experience, who, in everything relating to the ordinary financial management of the institution, was all-powerful. But as months went on I became uneasy. Again and again I urged that a careful examination be made of our affairs, and that reports be laid before us which we could clearly understand; but Mr. Cornell, always optimistic, assured me that all was going well, and the matter was deferred. Finally, I succeeded in impressing upon my colleagues in the board the absolute necessity of an investigation. It was made, and a condition of things was revealed which at first seemed appalling. The charter of the university made the board of trustees personally liable for any debt over fifty thousand dollars, and we now discovered that we were owing more than three times that amount. At this Mr. Cornell made a characteristic proposal. He said: "I will pay half of this debt if you can raise the other half.'' It seemed impossible. Our friends had been called upon so constantly and for such considerable sums that it seemed vain to ask them for
Then took place one of the things which led me later in life, looking back over the history of the university, to say that what had seemed to be our worst calamities had generally proved to be our greatest blessings. Among these I have been accustomed to name the monstrous McGuire attack in the Assembly on Mr. Cornell, which greatly disheartened me for the moment, but which eventually led the investigation committee not only to show to the world Mr. Cornell's complete honesty and self-sacrifice, but to recommend the measures which finally transferred the endowment fund from the State to the trustees, thus strengthening the institution greatly. So now a piece of good luck came out of this unexpected debt. As soon as the subscription was made, Mr. George W. Schuyler, treasurer of the university, in drawing up the deed of gift, ended it with words to the following effect: "And it is hereby agreed by the said Ezra Cornell, Henry W. Sage, Hiram Sibley, John McGraw, and Andrew D. White, that in case the said university shall ever be in position to repay their said subscriptions, then and in that case the said entire sum of one hundred and sixty thousand dollars shall be repaid into a university fund for the creation of fellowships and scholarships in the said university.'' A general laugh arose among the subscribers, Mr. McGraw remarking that this was rather offhand dealing with us; but all took it in good part and signed the agreement. It is certain that not one of us then expected in his lifetime to see the university able to repay the money; but, within a few years, as our lands were sold at better prices than we expected, the university was in condition to make restitution. At first some of the trustees demurred to investing so large a sum in fellowships and scholarships,
So far as the university treasury was concerned, matters
thenceforth went on well. Never again did the university incur any
troublesome debt; from that day to this its finances have been so
managed as to excite the admiration even of men connected with the most
successful and best managed corporations of our country. But financial
difficulties far more serious than the debt just referred to arose in
a different quarter. In assuming the expenses of locating and
managing the university lands, protecting them, paying taxes upon
them, and the like, Mr. Cornell had taken upon himself a fearful
load, and it pressed upon him heavily. But this was not all. It was,
indeed, far from the worst; for, in his anxiety to bring the
university town into easy connection with the railway system of the
State, he had invested very largely in local railways leading into
Ithaca. Under these circumstances, while he made heroic efforts and
sacrifices, his relations to the comptroller of the State, who still
had in his charge the land scrip of the university, became exceedingly
difficult. At the very crisis of this difficulty Mr. Cornell's hard
work proved too much for him, and he lay down to die. The university
affairs, so far as the land-grant fund was concerned, seemed
hopelessly entangled with his own and with those of the State: it
seemed altogether likely that at his death the institution would be
subjected to years of litigation, to having its endowment tied up in
the courts, and to a suspension of its operations. Happily, we had as
our adviser Francis Miles Finch, since justice of the Court of Appeals
of the State, and now dean of the Law School—a man of noble
character, of wonderfully varied gifts, an admirable legal adviser,
devoted personally to Mr. Cornell, and no less devoted to the
university.
Cornell University, 1878
[Description: Photograph of the author, 1878, by Sarony, New York]
A few years later came another calamity, not, like the others, touching the foundations and threatening the existence of the university, yet hardly less crushing at the time; indeed, with two exceptions, it was the most depressing I have ever encountered. At the establishment of the university in Ithaca, one of the charter trustees who showed himself especially munificent to the new enterprise was Mr. John McGraw. One morning, while I was in the midst of the large collection of books sent by me from Europe, endeavoring to bring them into some order before the opening day, his daughter, Miss Jenny McGraw, came in, and I had the pleasure of showing her some of our more interesting treasures. She was a woman of kind and thoughtful nature, had traveled in her own country and abroad to good purpose, and was evidently deeply interested. Next day her father met me and said: "Well,
A few years later she married one of our professors, an old friend of mine, and her marriage proved exceedingly happy; but, alas, its happiness was destined to be brief! Less than two years after her wedding day she was brought home from Europe to breathe her last in her husband's cottage on the university grounds, and was buried from the beautiful residence which she had built hard by, and had stored with works of art in every field.
At the opening of her will it was found that, while she had made ample provision for all who were near and dear to her, and for a multitude of charities, she had left to the university very nearly two millions of dollars, a portion of which was to be used for a student hospital, and the bulk of the remainder, amounting to more than a million and a half, for the university library. Her husband joined most heartily in her purpose, and all seemed ready for carrying it out in a way which would have made Cornell University, in that respect, unquestionably the foremost on the American continent. As soon as this munificent bequest was announced, I asked our leading lawyer, Judge Douglas Boardman, whether our charter allowed the university to take it, calling his attention to the
In view of the fact that Judge Boardman had long experience and was at the time judge of the Supreme Court of the State, I banished all thought of difficulty; though I could not but regret that, as he drew Mrs. Fiske's will, and at the same time knew the restrictions of our charter, he had not given us a hint, so that we could have had our powers of holding property enlarged. It would have been perfectly easy to have the restrictions removed, and, as a matter of fact, the legislature shortly afterward removed them entirely, without the slightest objection; but this action was too late to enable us to take the McGraw-Fiske bequest.
About a fortnight after these assurances that we were perfectly safe, Judge Boardman sent for me, and on meeting him I found that he had discovered a decision of the Court of Appeals—rendered a few years before—which might prevent our accepting the bequest.
But there was still much hope of inducing the main heirs to allow the purpose of Mrs. Fiske to be carried out. Without imputing any evil intentions to any person, I fully believe—indeed, I may say I know—that, had the matter been placed in my hands, this vast endowment would have been saved to us; but it was not so to be. Personal complications had arisen between the main heir and two of our trustees which increased the embarrassments of the situation. It is needless to go into them now; let all that be buried; but it may at least be said that day and night I labored to make some sort of arrangement between the
Beside these financial and other troubles, another class of difficulties beset us, which were, at times, almost as vexatious. These were the continued attacks made by good men in various parts of the State and Nation, who thought they saw in Cornell a stronghold-first, of ideas in religion antagonistic to their own; and secondly, of ideas in education likely to injure their sectarian colleges. From the day when our charter was under consideration at Albany they never relented, and at times they were violent. The reports of my inauguration speech were, in sundry denominational newspapers, utterly distorted; far and wide was spread the story that Mr. Cornell and myself were attempting to establish an institution for the propagation of "atheism'' and "infidelity.'' Certainly nothing could have been further from the purpose of either of us. He had aided, and loved to aid, every form of Christianity; I was myself a member of a Christian church and a trustee of a denominational college. Everything that we could do in the way of reasoning with our assailants was in vain. In talking with students from time to time, I learned that, in many cases, their pastors had earnestly besought them to go to any other institution rather than to Cornell; reports of hostile sermons reached us; bitter diatribes constantly appeared in denominational newspapers, and especially virulent were various addresses given on public occasions in the sectarian colleges which felt themselves injured by the creation of an unsectarian institution on so large a scale. Typical was the attack made by an eminent divine who, having been installed as president over one of the smaller colleges of the State, thought it his duty to denounce me as an "atheist,'' and to do this especially
Perhaps the most comical of these attacks was one made by a clergyman of some repute before the Presbyterian Synod at Auburn in western New York. This gentleman, having attended one or two of the lectures by Agassiz before our scientific students, immediately rushed off to this meeting of his brethren, and insisted that the great naturalist was "preaching atheism and Darwinism'' at the university. He seemed about to make a decided impression, when there arose a very dear old friend of mine, the Rev. Dr. Sherman Canfield, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Syracuse, who, fortunately, was a scholar abreast of current questions. Dr. Canfield quietly remarked that he was amazed to learn that Agassiz had, in so short a time, become an atheist, and not less astonished to hear that he had been converted to Darwinism; that up to that moment he had considered Agassiz a deeply religious man, and also the foremost—possibly, indeed, the last—great opponent of the Darwinian hypothesis. He therefore suggested that the resolution denouncing Cornell University brought in by his reverend brother be laid on the table to await further investigation. It was thus disposed of, and, in that region at least, it was never heard of more. Pleasing is it to me to chronicle the fact that, at Dr. Canfield's death, he left to the university a very important part of his library.
From another denominational college came an attack on Goldwin Smith. One of its professors published, in the Protestant Episcopal "Gospel Messenger,'' an attack upon the university for calling into its faculty a "Westminster Reviewer''; the fact being that Goldwin Smith was at that time a member of the Church of England, and had never written for the "Westminster Review'' save in reply to one of its articles. So, too, when there were sculptured on the stone seat which he had ordered
We also owed some munificent gifts to this same cause. In two cases gentlemen came forward and made large additions to our endowment as their way of showing disbelief in these attacks or contempt for them.
Still, the attacks were vexatious even when impotent. Ingenious was the scheme carried out by a zealous young clergyman settled for a short time in Ithaca. Coming one day into my private library, he told me that he was very anxious to borrow some works showing the more recent tendencies of liberal thought. I took him to one of my book-cases, in which, by the side of the works of Bossuet and Fénelon and Thomas Arnold and Robertson of Brighton, he found those of Channing, Parker, Renan, Strauss, and the men who, in the middle years of the last century, were held to represent advanced thought. He looked them over for some time, made some excuse for not borrowing any of them just then, and I heard nothing more from him until there came, in a denominational newspaper, his eloquent denunciation of me for possessing such books. Impressive, too, must have been the utterances of an eminent "revivalist'' who, in various West-ern cities, loudly asserted that Mr. Cornell had died lamenting his inability to base his university on atheism, and that I had fled to Europe declaring that in America an infidel university was, as yet, an impossibility.
For a long time I stood on the defensive, hoping that the provisions made for the growth of religious life among the students might show that we were not so wicked as we were represented; but, as all this seemed only to embitter our adversaries, I finally determined to take the offensive, and having been invited to deliver a lecture in the great hall of the Cooper Institute at New York, took as my subject "The Battle-fields of Science.'' In this my effort was to show how, in the supposed interest of religion, earnest and excellent men, for many ages and in many countries, had bitterly opposed various advances in science and in education, and that such opposition had resulted in most evil results, not only to science and education, but to religion. This lecture was published in full, next day, in the "New York Tribune''; extracts from it were widely copied; it was asked for by lecture associations in many parts of the country; grew first into two magazine articles, then into a little book which was widely circulated at home, reprinted in England with a preface by Tyndall, and circulated on the Continent in translations, was then expanded into a series of articles in the "Popular Science Monthly,'' and finally wrought into my book on "The Warfare of Science with Theology.'' In each of these forms my argument provoked attack; but all this eventually created a reaction in our favor, even in quarters where it was least expected. One evidence of this touched me deeply. I had been invited to repeat the lecture at New Haven, and on arriving there found a large audience of Yale professors and students; but, most surprising of all, in the chair for the evening, no less a personage than my revered instructor, Dr. Theodore Dwight Woolsey, president of the university. He was of a deeply religious nature; and certainly no man was ever under all circumstances, more true to his convictions of duty. To be welcomed by him was encouragement indeed. He presented me cordially to the audience, and at the close of my address made a brief speech, in which he thoroughly supported my positions and bade me God-speed. Few things in my life have so encouraged me.
Attacks, of course, continued for a considerable time, some of them violent; but, to my surprise and satisfaction, when my articles were finally brought together in book form, the opposition seemed to have exhausted itself. There were even indications of approval in some quarters where the articles composing it had previously been attacked; and I received letters thoroughly in sympathy with the work from a number of eminent Christian men, including several doctors of divinity, and among these two bishops, one of the Anglican and one of the American Episcopal Church.
The final result was that slander against the university for irreligion was confined almost entirely to very narrow circles, of waning influence; and my hope is that, as its formative ideas have been thus welcomed by various leaders of thought, and have filtered down through the press among the people at large, they have done something to free the path of future laborers in the field of science and education from such attacks as those which Cornell was obliged to suffer.
25. CHAPTER XXV
CONCLUDING YEARS—1881-1885
TO this work of pressing on the development of the leading departments in the university, establishing various courses of instruction, and warding off attacks as best I could, was added the daily care of the regular and steady administration of affairs, and in this my duty was to coöperate with the trustees, the faculty, and the students. The trustees formed a body differently composed from any organization for university government up to that time. As a rule, such boards in the United States were, in those days, self-perpetuating. A man once elected into one of them was likely to remain a trustee during his natural life; and the result had been much dry-rot and, frequently, a very sleepy condition of things in American collegiate and university administration. In drawing the Cornell charter, we provided for a governing body by first naming a certain number of high State officers—the governor, lieutenant-governor, speaker, president of the State Agricultural Society, and others; next, a certain number of men of special fitness, who were to be elected by the board itself; and, finally, a certain proportion elected by the alumni from their own number. Beside these, the eldest male lineal descendant of Mr. Cornell, and the president of the university, were trustees ex officio. At the first nomination of the charter trustees, Mr. Cornell proposed that he should name half the number and I the other half. This was done, and pains were taken to select men accustomed to deal with large affairs. A very important provision
During the first nine years the chairmanship of the board was held by Mr. Cornell, but at his death Mr. Henry W. Sage was elected to it, who, as long as he lived, discharged its duties with the greatest conscientiousness and ability. To the finances of the university he gave that shrewd care which had enabled him to build up his own immense business. Freely and without compensation, he bestowed upon the institution labor for which any great business corporation would have gladly paid him a very large sum. For the immediate management, in the intervals of the quarterly meetings of the board, an executive committee of the trustees was created, which also worked to excellent purpose.
The faculty, which was at first comparatively small, was elected by the trustees upon my nomination. In deciding on candidates, I put no trust in mere paper testimonials, no matter from what source; but always saw the candidates themselves, talked with them, and then secured confidential communications regarding them from those who knew them best. The results were good, and to this hour I cherish toward the faculty, as toward the trustees, a feeling of the deepest gratitude. Throughout all the hard work of that period they supported me heartily and devotedly; without their devotion and aid, my whole administration would have been an utter failure.
To several of these I have alluded elsewhere; but one should be especially mentioned to whom every member of the faculty must feel a debt of gratitude—Professor Hiram Corson. No one has done more to redress the balance between the technical side and the humanities. His writings, lectures, and readings have been a solace and an inspiration to many of us, both in the faculty and among the students. It was my remembrance of the effect of his readings that caused me to urge, at a public address at Yale in 1903, the establishment not only of professorships but of readerships in English literature in all our
From one evil which has greatly injured many American university faculties, especially in the middle and western States, we were virtually free. This evil was the prevalence of feuds between professors. Throughout a large part of the nineteenth century they were a great affliction. Twice the State University of Michigan was nearly wrecked by them; for several years they nearly paralyzed two or three of the New York colleges; and in one of these a squabble between sundry professors and the widow of a former president was almost fatal. Another of the larger colleges in the same State lost a very eminent president from the same cause; and still another, which had done excellent work, was dragged down and for years kept down by a feud between its two foremost professors. In my day, at Yale, whenever there
In another chapter I have referred to one of these explosions which, having blown out of a Western university the president, the entire board of trustees, and all the assistant professors and instructors, convulsed the State for years. I have known gifted members of faculties, term after term, substitute for their legitimate work impassioned appeals to their religious denominations, through synods or conferences, and to the public at large through the press,—their quarrels at last entangling other professors and large numbers of students.
In my "Plan of Organization'' I called attention to this evil, and laid down the principle that "the presence of no professor, however gifted, is so valuable as peace and harmony.'' The trustees acquiesced in this view, and from the first it was understood that, at any cost, quarrels must be prevented. The result was that we never had any which were serious, nor had we any in the board of trustees. One of the most satisfactory of all my reflections is that I never had any ill relations with any member of either body; that there was never one of them whom I did not look upon as a friend. My simple rule for the government of my own conduct was that I had no time for squabbling; that life was not long enough for quarrels; and this became, I think, the feeling among all of us who were engaged in the founding and building of the university.
As regards the undergraduates, I initiated a system which, so far as is known to me, was then new in American institutions of learning. At the beginning of every year, and also whenever any special occasion seemed to require it, I summoned the whole body of students and addressed them at length on the condition of the university, on their relations to it, and on their duties to it as well as to themselves; and in all these addresses endeavored to bring home to them the idea that under our system of giving to
The administrative care of the university was very engrossing. With study of the various interests combined within its organization; with the attendance on meetings of trustees, executive committee, and faculty, and discussion of important questions in each of these bodies— with the general oversight of great numbers of students in many departments and courses; with the constant necessity of keeping the legislature and the State informed as to the reasons of every movement, of meeting hostile forces pressing us on every side, of keeping in touch with our graduates throughout the country, there was much to be done. Trying also, at times, to a man never in robust health was the duty of addressing various assemblies of most dissimilar purposes. Within the space of two or three years I find mention in my diaries of a large number of addresses which, as president of the university, I could not refuse to give; among these, those before the legislature of the State, on Technical Education; before committees of Congress, on Agriculture and Technical Instruction; before the Johns Hopkins University, on Education with Reference to Political Life; before
But some of these journeys were not well suited to study. During the first few years of the university, being obliged to live in the barracks on the University Hill under many difficulties, I could not have my family with me, and from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning was given to them at Syracuse. In summer the journey by Cayuga Lake to the New York Central train gave me excellent opportunity for reading and even for writing. But in winter it was different. None of the railways now connecting the university town with the outside world had then been constructed, save that to the southward; and, therefore, during those long winters there was at least twice a week a dreary drive in wagon or sleigh sometimes taking all the better hours of the day, in order to reach the train from Binghamton to Syracuse. Coming out of my lecture-room Friday evening or Saturday morning, I was conveyed through nearly twenty-five miles of mud and slush or sleet and snow. On one journey my sleigh was upset three times in the drifts which made the roads almost impassable, and it required nearly ten hours to make the entire journey. The worst of it was that,
But my greater opportunities—those which kept me from becoming a mere administrative machine—were afforded by various vacations, longer or shorter. During the summer vacation, mainly passed at Saratoga and the seaside, there was time for consecutive studies with refer-ence to my work, my regular lectures, and occasional addresses. But this was not all. At three different times I was summoned from university work to public duties. The first of these occasions was when I was appointed by President Grant one of the commissioners to Santo Domingo. This appointment came when I was thoroughly worn out with university work, and it gave me a chance of great value physically and intellectually. During four months I was in a world of thought as different from anything that I had before known as that wonderful island in the Caribbean Sea is different in its climate from the hills of central New York swept by the winds of December. And I had to deal with men very different from the trustees, faculty, and students of Cornell. This episode certainly broadened my view as a professor, and strengthened me for administrative duties.
The third of these long vacations was in 1879—80—81, when President Hayes appointed me minister plenipotentiary in Berlin. My stay at that post, and especially my acquaintance with leaders in German thought and with professors at many of the Continental universities, did much for me in many ways.
It may be thought strange that I could thus absent myself from the university, but these absences really enabled me to maintain my connection with the institution. My constitution, though elastic, was not robust; an uninterrupted strain would have broken me, while variety of occupation strengthened me. Throughout my whole life I have found the best of all medicines to be travel and
As to the effect of such absences upon the university, I may say that it accorded with the theory which I held tenaciously regarding the administration of the university at that formative period. I had observed in various American colleges that a fundamental and most injurious error was made in relieving trustees and faculty from responsibility, and concentrating all in the president. The result, in many of these institutions, had been a sort of atrophy,—the trustees and faculty being, whenever an emergency arose, badly informed as to the affairs of their institutions, and really incapable of managing them. This state of things was the most serious drawback to President Tappan's administration at the University of Michigan, and was the real cause of the catastrophe which finally led to his break with the regents of that university, and his departure to Europe, never to return. Worse still was the downfall of Union College, Schenectady, from the position which it had held before the death of President Nott. Under Drs. Nott and Tappan the tendency in the institutions above named was to make the trustees in all administrative matters mere ciphers, and to make the faculty more and more incapable of administering discipline or conducting current university business. That system concentrated all knowledge of university affairs and all power of every sort in the hands of the president, and relieved trustees and faculty from everything except nominal responsibility. From the very beginning I determined to prevent this state of things at Cornell. Great powers were indeed given me by the trustees, and I used
Of the last two of these I have already spoken, and here some record should be made of the services rendered by
In the vice-presidency of the faculty he also rendered services of the greatest value. No one was more devoted than he to the university or more loyal to his associates. There was, indeed, some friction. His cousin, James Russell Lowell, once asked me regarding this, and my reply was that it reminded me of a character in the "Biglow Papers'' who "had a dre'dful winnin' way to make folks hate him.'' This was doubtless an overstatement, but it contained truth; for at times there was perhaps lacking in his handling of delicate questions something of the suaviter in modo. His honest frankness was worthy of all praise; but I once found it necessary to write him: "I am sorry that you have thought it best to send me so unsparing a letter, but no matter; write me as many as you like; they will never break our friendship; only do not write others in the same strain.'' This brought back from him one of the kindest epistles imaginable. Uncompromising as his manner was, his services vastly outweighed all the defects of his qualities; and among these services were some of which the general public never dreamed. I could tell of pathetic devotion and self-sacrifice on his part, not only to the university, but to individual students. No professor ever had a kindlier feeling toward any scholar in
As to my professorial work, I found in due time effective aid in various young men who had been members of my classes. Of these were Charles Kendall Adams, who afterward became my successor in the presidency of Cornell, and George Lincoln Burr, who is now one of my successors in the professorship of history.
Thus it was that from time to time I could be absent with a feeling that all at the university was moving on steadily and securely; with a feeling, indeed, that it was something to have aided in creating an institution which could move on steadily and securely, even when the hands of those who had set it in motion had been removed.
There was, however, one temporary exception to the rule. During my absence as minister at Berlin trouble arose in the governing board so serious that I resigned my diplomatic post before my term of service was ended, and has-tened back to my university duties. But no permanent injury had been done; in fact, this experience, by revealing weaknesses in sundry parts of our system, resulted in permanent good.
Returning thus from Berlin, I threw myself into university work more heartily than ever. It was still difficult, for our lands had not as yet been sold to any extent, and our income was sadly insufficient. The lands were steadily increasing in value, and it was felt that it would be a great error to dispose of them prematurely. The work of providing ways and means to meet the constantly increasing demands of the institution was therefore severe, and the loss of the great library bequest to the university also tried me sorely; but I labored on, and at last, thanks to the admirable service of Mr. Sage in the management of the lands, the university was enabled to realize, for the first time, a large capital from them. Up to the year 1885
Twenty years had now elapsed since I had virtually begun my duties as president by drafting the university charter and by urging it upon the legislature. The four years of work since my return from Berlin had tried me severely; and more than that, I had made a pledge some years before to the one who, of all in the world, had the right to ask it, that at the close of twenty years of service I would give up all administrative duties. To this pledge I was faithful, but with the feeling that it was at the sacrifice of much. The new endowment coming in from the sale of lands offered opportunities which I had longed for during many weary years; but I felt that it was best to put the management into new hands. There were changes needed which were far more difficult for me to make than for a new-comer—especially changes in the faculty, which involved the severing of ties very dear to me.
At the annual commencement of 1885, the twenty years from the granting of our charter having arrived, I presented my resignation with the declaration that it must be accepted. It was accepted in such a way as to make me very grateful to all connected with the institution: trustees, faculty, and students were most kind to me. As regards the first of these bodies, I cannot resist the temptation to mention two evidences of their feeling which touched me deeply. The first of these was the proposal that I should continue as honorary president of the university. This I declined. To hold such a position would have been an injury to my successor; I knew well that the time had come when he would be obliged to grapple with questions which I had left unsettled from a feeling that he would have a freer hand than I could have. But another tender made me I accepted: this was that I should nominate my successor. I did this, naming my old student at the University of Michigan, who had succeeded
In thus leaving the presidency of the university, it seemed to me that the time had come for carrying out a plan formed long before—the transfer to the university of my historical and general library, which had become one of the largest and, in its field, one of the best private collections of books in the United States. The trustees accepted it, providing a most noble room for it in connection with the main university library and with the historical lecture-rooms; setting apart, also, from their resources, an ample sum, of which the income should be used in maintaining the library, in providing a librarian, in publishing a complete catalogue, and in making the collection effective for historical instruction. My only connection with the university thenceforward was that of a trustee and member of its executive committee. In this position it has been one of the greatest pleasures and satisfactions of my life to note the large and steady development of the institution during the two administrations which have succeeded my own. At the close of the administration of President Adams, who had especially distinguished himself in developing the law department and various other important university interests, in strengthening the connection of the institution with the State, and in calling several most competent professors, he was succeeded by a gentleman whose acquaintance I had made during my stay as minister to Germany, he being at that time a student at the University of Berlin,—Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman, whose remarkable powers and gifts have more than met the great expectations I then formed regarding him, and have developed the university to a yet higher point, so that its number of students is now, as I revise these lines, over three thousand. He, too, has been called to important duties in the public service; and he has just returned after a year of most valuable work as president of the Commission of the United States to the
On laying down the duties of the university presidency, it did not seem best to me to remain in its neighborhood during the first year or two of the new administration. Any one who has ever been in a position similar to mine at that period will easily understand the reason. It is the same which has led thoughtful men in the churches to say that it is not well to have the old pastor too near when the new pastor is beginning his duties. Obedient to this idea of leaving my successor a free hand, my wife and myself took a leisurely journey through England, France, and Italy, renewing old acquaintances and making new friends. Returning after a year, I settled down again in the university, hoping to complete the book for which I had been gathering materials and on which I had been working steadily for some years, when there came the greatest calamity of my life,—the loss of her who had been my main support during thirty years,—and work became for a time, an impossibility. Again I became a wanderer, going, in 1888, first to Scotland, and thence, being ordered by physicians to the East, went again through France and Italy, and extended the journey through Egypt, Greece and Turkey. Of the men and things which seemed most noteworthy to me at that period I speak in other chapters. @ From the East I made my way leisurely to Paris, with considerable stops at Buda-Pesth, Vienna, Ulm, Munich Frankfort-on-the-Main, Paris, London, taking notes in libraries, besides collecting books and manuscripts.
Returning to the United States in the autumn of 1889, and settling down again in my old house at Cornell, I was invited to give courses of historical lectures at various American universities, especially one upon the "Causes of the French Revolution,'' at Johns Hopkins, Columbian University in Washington, the University of Pennsylvania, Tulane University in New Orleans, and Stanford University in California. Excursions to these institutions
During this period of something over fifteen years, I have been frequently summoned from these duties, which were especially agreeable to me—first, in 1892, as minister to Russia; next, in 1896, as a member of the Venezuelan Commission at Washington; and, in 1897, as ambassador to Germany. I have found many men and things which would seem likely to draw me away from my interest in Cornell; but, after all, that which has for nearly forty years held, and still holds, the deepest place in my thoughts is the university which I aided to found.
Since resigning its presidency I have, in many ways, kept in relations with it; and as I have, at various times, returned from abroad and walked over its grounds, visited its buildings, and lived among its faculty and students, an enjoyment has been mine rarely vouchsafed to mortals. It has been like revisiting the earth after leaving it. The work to which I had devoted myself for so many years, and with more earnestness than any other which I have ever undertaken, though at times almost with the energy of despair, I have now seen successful beyond my dreams. Above all, as I have seen the crowd of students coming and going, I have felt assured that the work is good. It was with this feeling that, just before I left the university for the embassy at Berlin, I erected at the entrance of the university grounds a gateway, on which I placed a paraphrase of a Latin inscription noted by me, many years before, over the main portal of the University of Padua, as follows:
So depart that daily thou mayest become more useful to thy country and to mankind.''
I often recall the saying of St. Philip Neri, who, in the days of the Elizabethan persecutions, was wont to gaze
During my life, which is now extending beyond the allotted span of threescore and ten, I have been engaged after the manner of my countrymen, in many sorts of work, have become interested in many conditions of men have joined in many efforts which I hope have been of use; but, most of all, I have been interested in the founding and maintaining of Cornell University, and by the part I have taken in that, more than by any other work of my life I hope to be judged.
| Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Volume I | |