For the class next above, the juniors, I took for textbook preparation Guizot's "History of Civilization in Europe''—a book tinged with the doctrinairism of its author, but a work of genius; a GREAT work, stimulating new trains of thought, and opening new vistas of knowledge. This, with sundry supplementary talks, and with short readings from Gibbon, Thierry, Guizot's "History of Civilization in France,'' and Sir James Stephen's "Lectures on French History,'' served an excellent purpose.

Nor was the use of Guizot's book entirely confined to historical purposes. Calling attention to the Abb Bautain's little book on extemporaneous speaking, as the best treatise on the subject I had ever seen, I reminded my students that these famous lectures of Guizot, which had opened a new epoch in modern historical investigation and instruction, were given, as regards phrasing, extemporaneously, but that, as regards matter, they were carefully prepared beforehand, having what Bautain calls a "self- developing order''; and I stated that I would allow any member of my class who might volunteer for the purpose to give, in his own phrasing, the substance of an entire lecture. For a young man thus to stand up and virtually deliver one of Guizot's lectures required great concentration of thought and considerable facility in expression, but several students availed themselves of the permission, and acquitted themselves admirably. This seemed to me an excellent training for effective public speaking, and several of my old students, who have since distinguished themselves in public life, have confessed to me that they found it so.

My next and highest duty was giving lectures to the senior class and students from the law school. Into this I threw myself heartily, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing my large lecture-room constantly full. The first of these courses was on the "Development of Civilization during the Middle Ages''; and, as I followed the logical rather than the chronological order,—taking up the subject, not by a recital of events, but by a discussion of epochs and subjects,—I thought it best to lecture without manuscript or even notes. This was, for me, a bold venture. I had never before attempted anything in the way of extended extemporaneous speaking; and, as I entered the old chapel of the university for my first lecture, and saw it full of students of all classes, I avowed my trepidation to President Tappan, who, having come to introduce me, was seated by my side. He was an admirable extemporaneous speaker in the best sense, and he then and there gave me a bit of advice which proved of real value. He said: "Let me, as an old hand, tell you one thing: never stop dead; keep saying something.'' This course of lectures was followed by others on modern history, one of these being on "German History from the Revival of Learning and the Reformation to Modern Times,'' another on "French History from the Consolidation of the Monarchy to the French Revolution,'' and still another on the "French Revolution.'' To this latter course I gave special attention, the foundation having been laid for it in France, where I had visited various interesting places and talked with interesting men who recalled events and people of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. For a text-book foundation I read with my lower classes Mignet's "History of the Revolution,'' which still remained what Carlyle pronounced it—the best short summary of that great period.

To further the work of my students in the lecture-room, I published an interleaved syllabus of each course, and was, I think, the first person in our country who ever did this in connection with historical lectures. It is a matter of wonder to me that so few professors in these days resort to this simple means of strengthening their instruction. It ought to be required by university statutes. It seems to me indispensable to anything like thorough work. A syllabus, properly interleaved, furnishes to a student by far the best means of taking notes on each lecture, as well as of reviewing the whole course afterward, and to a professor the best means of testing the faithfulness of his students. As regards myself personally, there came to me from my syllabus an especial advantage; for, as I have shown in my political experiences, it gained for me the friendship of Charles Sumner.

I have stated elsewhere that my zeal in teaching history was by no means the result of a mere liking for that field of thought. Great as was my love for historical studies, there was something I prized far more—and that was the opportunity to promote a better training in thought regarding our great national problems then rapidly approaching solution, the greatest of all being the question between the supporters and opponents of slavery.

In order that my work might be fairly well based, I had, during my college days and my first stay abroad, begun collecting the private library which has added certainly to the pleasures, and probably to the usefulness, of my life. Books which are now costly rarities could then be bought in the European capitals for petty sums. There is hardly any old European city which has not been, at some time, one of my happy hunting-grounds in the chase for rare books bearing upon history; even now, when my collection, of which the greater part has been trans- ferred to Cornell University, numbers not far short of forty thousand volumes, the old passion still flames up at times; and during the inditing of this chapter I have secured two series of manuscripts of very great value in illustrating the evolution of modern civilization. My reason for securing such original material was not the desire to possess rarities and curiosities. I found that passages actually read from important originals during my lectures gave a reality and vividness to my instruction which were otherwise unattainable. A citation of the ipsissima verba of Erasmus, or Luther, or Melanchthon, or Peter Canisius, or Louis XIV, or Robespierre, or Marat, interested my students far more than any quotation at second hand could do. No rhetoric could impress on a class the real spirit and strength of the middle ages as could one of my illuminated psalters or missals; no declamation upon the boldness of Luther could impress thinking young men as did citations from his "Erfurt Sermon,'' which, by weakening his safe-conduct, put him virtually at the mercy of his enemies at the Diet of Worms; no statements as to the fatuity of Robespierre could equal citations from an original copy of his "Report on the Moral and Religious Considerations which Ought to Govern the Republic''; all specifications of the folly of Marat paled before the ravings in the original copies of his newspaper, "L'Ami du Peuple''; no statistics regarding the paper-money craze in France could so impress its actuality on students as did the seeing and handling of French revolutionary assignats and mandats, many of them with registration numbers clearly showing the enormous quantities of this currency then issued; no illustration, at second hand, of the methods of the French generals during the Revolutionary period could produce the impression given by a simple exhibition of the broadsides issued by the proconsuls of that period; no description of the collapse of the triumvirate and the Reign of Terror could equal a half-hour's reading from the "Moniteur''; and all accounts of the Empire were dim compared to grandiose statements read from the original bulletins of Napoleon.

In this way alone can history be made real to students. Both at my lectures and in the social gatherings at my house, I laid out for my classes the most important originals bearing upon their current work; and it was no small pleasure to point out the relations of these to the events which had formed the subject of our studies together. I say "our studies together,'' because no one of my students studied more hours than myself. They stimulated me greatly. Most of them were very near my own age; several were older. As a rule, they were bright, inquiring, zealous, and among them were some of the best minds I have ever known. From among them have since come senators, members of Congress, judges, professors, lawyers, heads of great business enterprises, and foreign ministers. One of them became my successor in the professorship in the University of Michigan and the presidency of Cornell, and, in one field, the leading American historian of his time. Another became my predecessor in the embassy to Germany. Though I had what might be fairly called "a good start'' of these men, it was necessary to work hard to maintain my position; but such labor was then pleasure.

Nor was my work confined to historical teaching. After the fashion of that time, I was called upon to hear the essays and discussions of certain divisions of the upper classes. This demanded two evenings a week through two terms in each year, and on these evenings I joyfully went to my lecture-room, not infrequently through drifts of snow, and, having myself kindled the fire and lighted the lamps, awaited the discussion. This subsidiary work, which in these degenerate days is done by janitors, is mentioned here as showing the simplicity of a bygone period. The discussions thus held were of a higher range than any I had known at Yale, and some were decidedly original. One deserves especial mention. A controversy having arisen in Massachusetts and spread throughout the country regarding the erection of a statue of Daniel Webster in front of the State House at Boston, and bitter opposition having been aroused by his seventh-of-March speech, two groups of my student-disputants agreed to take up this subject and model their speeches upon those of Demosthenes and Aeschines on the crown, which they were then reading in the original. It was a happy thought, and well carried out.



CHAPTER XVI

UNIVERSITY LIFE IN THE WEST—1857-1864

It must be confessed that all was not plain sailing in my new position. One difficulty arose from my very youthful, not to say boyish, appearance. I was, indeed, the youngest member of the faculty; but at twenty-four years one has the right to be taken for a man, and it was vexatious to be taken for a youth of seventeen. At my first arrival in the university town I noticed, as the train drew up to the station, a number of students, evidently awaiting the coming of such freshmen as might be eligible to the various fraternities; and, on landing, I was at once approached by a sophomore, who asked if I was about to enter the university. For an instant I was grievously abashed, but pulling myself together, answered in a sort of affirmative way; and at this he became exceedingly courteous, taking pains to pilot me to a hotel, giving me much excellent advice, and even insisting on carrying a considerable amount of my baggage. Other members of fraternities joined us, all most courteous and kind, and the dnouement came only at the registration of my name in the hotel book, when they recognized in me "the new professor.'' I must say to their credit that, although they were for a time laughed at throughout the university, they remained my warm personal friends.

But after I had discharged the duties of my professorship for a considerable period, this same difficulty existed. On a shooting excursion, an old friend and myself came, and, being very hungry, asked for bread and milk. My companion being delayed outside, cleaning the guns, the farmer's wife left me and went out to talk with him. I continued eating my bread and milk voraciously, and shortly afterward they entered, he laughing heartily and she looking rather shamefaced. On my asking the cause he declined for a time to state it, but at length said that she had come out to warn him that if he did not come in pretty soon "that boy would eat up all the bread and milk in the house.'' This story leaked out, and even appeared in a local paper, but never, I think, did me any harm.

Another occurrence, shortly afterward, seemed likely for a time to be more serious. The sophomore class, exuberant and inventive as ever, were evidently determined to "try it on'' their young professor—in fact, to treat me as they had treated their tutors. Any mistake made by a student at a quiz elicited from sundry benches expressions of regret much too plaintive, or ejaculations of contempt much too explosive; and from these and various similar demonstrations which grew every day among a certain set in my class-room, it was easy to see that a trial of strength must soon come, and it seemed to me best to force the fighting. Looking over these obstreperous youths I noticed one tall, black-bearded man with a keen twinkle in his eye, who was evidently the leader. There was nothing in him especially demonstrative. He would occasionally nod in this direction, or wink in that, or smile in the other; but he was solemn when others were hilarious, unconcerned when others applauded. It was soon clear to me that in him lay the key to the situation, and one day, at the close of the examination, I asked him to remain. When we were alone I said to him, in an easy-going way, "So, F——, I see that either you or I must leave the university.'' He at once bristled up, feigned indignation, and said that he could not understand me. This I pooh-poohed, saying that we understood each other perfectly; that I had been only recently a student myself; that, if the growing trouble in the class continued, either he or I must give it up, and added, "I believe the trustees will prefer your departure to mine.'' At this he protested that he had made no demonstrations, to which I answered that if I put him on his honor he would not deny that he was the real center of the difficulty; that the others were, comparatively, men of small account; and that, with him gone, the backbone of the whole difficulty would be broken. He seemed impressed by this view—possibly he was not wholly displeased at the importance it gave him; and finally he acknowledged that perhaps he had been rather foolish, and suggested that we try to live together a little longer. I answered cordially, we shook hands at parting, and there was never any trouble afterward. I soon found what sort of questions interested him most, took especial pains to adapt points in my lectures to his needs, and soon had no stronger friend in the university.

But his activity finally found a less fortunate outcome. A year or two afterward came news of a terrible affair in the university town. A student was lying dead at the coroner's rooms, and on inquiry it was found that his death was the result of a carousal in which my friend F—— was a leading spirit. Eight men were concerned, of whom four were expelled—F—— being one—and four suspended. On leaving, he came to me and thanked me most heartily for what I had done for him, said that the action of the faculty was perfectly just, that no other course was open to us, but that he hoped yet to show us all that he could make a man of himself. He succeeded. Five years later he fell as a general at the head of his brigade at Gettysburg.

In addition to my regular work at the university, I lectured frequently in various cities throughout Michigan and the neighboring States. It was the culminating period of the popular-lecture system, and through the winter months my Friday and Saturday evenings were generally given to this sort of duty. It was, after its fashion, what in these days is called "university extension''; indeed, the main purpose of those members of the faculty thus invited to lecture was to spread the influence of the university. But I received from the system more than I gave to it; for it gave me not only many valuable acquaintances throughout the West, but it brought to Ann Arbor the best men then in the field, among them such as Emerson, Curtis, Whipple, Wendell Phillips, Carl Schurz, Moncure Conway, Bayard Taylor, and others noted then, but, alas, how few of them remembered now! To have them by my fireside and at my table was one of the greatest pleasures of a professorial life. It was at the beginning of my housekeeping; and under my roof on the university grounds we felt it a privilege to welcome these wise men from the East, and to bring the faculty and students into closer relations with them.

As regards the popular-lecture pulpit, my main wish was to set people thinking on various subjects, and especially regarding slavery and "protection.'' This presently brought a storm upon me. Some years before there had settled in the university town a thin, vociferous lawyer, past his prime, but not without ideas and force. He had for many years been a department subordinate at Washington; but, having accumulated some money, he had donned what was then known as senatorial costume— namely, a blue swallow-tailed coat, and a buff vest, with brass buttons—and coming to this little Michigan town he had established a Whig paper, which afterward became Republican. He was generally credited, no doubt justly, with a determination to push himself into the United States Senate; but this determination was so obvious that people made light of it, and he never received the honor of a nomination to that or any other position. The main burden of his editorials was the greatness of Henry Clay, and the beauties of a protective tariff, his material being largely drawn from a book he had published some years before; and, on account of the usual form of his arguments, he was generally referred to, in the offhand Western way, as "Old Statistics.''

In a public lecture based upon my Russian experiences, I had incidentally attacked paternal government, and especially such developments of it as tariffs for protection. The immediate result was a broadside from this gentleman's paper, and this I answered in an article which was extensively copied throughout the State. At this he evidently determined to crush this intruder upon his domain. That an "upstart''—a "mere school-teacher''— should presume to reply to a man like himself, who had sat at the feet of Henry Clay, and was old enough to be my father, was monstrous presumption; but that a professor in the State university of a commonwealth largely Republican should avow free-trade opinions was akin to treason, and through twelve successive issues of his paper he lashed me in all the moods and tenses. As these attacks soon became scurrilous, I made no reply to any after the first; but his wrath was increased when he saw my reply quoted by the press throughout the State and his own diatribes neglected. Among his more serious charges I remember but one, and this was that I had evidently come into the State as a secret emissary of Van Burenism. But I recalled the remark of my enemy's idol, Henry Clay, to the effect that no one should ever reply to an attack by an editor, a priest, or a woman, since each of them is sure to have the last word. This feeling was soon succeeded by indifference; for my lecture-rooms, both at the university and throughout the State, were more and more frequented, and it became clear that my opponent's attacks simply advertised me. The following year I had my revenge. From time to time debates on current topics were held at the city hall, the participants being generally young professional men; but, the subject of a tariff for protection having been announced, my old enemy declared, several weeks beforehand, his intention of taking part in the discussion. Among my students that winter was one of the most gifted young scholars and speakers I have ever known. Not long after his graduation he was sent to the United States Senate from one of the more important Western States, and nothing but his early death prevented his attaining a national reputation. He was a man of convictions, strong and skilful in impressing them upon his hearers, of fine personal appearance, with a pleasing voice, and in every way fitted to captivate an audience. Him I selected as the David who was to punish the protectionist Goliath. He had been himself a protectionist, having read Greeley's arguments in the "New York Tribune,'' but he had become a convert to my views, and day after day and week after week I kept him in training on the best expositions of free trade, and, above all, on Bastiat's "Sophisms of Protection.'' On the appointed evening the city hall was crowded, and my young David having modestly taken a back seat, the great Goliath appeared at the front in full senatorial costume, furbished up for the occasion, with an enormous collection of books and documents; and, the subject being announced, he arose, assumed his most imposing senatorial attitude, and began a dry, statistical oration. His manner was harsh, his matter wearisome; but he plodded on through an hour —and then my David arose. He was at his best. In five minutes he had the audience fully with him. Every point told. From time to time the house shook with applause; and at the close of the debate, a vote of the meeting being taken after the usual fashion in such assemblies, my old enemy was left in a ridiculous minority. Not only free-traders, but even protectionists voted against him. As he took himself very seriously, he was intensely mortified, and all the more so when he learned from one of my students that I now considered that we were "even.''[4]

[4] The causes of my change of views on the question of "protection'' are given in my political reminiscences.

The more I threw myself into the work of the university the more I came to believe in the ideas on which it was founded, and to see that it was a reality embodying many things of which I had previously only dreamed. Up to that time the highest institutions of learning in the United States were almost entirely under sectarian control. Even the University of Virginia, which Thomas Jefferson had founded as a center of liberal thought, had fallen under the direction of sectarians, and among the great majority of the Northern colleges an unwritten law seemed to require that a university president should be a clergyman. The instruction in the best of these institutions was, as I have shown elsewhere, narrow, their methods outworn, and the students, as a rule, confined to one simple, single, cast-iron course, in which the great majority of them took no interest. The University of Michigan had made a beginning of something better. The president was Dr. Henry Philip Tappan, formerly a Presbyterian clergyman, a writer of repute on philosophical subjects, a strong thinker, an impressive orator, and a born leader of men, who, during a visit to Europe, had been greatly impressed by the large and liberal system of the German universities, and had devoted himself to urging a similar system in our own country. On the Eastern institutions—save, possibly, Brown—he made no impression. Each of them was as stagnant as a Spanish convent, and as self-satisfied as a Bourbon duchy; but in the West he attracted supporters, and soon his ideas began to show themselves effective in the State university over which he had been called to preside.

The men he summoned about him were, in the main, admirably fitted to aid him. Dearest of all to me, though several years my senior, was Henry Simmons Frieze, professor of Latin. I had first met him at the University of Berlin, had then traveled with him through Germany and Italy, and had found him one of the most charming men I had ever met—simple, modest, retiring to a fault, yet a delightful companion and a most inspiring teacher. There was in him a combination which at first seemed singular; but experience has since shown me that it is by no means unnatural, for he was not only an ideal professor of Latin, but a gifted musician. The first revelation of this latter quality was made to me in a manner which showed his modesty. One evening during our student days at Berlin, at a reception given by the American minister of that period,—Governor Vroom of New Jersey,—I heard the sound of music coming from one of the more distant apartments. It was a sonata of Beethoven, wonderfully interpreted, showing not only skill but deep feeling. On my asking my neighbors who the performer might be, no one seemed to know, until, at last, some one suggested that it might be Professor Frieze. I made my way through the crowd toward the room from which the sounds came, but before arriving there the music had ended; and when I met the professor shortly afterward, and asked him if he had been the musician, his reply was so modest and evasive that I thought the whole thing a mistake and said nothing more about it. On our way to Italy some months later, I observed that, as we were passing through Bohemia, he jotted down in his note-book the quaint songs of the peasants and soldiers, and a few weeks later still he gave an exhibition of his genius. Sitting down one evening at the piano on the little coasting steamer between Genoa and Civit Vecchia, he began playing, and though it has been my good fortune to hear all the leading pianists of my time, I have never heard one who seemed to interpret the masterpieces of music more worthily. At Ann Arbor I now came to know him intimately. Once or twice a week he came to my house, and, as mine was the only grand piano in the town, he enjoyed playing upon it. His extemporizations were flights of genius. At these gatherings he was inspired by two other admirable musicians, one being my dear wife, and the other Professor Brunnow, the astronomer. Nothing could be more delightful than their interpretations together of the main works of Beethoven Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Weber, and other masters. On one of these evenings, when I happened to speak of the impression made upon me at my first hearing of a choral in a German church, Frieze began playing Luther's hymn, "Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott,'' throwing it into all forms and keys, until we listened to his improvisations in a sort of daze which continued until nearly midnight. Next day, at St. Andrew's Church, he, as usual, had charge of the organ. Into his opening voluntary he wove the music of the preceding evening, the "Feste Burg''; it ran through all the chants of the morning service; it pervaded the accompaniment to the hymns; it formed the undertone of all the interludes; it was not relinquished until the close of the postlude. And the same was true of the afternoon service. I have always insisted that, had he lived in Germany, he would have been a second Beethoven. This will seem a grossly exaggerated tribute, but I do not hesitate to maintain it. So passionately was he devoted to music that at times he sent his piano away from his house in order to shun temptation to abridge his professorial work, and especially was this the case when he was preparing his edition of Vergil. A more lovely spirit never abode in mortal frame. No man was ever more generally beloved in a community; none, more lamented at his death. The splendid organ erected as a memorial to him in the great auditorium of the university; the noble monument which his students have placed over his grave; his portrait, which hangs in one of the principal rooms; the society which commemorates his name—all combine to show how deeply he was respected and beloved.

Entwined also with my happiest recollections is Brunnow, professor of astronomy and director of the observatory. His eminence in his department was widely recognized, as was shown when he was afterward made director of the Dudley Observatory at Albany, N. Y., and, finally, astronomer royal of Ireland. His musical abilities, in connection with those of Frieze, aided to give a delightful side to this period of my life. There was in him a quiet simplicity which led those who knew him best to love him most, but it occasionally provoked much fun among the students. On one occasion, President Tappan, being suddenly called out of town, requested Brunnow, who had married his daughter and was an inmate of his family, to find some member of the faculty to take his place at morning prayers next day. Thereupon Brunnow visited sev- eral professors, his first question to each of them being, with his German use of the consonants, "Professor, can you BRAY?'' and henceforward this was added to the many standing jokes upon him in the student world.

I also found at the university other admirable men, and among those to whom I became specially attached was Thomas M. Cooley. When he had become chief justice of the State, and the most eminent writer of his time on the Constitution of the United States, he was still the same man, gentle, simple, and kindly. Besides these were such well-known professors as Fasquelle in modern literature; Williams, Douglass, and Winchell in science; Boise in Greek; Palmer, Sager, and Gunn in medicine and surgery; Campbell and Walker in law. Of these Judge Campbell was to me one of the main attractions of the place—a profound lawyer, yet with a kindly humor which lighted up all about him. He was especially interested in the early French history of the State, to which he had been drawn by his study of the titles to landed property in Detroit and its neighborhood, and some of his discoveries were curious. One of these had reference to an island in the straits near Detroit known as "Skillagalee,'' which had puzzled him a long time. The name seemed to be Irish, and the question was how an Irish name could have been thus applied. Finally he found on an old map an earlier name. It was le aus Galets, or Pebble Island, which, in the mouths of Yankee sailors, had taken this apparently Celtic form. Another case was that of a river in Canada emptying into the straits not far from Detroit. It was known as "Yellow Dog River''; but, on rummaging through the older maps, he discovered that the earlier name was River St. John. To account for the transformation was at first difficult, but the mystery was finally unraveled: the Rivire St. Jean became, in the Canadian patois, Rivire Saan Jawne, and gradually Rivire Chien Jaune; recent geographers had simply translated it into English.

The features which mainly distinguished the University of Michigan from the leading institutions of the East were that it was utterly unsectarian, that various courses of instruction were established, and that options were allowed between them. On these accounts that university holds a most important place in the history of American higher education; for it stands practically at the beginning of the transition from the old sectarian college to the modern university, and from the simple, single, cast-iron course to the form which we now know, in which various courses are presented, with free choice between them. The number of students was about five hundred, and the faculty corresponded to these in numbers. Now that the university includes over four thousand students, with a faculty in proportion, those seem the days of small things; but to me at that period it was all very grand. It seemed marvelous that there were then very nearly as many students at the University of Michigan as at Yale; and, as a rule, they were students worth teaching—hardy, vigorous, shrewd, broad, with faith in the greatness of the country and enthusiasm regarding the nation's future. It may be granted that there was, in many of them, a lack of elegance, but there was neither languor nor cynicism. One seemed, among them, to breathe a purer, stronger air. Over the whole institution Dr. Tappan presided, and his influence, both upon faculty and students, was, in the main, excellent. He sympathized heartily with the work of every professor, allowed to each great liberty, yet conducted the whole toward the one great end of developing a university more and more worthy of our country. His main qualities were of the best. Nothing could be better than his discussions of great questions of public policy and of education. One of the noblest orations I have ever heard was an offhand speech of his on receiving for the university museum a cast of the Laocon from the senior class; yet this speech was made without preparation, and in the midst of engrossing labor. He often showed, not only the higher qualities required in a position like his, but a remarkable shrewdness and tact in dealing with lesser questions. Typical was one example, which taught me much when, in after years, I was called to similar duties at Cornell. The present tower and chime of the University of Michigan did not then exist; between the two main buildings on the university grounds there was simply a wooden column, bearing a bell of moderate size, which was rung at every lecture-hour by the principal janitor. One cold winter night those of us living in the immediate neighborhood heard the sound of axe-strokes. Presently there came a crash, and all was still. Next morning, at the hour for chapel, no bell was rung; it was found that the column had been cut down and the bell carried off. A president of less shrewdness would have declaimed to the students on the enormity of such a procedure, and have accentuated his eloquence with threats. Not so Dr. Tappan. At the close of the morning prayers he addressed the students humorously. There was a great attendance, for all wished to know how he would deal with the affair. Nothing could be better than his matter and manner. He spoke somewhat on this wise: "Gentlemen, there has doubtless been a mistake in the theory of some of you regarding the college bell. It would seem that some have believed that if the bell were destroyed, time would cease, and university exercises would be suspended. But, my friends, time goes on as ever, without the bell as with it; lectures and exercises of every sort continue, of course, as usual. The only thing which has occurred is that some of you have thought it best to dispense with the aid in keeping time which the regents of the university have so kindly given you. Knowing that large numbers of you were not yet provided with watches, the regents very thoughtfully provided the bell, and a man to ring it for you at the proper hours; and they will doubtless be pleased to learn that you at last feel able to dispense with it, and save them the expense of maintaining it. You are trying an interesting experiment. In most of the leading European universities, students get along perfectly without a bell; why should we not? In the interests of the finances of the university, I am glad to see you trying this experiment, and will only suggest that it be tried thoroughly. Of course the rolls will be called in the lecture-rooms promptly, as usual, and you will, of course, be present. If the experiment succeeds, it will enable us to dispense with a university bell forever; but if, after a suitable time, you decide that it is better to have the bell back again to remind you of the hours, and if you will make a proper request to the regents through me, I trust that they will allow you to restore it to its former position.''

The students were greatly amused to see the matter taken in this way. They laughingly acknowledged themselves outwitted, and greeted the doctor's speech with applause. All of the faculty entered into the spirit of the matter; rolls were called perhaps rather more promptly than formerly, and students not present were marked rather more mercilessly than of old. There was evidently much reluctance on their part to ask for excuses, in view of the fact that they had themselves abolished the bell which had enabled them to keep the time; and one morning, about a month or six weeks later, after chapel, a big jolly student rose and asked permission to make a motion. This motion was that the president of the university be requested to allow the students to restore the bell to its former position. The proposal was graciously received by the doctor, put by him after the usual parliamentary manner, carried unanimously, and, a few mornings later, the bell was found in its old place on a new column, was rung as usual, and matters went on after the old fashion.

Every winter Dr. Tappan went before the legislature to plead the cause of the university, and to ask for appropriations. He was always heard with pleasure, since he was an excellent speaker; but certain things militated against him. First of all, he had much to say of the excellent models furnished by the great German universities, and especially by those of Prussia. This gave demagogues in the legislature, anxious to make a reputation in buncombe, a great chance. They orated to the effect that we wanted an American and not a Prussian system. Moreover, some unfortunate legends were developed. Mrs. Tappan, a noble and lovely woman belonging to the Livingston family, had been brought up in New York and New England, and could hardly suppress her natural preference for her old home and friends. A story grew that in an assembly of Michigan ladies she once remarked that the doctor and herself considered themselves as "missionaries to the West.'' This legend spread far and wide. It was resented, and undoubtedly cost the doctor dear.

The worst difficulty by far which he had to meet was the steady opposition of the small sectarian colleges scattered throughout the State. Each, in its own petty interest, dreaded the growth of any institution better than itself; each stirred the members of the legislature from its locality to oppose all aid to the State university; each, in its religious assemblages, its synods, conferences, and the like, sought to stir prejudice against the State institution as "godless.'' The result was that the doctor, in spite of his eloquent speeches, became the butt of various wretched demagogues in the legislature, and he very rarely secured anything in the way of effective appropriations. The university had been founded by a grant of public lands from the United States to Michigan; and one of his arguments was based on the fact that an immensely valuable tract, on which a considerable part of the city of Toledo now stands, had been taken away from the university without any suitable remuneration. But even this availed little, and it became quite a pastime among demagogues at the State Capitol to bait the doctor. On one of these occasions he was inspired to make a prophecy. Disgusted at the poor, cheap blackguardism, he shook the dust of the legislature off his feet, and said: "The day will come when my students will take your places, and then something will be done.'' That prophecy was fulfilled. In a decade the leading men in the legislature began to be the graduates of the State university; and now these graduates are largely in control, and they have dealt nobly with their alma mater. The State has justly become proud of it, and has wisely developed it.

Dr. Tappan's work was great, indeed. He stood not only at the beginning of the institution at Ann Arbor, but really at the beginning of the other universities of the Western States, from which the country is gaining so much at present, and is sure to gain vastly more in the future. The day will come when his statue will commemorate his services.

But there was another feature in his administration to which I refer with extreme reluctance. He had certain "defects of his qualities.'' Big, hearty, frank, and generous, he easily became the prey of those who wrought upon his feelings; and, in an evil hour, he was drawn into a quarrel not his own, between two scientific professors. This quarrel became exceedingly virulent; at times it almost paralyzed the university, and finally it convulsed the State. It became the main object of the doctor's thoughts. The men who had drawn him into it quietly retired under cover, and left him to fight their battle in the open. He did this powerfully, but his victories were no less calamitous than his defeats; for one of the professors, when overcome, fell back upon the church to which he belonged, and its conference was led to pass resolutions warning Christian people against the university. The forces of those hostile to the institution were marshaled to the sound of the sectarian drum. The quarrel at last became political; and when the doctor unwisely entered the political field in hopes of defeating the candidates put forward by his opponents, he was beaten at the polls, and his resignation followed. A small number of us, including Judge Cooley and Professors Frieze, Fasquelle, Boise, and myself, simply maintained an "armed neutrality,'' standing by the university, and refusing to be drawn into this whirlpool of intrigue and objurgation. Personally, we loved the doctor. Every one of us besought him to give up the quarrel, but in vain. He would not; he could not. It went on till the crash came. He was virtually driven from the State, retired to Europe, and never returned.

Years afterward, the citizens of Michigan in all parts of the State sought to make amends to him. The great body of the graduates, who loved and respected him, with leading men throughout the commonwealth, joined in a letter inviting him to return as a public guest; but he declined, and never again saw his native land. His first main place of residence was Basel, where, at the university, he superintended the education of his grandson, who, at a later period, became a professor at Heidelberg. Finally, he retired to a beautiful villa on the shores of Lake Leman and there, with his family about him, peacefully followed his chosen studies. At his death he was buried amid the vineyards and orchards of Vevey.

Though I absolutely refused to be drawn into any of his quarrels, my relations with the doctor remained kindly and not a single feeling was left which marred my visit to him in after years at Basel, or my later pilgrimage to his grave on the shores of Lake Leman. To no man is any success I may have afterward had in the administration of Cornell University so greatly due as to him.

In this summary I have hardly touched upon the most important part of my duty,—namely, the purpose of my lecture-courses, with their relations to that period in the history of our country, and to the questions which thinking men, and especially thinking young men, were then endeavoring to solve,—since all this has been given in my political reminiscences.

So much for my main work at the University of Michigan. But I had one recreation which was not without its uses. The little city of Ann Arbor is a beautiful place on the Huron River, and from the outset interested me. Even its origin had a peculiar charm. About a quarter of a century before my arrival, three families came from the East to take up the land which they had bought of the United States; and, as their three holdings touched each other at one corner, they brought boughs of trees to that spot and erected a sort of hut, or arbor, in which to live until their log houses were finished. On coming together in this arbor they discovered that the Christian name of each of the three wives was Ann: hence the name of the place; and this fact gave a poetic coloring to it which was a permanent pleasure to me. It was an unending satisfaction to reflect that no misguided patriot had been allowed to inflict upon that charming university town the name of "Athens,'' or "Oxford,'' or "Socratopolis,'' or "Anacreonsburg,'' or "Platoville,'' or "Emporium,'' or "Eudaimonia.'' What, but for those three good women, the name might have been, may be judged from the fact that one of the founders of the university did his best to have it called a "Katholopistemiad''!

But there was one drawback. The "campus,'' on which stood the four buildings then devoted to instruction, greatly disappointed me. It was a flat, square inclosure of forty acres, unkempt and wretched. Throughout its whole space there were not more than a score of trees outside the building sites allotted to professors; unsightly plank walks connected the buildings, and in every direction were meandering paths, which in dry weather were dusty and in wet weather muddy. Coming, as I did, from the glorious elms of Yale, all this distressed me, and one of my first questions was why no trees had been planted. The answer was that the soil was so hard and dry that none would grow. But on examining the territory in the neighborhood, especially the little inclosures about the pretty cottages of the town, I found fine large trees, and among them elms. At this, without permission from any one, I began planting trees within the university inclosure; established, on my own account, several avenues; and set out elms to overshadow them. Choosing my trees with care, carefully protecting and watering them during the first two years, and gradually adding to them a considerable number of evergreens, I preached practically the doctrine of adorning the campus. Gradually some of my students joined me; one class after another aided in securing trees and in planting them, others became interested, until, finally, the university authorities made me "superintendent of the grounds,'' and appropriated to my work the munificent sum of seventy-five dollars a year. So began the splendid growth which now surrounds those buildings. These trees became to me as my own children. Whenever I revisit Ann Arbor my first care is to go among them, to see how they prosper, and especially how certain peculiar examples are flourishing; and at my recent visit, forty-six years after their planting, I found one of the most beautiful academic groves to be seen in any part of the world.

The most saddening thing during my connection with the university I have touched upon in my political reminiscences. Three years after my arrival the Civil War broke out, and there came a great exodus of students into the armies, the vast majority taking up arms for the Union, and a few for the Confederate States. The very noblest of them thus went forth—many of them, alas! never to return, and among them not a few whom I loved as brothers and even as my own children. Of all the experiences of my life, this was among the most saddening.

My immediate connection with the University of Michigan as resident professor of history lasted about six years; and then, on account partly of business interests which resulted from the death of my father, partly of my election to the New York State Senate, and partly of my election to the presidency of Cornell University, I resided in central New York, but retained a lectureship at the Western institution. I left the work and the friends who had become so dear to me with the greatest reluctance, and as long as possible I continued to revisit the old scenes, and to give courses of lectures. But at last my duties at Cornell absolutely forbade this, and so ended a connection which was to me one of the most fruitful in useful experiences and pregnant thoughts that I have ever known.



PART IV

AS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT



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 noble and dignified belongings of a great seat of learning, —my heart sank within me. Every feature of the little American college seemed all the more sordid. But gradually I began consoling myself by building air-castles. These took the form of structures suited to a great university:—with distinguished professors in every field, with libraries as rich as the Bodleian, halls as lordly as that of Christ Church or of Trinity, chapels as inspiring as that of King's, towers as dignified as those of Magdalen and Merton, quadrangles as beautiful as those of Jesus and St. John's. In the midst of all other occupations I was constantly rearing these structures on that queenly site above the finest of the New York lakes, and dreaming of a university worthy of the commonwealth and of the nation. This dream became a sort of obsession. It came upon me during my working hours, in the class-rooms, in rambles along the lake shore, in the evenings, when I paced up and down the walks in front of the college buildings, and saw rising in their place and extending to the pretty knoll behind them, the worthy home of a great university. But this university, though beautiful and dignified, like those at Oxford and Cambridge, was in two important respects very unlike them. First, I made provision for other studies beside classics and mathematics. There should be professors in the great modern literatures—above all, in our own; there should also be a professor of modern history and a lecturer on architecture. And next, my university should be under control of no single religious organization; it should be free from all sectarian or party trammels; in electing its trustees and professors no questions should be asked as to their belief or their attachment to this or that sect or party. So far, at least, I went in those days along the road toward the founding of Cornell.

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 more numerous, its general scope more extended. But it was still far below my dreams. Its single course in classics and mathematics, through which all students were forced alike, regardless of their tastes, powers, or aims; its substitution of gerund-grinding for ancient literature; its want of all instruction in modern literature; its substitution of recitals from text-books for instruction in history—all this was far short of my ideal. Moreover, Yale was then far more under denominational control than at present—its president, of necessity, as was then supposed, a Congregational minister; its professors, as a rule, members of the same sect; and its tutors, to whom our instruction during the first two years was almost entirely confined, students in the Congregational Divinity.

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 entrance tower of Trinity at Cambridge—statues of old Yalensian worthies, such as Elihu Yale in his costume of the Georgian period, Bishop Berkeley in his robes, President Dwight in his Geneva gown, and Nathan Hale in fetters. There was also in my dream another special feature, which no one has as yet attempted to realize—a lofty campanile, which I placed sometimes at the intersection of College and Church, and sometimes at the intersection of College and Elm streets—a clock-tower looking proudly down the slope, over the traffic of the town, and bearing a deep-toned peal of bells.

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 the "commons'' and "combination rooms,'' which give a still closer relation between those most directly concerned in university work; of the quadrangles, which give a sense of scholarly seclusion, even in the midst of crowded cities; and of all the surroundings which give a dignity befitting these vast establishments. Still more marked progress in my ideas was made during my attendance at the Sorbonne and the Collge de France. In those institutions, during the years 1853-1854, I became acquainted with the French university-lecture system, with its clearness, breadth, wealth of illustration, and its hold upon large audiences of students; and I was seized with the desire to transfer something like it to our own country. My castles in the air were now reared more loftily and broadly; for they began to include laboratories, museums, and even galleries of art.

Even St. Petersburg, during my attachship 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 at the University of Michigan, regarding the influence on my ideas of its president, Henry Philip Tappan, and of the whole work in that institution. Though many good things may be justly said for the University of Virginia, the real beginning of a university in the United States, in the modern sense, was made by Dr. Tappan and his colleagues at Ann Arbor. Its only defects seemed to me that it included no technical side, and did not yet admit women. As to the first of these defects, the State had separated the agricultural college from the university, placing it in what, at that period, was a remote swamp near the State Capitol, and had as yet done nothing toward providing for other technical branches. As to the second, though a few of us favored the admission of women, President Tappan opposed it; and, probably, in view of the condition of the university and of public opinion at that time, his opposition was wise.

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]

[5] See Mr. Curtis's speech, September 8, 1868, published by the university.

The next thing was to decide upon a site. It must naturally be in the central part of the State; and, rather curiously, that which I then most coveted, frequently visited, walked about, and inspected was the rising ground southeast of Syracuse since selected by the Methodists for their institution which takes its name from that city.

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

"The baseless fabric of a vision''

and to have left

"Not a wrack behind''—

when all its main features were made real in a way and by means utterly unexpected; for now began the train of events which led to my acquaintance, friendship, and close alliance with the man through whom my plans became a reality, larger and better than any ever seen in my dreams —Ezra Cornell.



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 added to them the pastors of all the principal churches, Catholic and Protestant. This breadth of mind, even more than his munificence, drew me to him. We met several times, discussed his bill, and finally I reported it substantially as introduced, and supported it until it became a law.

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 to impress upon him the importance of keeping the fund together.

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 subject; but had obtained no encouragement, until this strange and unexpected combination of circumstances—a great land grant, the use of which was to be determined largely by the committee of which I was chairman, and this noble pledge by Mr. Cornell.

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 and began conversation. He was, as usual, austere and reserved in appearance; but I had already found that below this appearance there was a warm heart and noble purpose. No observant associate could fail to notice that the only measures in the legislature which he cared for were those proposing some substantial good to the State or nation, and that he despised all political wrangling and partizan jugglery.

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 and five hundred thousand dollars as an addition to the land-grant endowment, instead of three hundred thousand, as I proposed at Rochester.''

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, the supplementary legislation allowing him to make a contract with the State for "locating'' the lands, were thought out entirely by himself; and in all these matters he showed, not only a public spirit far beyond that displayed by any other benefactor of education in his time, but a foresight which seemed to me then, and seems to me now, almost miraculous. He alone, of all men in the United States, was able to foresee what might be done by an individual to develop the land-grant fund, and he alone was willing to make the great personal sacrifice thereby required.

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 common cause with the sectarian colleges, and with various corporations and persons who, having bills of their own in the legislature, were ready to exchange services and votes.

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 that prostituted pettifogger, the indifference of the committee, and the laughter of the audience. It was a scene for a painter, and I trust that some day it will be fitly perpetuated for the university.

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,'' Eras- tus Brooks of the "Express,'' and Manton Marble of the "World.'' This did much for us, yet when the vote was taken the old cowardice was again shown; but several of us stood in the cloak-room and fairly shamed the waverers back into their places. As a result, to the surprise and disgust of the chairman of the Assembly committee, the bill was taken out of his control, and referred to the Committee of the Whole House.

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 securities for the five hundred thousand dollars required by the charter, but also gave two hundred acres of land as a site. Thus came into being Cornell University.

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, and his willingness not only to labor but to wait; but these stood not at all in the way of my respect and affection for him.

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 another time, seeing the need of some costly works to illustrate agriculture, he gave them to us at a somewhat greater cost; and, having heard Professor Tyndall's lectures in New York, he bought additional physical apparatus to enable our resident professor to repeat the lectures at Ithaca, and this cost him fifteen hundred dollars.

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 generosity 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 was clear evidence of a noble purpose. Whatever worthy work his hand had found to do, he had done it with his might: the steamers of Cayuga Lake; the tunnel which carries the waters of Fall Creek to the mills below; the mills themselves; the dams against that turbulent stream, which he built after others had failed, and which stand firmly to this day; the calendar clocks for which Ithaca has become famous, and of which he furnished the original hint—all these he touched upon, though so modestly that I never found out his full agency in them until a later period, when I had made the acquaintance of many of his townsmen.

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— troubles from men of pretended science, from selfish men, from stupid men—all chronicled by him without the slightest bitterness against any human being, yet with a quaint humor which made the story very enjoyable.

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 that could improve the community in which he lived was matter of concern to him. He took the lead in establishing "Cascadilla Place,'' in order to give a very gifted woman an opportunity to show her abilities in administering hydropathic treatment to disease; his public library, when I first visited Ithaca, was just completed.