--whatever that might mean. But I have had the pleasure of living to see this system adopted at other leading universities of our country, and it is evidently on its way to become the prevailing system among all of them. I believe that no pulpit in the United States has exercised a more powerful influence for good. Strong men have been called to it from all the leading religious bodies; and they, knowing the character of their audience, have never advocated sectarianism, but have presented the great fundamental truths upon which all religion must be based.
The first of these university preachers was Phillips Brooks, and he made a very deep impression. An interesting material result of his first sermon was that Mr.
William Sage, the second son of our benefactor, came forward at the close of the service, and authorized me to secure a beautiful organ for the university chapel.[8] In my addresses to students I urged them to attend for various good reasons, and, if for none of these, because a man is but poorly educated who does not keep himself abreast of the religious thought of his country. Curious was it to see j.a.panese students, some of them Buddhists, very conscientious in their attendance, their eyes steadily fixed upon the preacher.
[8] Sunday, June 13, 1875.
My selections for the preachership during the years of my presidency were made with great care. So far as possible, I kept out all ""sensational preaching."" I had no wish to make the chapel a place for amus.e.m.e.nt or for ground and lofty tumbling by clerical performers, and the result was that its enn.o.bling influence was steadily maintained.
Some other pulpits in the university town were not so well guarded. A revivalist, having been admitted to one of them, attempted to make a sensation in various ways-- and one evening laid great stress on the declaration that she was herself a brand plucked from the burning, and that her parents were undoubtedly lost. A few minutes afterward, one of the Cornell students present, thinking doubtless, that his time would be better employed upon his studies, arose and walked down the aisle to the door. At this the preacher called out, ""There goes a young man straight down to h.e.l.l."" Thereupon the student turned instantly toward the preacher and asked quietly, ""Have you any message to send to your father and mother?""
Our list of university preachers, both from our own and other countries, as I look back upon it, is wonderful to me.
Becoming acquainted with them, I have learned to love very many men whom I previously distrusted, and have come to see more and more the force of the saying, ""The man I don"t like is the man I don"t know."" Many of their arguments have not appealed to me, but some from which I have entirely dissented, have suggested trains of profitable thought; in fact, no services have ever done more for me, and, judging from the numbers who have thronged the chapel, there has been a constant good influence upon the faculty and students.
In connection with the chapel may be mentioned the development of various religious a.s.sociations, the first of these being the Young Men"s Christian a.s.sociation. Feeling the importance of this, although never a member of it, I entered heartily into its plan, and fitted up a hall for its purposes. As this hall had to serve also, during certain evenings in the week, for literary societies, I took pains to secure a series of large and fine historical engravings from England, France, and Germany, among them some of a decidedly religious cast, brought together after a decidedly Broad-church fashion. Of these, two, adjoining each other, represented--the one, Luther discussing with his a.s.sociates his translation of the Bible, and the other, St. Vincent de Paul comforting the poor and the afflicted; and it was my hope that the juxtaposition of these two pictures might suggest ideas of toleration in its best sense to the young men and women who were to sit beneath them. About the room, between these engravings, I placed some bronze statuettes, obtained in Europe, representing men who had done n.o.ble work in the world; so that it was for some years one of the attractions of the university.
Some years later came a gift very advantageous to this side of university life. A gentleman whom I had known but slightly--Mr. Alfred S. Barnes of Brooklyn, a trustee of the university--dropped in at my house one morning, and seemed to have something on his mind. By and by he very modestly asked what I thought of his putting up a building for the religious purposes of the students. I welcomed the idea joyfully; only expressing the hope that it would not be tied up in any way, but open to all forms of religious effort. In this idea he heartily concurred, and the beautiful building which bears his honored name was the result,--one of the most perfect for its purposes that can be imagined,--and as he asked me to write an inscription for the corner-stone, I placed on it the words: ""For the Promotion of G.o.d"s work among Men."" This has seemed, ever since, to be the key-note of the work done in that building.
It has been, and is, a great pleasure to me to see young men joining in religious effort; and I feel proud of the fact that from this a.s.sociation at Cornell many strong and earnest men have gone forth to good work as clergymen in our own country and in others.
In the erection of the new group of buildings south of the upper university quadrangle, as well as in building the president"s house hard by, an opportunity was offered for the development of some minor ideas regarding the evolution of university life at Cornell which I had deeply at heart. During my life at Yale, as well as during visits to various other American colleges, I had been painfully impressed by the lack of any development of that which may be called the commemorative or poetical element. In the long row of barracks at Yale one longed for some little bit of beauty, and hungered and thirsted for something which connected the present with the past; but, with the exception of the portraits in the Alumni Hall, there was little more to feed the sense of beauty or to meet one "s craving for commemoration of the past than in a cotton- factory. One might frequent the buildings at Yale or Harvard or Brown, as they then were, for years, and see nothing of an architectural sort which had been put in its place for any other reason than bare utility.
Hence came an effort to promote at Cornell some development of a better kind. Among the first things I ordered were portraits by competent artists of the leading non- resident professors, Aga.s.siz, Lowell, Curtis, and Goldwin Smith. This example was, from time to time, followed by the faculty and trustees, the former commemorating by portraits some of their more eminent members, and the latter ordering portraits of some of those who had connected their names with the university by benefactions or otherwise, such as Mr. Cornell, Senator Morrill, Mr. Sage, Mr. McGraw, and others. The alumni and undergradu- ates also added portraits of professors. This custom has proved very satisfactory; and the line of portraits hanging in the library cannot fail to have an enn.o.bling influence on many of those who, day after day, sit beneath them.
But the erection of these new buildings--Sage College, Sage Chapel, Barnes Hall, and, finally, the university library--afforded an opportunity to do something of a different sort. There was a chance for some effort to promote beauty of detail in construction, and, fortunately, the forethought of Goldwin Smith helped us greatly in this. On his arrival in Ithaca, just after the opening of the university, he had seen that we especially needed thoroughly trained artisans; and he had written to his friend Auberon Herbert, asking him to select and send from England a number of the best he could find. Nearly all proved of value, and one of them gave himself to the work in a way which won my heart. This was Robert Richardson, a stone-carver. I at first employed him to carve sundry capitals, corbels, and spandrels for the president"s house, which I was then building on the university grounds; and this work was so beautifully done that, in the erection of Sage College, another opportunity was given him. Any one who, to-day, studies the capitals of the various columns, especially those in the porch, in the loggia of the northern tower, and in some of the front windows, will feel that he put his heart into the work. He wrought the flora of the region into these creations of his, and most beautifully. But best of all was his work in the chapel. The tracery of the windows, the capitals of the columns, and the corbels supporting the beams of the roof were masterpieces; and, in my opinion, no investment of equal amount has proved to be of more value to us, even for the moral and intellectual instruction of our students, than these examples of a conscientious devotion of genius and talent which he thus gave us.
The death of Mr. Cornell afforded an opportunity for a further development in the same direction. It was felt that his remains ought to rest on that beautiful site, in the midst of the inst.i.tution he loved so well; and I proposed that a memorial chapel be erected, beneath which his remains and those of other benefactors of the university might rest, and that it should be made beautiful. This was done. The stone vaulting, the tracery, and other decorative work, planned by our professor of architecture, and carried out as a labor of love by Richardson, were all that I could desire. The trustees, entering heartily into the plan, authorized me to make an arrangement with Story, the American sculptor at Rome, to execute a reclining statue of Mr. Cornell above the crypt where rest his remains; and citizens of Ithaca also authorized me to secure in London the memorial window beneath which the statue is placed. Other memorials followed, in the shape of statues, busts, and tablets, as others who had been loved and lost were laid to rest in the chapel crypt, until the little building has become a place of pilgrimage. In the larger chapel, also, tablets and windows were erected from time to time; and the mosaic and other decorations of the memorial apse, recently erected as a place of repose for the remains of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Sage, are a beautiful development of the same idea.
So, too, upon the grounds, some effort was made to connect the present with the past. Here, as elsewhere in our work, it seemed to me well to impress, upon the more thinking students at least, the idea that all they saw had not ""happened so,"" without the earnest agency of human beings; but that it had been the result of the earnest life-work of men and women, and that no life-work to which a student might aspire could be more worthy. In carrying out this idea upon the ""campus"" Goldwin Smith took the lead by erecting the stone seat which has now stood there for over thirty years. Other memorials followed, among them a drinking-fountain, the stone bridge across the Cascadilla, the memorial seat back of the library, the entrance gateway, and the like; and, at the lamented death of Richardson, another English stone carver put his heart into some of the details of the newly erected library.
Meanwhile, the grounds themselves became more and more beautiful. There was indeed one sad mistake; and I feel bound, in self-defense, to state that it was made during an absence of mine in Europe: this was the erection of the chemical laboratory upon the promontory northwest of the upper quadrangle. That site afforded one of the most beautiful views in our own or any other country. A very eminent American man of letters, who had traveled much in other countries, said to me, as we stood upon it, ""I have traveled hundreds of miles in Europe to obtain views not half so beautiful as this."" It was the place to which Mr. Cornell took the trustees at their first meeting in Ithaca, when their view from it led them to choose the upper site for the university buildings rather than the lower. On this spot I remember once seeing Phillips Brooks evidently overawed by the amazing beauty of the scene spread out at his feet--the great amphitheater to the south and southwest, the hills beyond, and Cayuga Lake stretching to the north and northwest.
But though this part of the grounds has been covered by a laboratory which might better have been placed elsewhere, much is still left, and this has been treated so as to add to the natural charm of the surroundings. With the exception of the grounds of the State University of Wisconsin and of the State University and Stanford University in California, I know of none approaching in beauty those of Cornell. I feel bound to say, however, that there is a danger. Thus far, though mistakes have been made here and there, little harm has been done which is irremediable.
But this may not always be the case. In my view, one of the most important things to be done by the trustees is to have a general plan most carefully decided upon which shall be strictly conformed to in the erection of all future buildings, no matter what their size or character may be. This has been urged from time to time, but deferred.[9] The experience of other universities in the United States is most instructive in this respect. Nearly every one of them has suffered greatly from the want of some such general plan. One has but to visit almost any one of them to see buildings of different materials and styles--cla.s.sical, Renaissance, Gothic, and nondescript --thrown together in a way at times fairly ludicrous.
Thomas Jefferson, in founding the University of Virginia, was wiser; and his beautiful plan was carried out so fully, under his own eyes, that it has never been seriously departed from. At Stanford University, thanks to the wisdom of its founders, a most beautiful plan was adopted, to which the buildings have been so conformed that nothing could be more satisfactory; and recently another n.o.ble Californian--Mrs. Hearst--has devoted a queenly gift to securing a plan worthy of the University of California. At the opening of Cornell, as I have already said, a general plan was determined upon, with an upper quadrangle of stone, plain but dignified, to be at some future time architecturally enriched, and with a freer treatment of buildings on other parts of the grounds; but there is always danger, and I trust that I may be allowed to remind my a.s.sociates and successors in the board of trustees, of the necessity, in the future development of the university, for a satisfactory plan, suitable to the site, to be steadily kept in mind.
[9] It has now--1904--been very intelligently developed.
CHAPTER XXIV
ROCKS, STORMS, AND PERIL--1868-1874
Thus far I have dwelt especially upon the steady development of the university in its general system of instruction, its faculty, its equipment, and its daily life; but it must not be supposed that all was plain sailing. On the contrary, there were many difficulties, some discouragements, and at times we pa.s.sed through very deep waters. There were periods when ruin stared us in the face--when I feared that my next move must be to close our doors and announce the suspension of instruction.
The most serious of these difficulties were financial. Mr.
Cornell had indeed endowed the inst.i.tution munificently, and others followed his example: the number of men and women who came forward to do something for it was astonishing. In addition to the great endowments made by Mr. Cornell, Mr. Sage, Mr. McGraw, Mr. Sibley, and others, which aggregated millions, there were smaller gifts no less encouraging: Goldwin Smith"s gift of his services, of his library, and of various sums to increase it, rejoiced us all; and many other evidences of confidence, in the shape of large collections of books and material, cheered us in that darkest period; and from that day to this such gifts have continued.
Some of the minor gifts were especially inspiring, as showing the breadth of interest in our work. One of them warmed my heart when it was made, and for many years afterward cheered me amid many cares. As Mr. Sage and myself were one day looking over matters upon the grounds, there came along, in his rough wagon, a plain farmer from a distant part of the county, a hard-working man of very small means, who had clearly something upon his mind. Presently he said: ""I would very much like to do something for the university if I could. I have no money to give; but I have thought that possibly some good elm-trees growing on my farm might be of use to you, and if you wish them I will put them in the best condition and bring them to you."" This offer we gladly accepted; the farmer brought the trees; they were carefully planted; they have now, for over twenty years, given an increasing and ever more beautiful shade to one of the main university avenues; and in the line of them stands a stone on which are engraved the words, ""Ostrander Elms.""
But while all this encouraged us, there were things of a very different sort. Could the university have been developed gradually, normally, and in obedience to a policy determined solely by its president, trustees, and faculty all would have gone easily. But our charter made this impossible. Many departments must be put into operation speedily, each one of them demanding large outlay for buildings, equipment, and instruction. From all parts of the State came demands--some from friends, some from enemies--urging us to do this, blaming us for not doing that, and these utterances were echoed in various presses, and rechoed from the State legislature. Every nerve had to be strained to meet these demands. I remember well that when a committee of the Johns Hopkins trustees, just before the organization of that university, visited Cornell and looked over our work, one of them said to me: ""We at least have this in our favor: we can follow out our own conceptions and convictions of what is best; we have no need of obeying the injunctions of any legislature, the beliefs of any religious body, or the clamors of any press; we are free to do what we really believe best, as slowly, and in such manner, as we see fit."" As this was said a feeling of deep envy came over me: our condition was the very opposite of that. In getting ready for the opening of the university in October, 1868, as required by our charter, large sums had to be expended on the site now so beautiful, but then so unpromising. Mr. Cornell"s private affairs, as also the constant demands upon him in locating the university lands on the northern Mississippi, kept him a large part of the time far from the university; and my own university duties crowded every day. The president of a university in those days tilled a very broad field. He must give instruction, conduct examinations, preside over the faculty, correspond with the trustees, address the alumni in various parts of the country, respond to calls for popular lectures, address the legislature from time to time with reference to matters between the university and the State and write for reviews and magazines; and all this left little time for careful control of financial matters.In this condition of things Mr. Cornell had installed, as ""business manager,"" a gentleman supposed to be of wide experience, who, in everything relating to the ordinary financial management of the inst.i.tution, was all-powerful.
But as months went on I became uneasy. Again and again I urged that a careful examination be made of our affairs, and that reports be laid before us which we could clearly understand; but Mr. Cornell, always optimistic, a.s.sured me that all was going well, and the matter was deferred. Finally, I succeeded in impressing upon my colleagues in the board the absolute necessity of an investigation. It was made, and a condition of things was revealed which at first seemed appalling. The charter of the university made the board of trustees personally liable for any debt over fifty thousand dollars, and we now discovered that we were owing more than three times that amount. At this Mr. Cornell made a characteristic proposal. He said: ""I will pay half of this debt if you can raise the other half."" It seemed impossible. Our friends had been called upon so constantly and for such considerable sums that it seemed vain to ask them for more. But we brought together at Albany a few of the most devoted, and in fifteen minutes the whole amount was subscribed: four members of the board of trustees agreed to give each twenty thousand dollars; and this, with Mr.
Cornell"s additional subscription; furnished the sum needed.
Then took place one of the things which led me later in life, looking back over the history of the university, to say that what had seemed to be our worst calamities had generally proved to be our greatest blessings. Among these I have been accustomed to name the monstrous McGuire attack in the a.s.sembly on Mr. Cornell, which greatly disheartened me for the moment, but which eventually led the investigation committee not only to show to the world Mr. Cornell"s complete honesty and self- sacrifice, but to recommend the measures which finally transferred the endowment fund from the State to the trustees, thus strengthening the inst.i.tution greatly. So now a piece of good luck came out of this unexpected debt.
As soon as the subscription was made, Mr. George W.
Schuyler, treasurer of the university, in drawing up the deed of gift, ended it with words to the following effect: ""And it is hereby agreed by the said Ezra Cornell, Henry W. Sage, Hiram Sibley, John McGraw, and Andrew D.
White, that in case the said university shall ever be in position to repay their said subscriptions, then and in that case the said entire sum of one hundred and sixty thousand dollars SHALL BE REPAID INTO A UNIVERSITY FUND FOR THE CREATION OF FELLOWSHIPS AND SCHOLARSHIPS in the said university."" A general laugh arose among the subscribers, Mr.
McGraw remarking that this was rather offhand dealing with us; but all took it in good part and signed the agreement.
It is certain that not one of us then expected in his lifetime to see the university able to repay the money; but, within a few years, as our lands were sold at better prices than we expected, the university was in condition to make rest.i.tution. At first some of the trustees demurred to investing so large a sum in fellowships and scholarships, and my first effort to carry through a plan to this effect failed; but at the next meeting I was successful; and so, in this apparently calamitous revelation of debt began that system of university fellowships and scholarships which has done so much for the development of higher instruction at Cornell.
So far as the university treasury was concerned, matters thenceforth went on well. Never again did the university incur any troublesome debt; from that day to this its finances have been so managed as to excite the admiration even of men connected with the most successful and best managed corporations of our country. But financial difficulties far more serious than the debt just referred to arose in a different quarter. In a.s.suming the expenses of locating and managing the university lands, protecting them, paying taxes upon them, and the like, Mr.
Cornell had taken upon himself a fearful load, and it pressed upon him heavily. But this was not all. It was, indeed, far from the worst; for, in his anxiety to bring the university town into easy connection with the railway system of the State, he had invested very largely in local railways leading into Ithaca. Under these circ.u.mstances, while he made heroic efforts and sacrifices, his relations to the comptroller of the State, who still had in his charge the land scrip of the university, became exceedingly difficult. At the very crisis of this difficulty Mr. Cornell"s hard work proved too much for him, and he lay down to die. The university affairs, so far as the land-grant fund was concerned, seemed hopelessly entangled with his own and with those of the State: it seemed altogether likely that at his death the inst.i.tution would be subjected to years of litigation, to having its endowment tied up in the courts, and to a suspension of its operations. Happily, we had as our adviser Francis Miles Finch, since justice of the Court of Appeals of the State, and now dean of the Law School--a man of n.o.ble character, of wonderfully varied gifts, an admirable legal adviser, devoted personally to Mr. Cornell, and no less devoted to the university.
He set at work to disentangle the business relations of Mr. Cornell with the university, and of both with the State.
Every member of the board, every member of Mr. Cornell"s family,--indeed, every member of the community,-- knew him to be honest, faithful, and capable. He labored to excellent purpose, and in due time the princ.i.p.al financial members of the board were brought together at Ithaca to consider his solution of the problem. It was indeed a dark day; we were still under the shadow of ""Black Friday,"" the worst financial calamity in the history of the nation. Mr. Finch showed us that the first thing needful was to raise about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which could be tendered to the comptroller of the State in cash, who, on receiving it, would immediately turn over to the trustees the land scrip, which it was all-important should be in our possession at the death of Mr. Cornell. He next pointed out the measures to be taken in separating the interests of the university from Mr. Cornell"s estate, and these were provided for. The sum required for obtaining control of the land scrip was immediately subscribed as a loan, virtually without security, by members of the board then present; though at that depressing financial period of the country strong men went about with the best of securities, unable to borrow money upon them. In a few days Mr. Cornell was dead; but the university was safe. Mr. Finch"s plan worked well in every particular; and this, which appeared likely to be a great calamity, resulted in the board of trustees obtaining control of the landed endowment of the inst.i.tution, without which it must have failed. But the weeks while these negotiations were going on were gloomy indeed for me; rarely in my life have I been so unhappy. That crisis of our fate was the winter of 1874.
The weather was cold and depressing, my family far off in Syracuse. My main refuge then, as at sundry other times of deep personal distress, was in work. In the little southwest room of the president"s house, hardly yet finished and still unfurnished, I made my headquarters. Every morn- ing a blazing fire was lighted on the hearth; every day I devoted myself to university work and to study for my lectures. Happily, my subject interested me deeply. It was ""The Age of Discovery""; and, surrounded with my books, I worked on, forgetful, for the time, of the December storms howling about the house, and of the still more fearful storms beating against the university. Three new lectures having been thus added to my course on the Renaissance period, I delivered them to my cla.s.s; and, just as I was finishing the last of them, a messenger came to tell me that Mr. Cornell was dying. Dismissing my students, I hurried to his house, but was just too late; a few minutes before my arrival his eyes had closed in death. But his work was done--n.o.bly done. As I gazed upon his dead face on that 9th of December, 1874, I remember well that my first feeling was that he was happily out of the struggle; and that, wherever he might be, I could wish to be still with him. But there was no time for unavailing regrets. We laid him reverently and affectionately to rest, in the midst of the scenes so dear to him, within the sound of the university chimes he so loved to hear, and pressed on with the work.
A few years later came another calamity, not, like the others, touching the foundations and threatening the existence of the university, yet hardly less crushing at the time; indeed, with two exceptions, it was the most depressing I have ever encountered. At the establishment of the university in Ithaca, one of the charter trustees who showed himself especially munificent to the new enterprise was Mr. John McGraw. One morning, while I was in the midst of the large collection of books sent by me from Europe, endeavoring to bring them into some order before the opening day, his daughter, Miss Jenny McGraw, came in, and I had the pleasure of showing her some of our more interesting treasures. She was a woman of kind and thoughtful nature, had traveled in her own country and abroad to good purpose, and was evidently deeply interested. Next day her father met me and said: ""Well, you are pressing us all into the service. Jenny came home yesterday, and said very earnestly, "I wish that I could do something to help on the university"; to which I replied, "Very well. Do anything you like; I shall be glad to see you join in the work." "" The result was the gift from her of the chime of bells which was rung at the opening of the university, and which, with the additions afterward made to it, have done beautiful service. On the bells she thus gave were inscribed the verses of the ninety- fifth chant of Tennyson"s ""In Memoriam""; and some weeks afterward I had the pleasure of placing in her hands what she considered an ample return for her gift-- a friendly letter from Tennyson himself, containing some of the stanzas written out in his own hand. So began her interest in the university--an interest which never faltered.
A few years later she married one of our professors, an old friend of mine, and her marriage proved exceedingly happy; but, alas, its happiness was destined to be brief!
Less than two years after her wedding day she was brought home from Europe to breathe her last in her husband"s cottage on the university grounds, and was buried from the beautiful residence which she had built hard by, and had stored with works of art in every field.
At the opening of her will it was found that, while she had made ample provision for all who were near and dear to her, and for a mult.i.tude of charities, she had left to the university very nearly two millions of dollars, a portion of which was to be used for a student hospital, and the bulk of the remainder, amounting to more than a million and a half, for the university library. Her husband joined most heartily in her purpose, and all seemed ready for carrying it out in a way which would have made Cornell University, in that respect, unquestionably the foremost on the American continent. As soon as this munificent bequest was announced, I asked our leading lawyer, Judge Douglas Boardman, whether our charter allowed the university to take it, calling his attention to the fact that, like most of its kind in the State of New York, it restricted the amount of property which the university could hold, and reminding him that we had already exceeded the limit thus allowed. To this he answered that the restriction was intended simply to prevent the endowment of corporations beyond what the legislature might think best for the commonwealth; that if the attorney- general did not begin proceedings against us to prevent our taking the property, no one else could; and that he would certainly never trouble us.
In view of the fact that Judge Boardman had long experience and was at the time judge of the Supreme Court of the State, I banished all thought of difficulty; though I could not but regret that, as he drew Mrs. Fiske"s will, and at the same time knew the restrictions of our charter, he had not given us a hint, so that we could have had our powers of holding property enlarged. It would have been perfectly easy to have the restrictions removed, and, as a matter of fact, the legislature shortly afterward removed them entirely, without the slightest objection; but this action was too late to enable us to take the McGraw-Fiske bequest.
About a fortnight after these a.s.surances that we were perfectly safe, Judge Boardman sent for me, and on meeting him I found that he had discovered a decision of the Court of Appeals--rendered a few years before--which might prevent our accepting the bequest.
But there was still much hope of inducing the main heirs to allow the purpose of Mrs. Fiske to be carried out. Without imputing any evil intentions to any person, I fully believe--indeed, I may say I KNOW--that, had the matter been placed in my hands, this vast endowment would have been saved to us; but it was not so to be. Personal complications had arisen between the main heir and two of our trustees which increased the embarra.s.sments of the situation. It is needless to go into them now; let all that be buried; but it may at least be said that day and night I labored to make some sort of arrangement between the princ.i.p.al heir and the university, and finally took the steamer for Europe in order to meet him and see if some arrangement could be made. But personal bitterness had entered too largely into the contest, and my efforts were in vain. Though our legal advisers insisted that the university was sure of winning the case, we lost it in every court--first in the Supreme Court of the State, then in the Court of Appeals, and finally in the Supreme Court of the United States. To me all this was most distressing. The creation of such a library would have been the culmination of my work; I could then have sung my Nunc dimittis. But the calamity was not without its compensations. When the worst was known, Mr. Henry W. Sage, a lifelong friend of Mr. McGraw and of Mrs. Fiske, came to my house, evidently with the desire to console me. He said: ""Don"t allow this matter to prey upon you; Jenny shall have her library; it shall yet be built and well endowed."" He was true to his promise. On the final decision against us, he added to his previous large gifts to the university a new donation of over six hundred thousand dollars, half of which went to the erection of the present library building, and the other half to an endowment fund.
Professor Fiske also joined munificently in enlarging the library, adding various gifts which his practised eye showed him were needed, and, among these, two collections, one upon Dante and one in Romance literature, each the best of its kind in the United States. Mr. William Sage also added the noted library in German literature of Professor Zarncke of Leipsic; and various others contributed collections, larger or smaller, so that the library has become, as a whole, one of the best in the country. As I visit it, there often come back vividly to me remembrances of my college days, when I was wont to enter the Yale library and stand amazed in the midst of the sixty thousand volumes which had been brought together during one hundred and fifty years. They filled me with awe.
But Cornell University has now, within forty years from its foundation, acc.u.mulated very nearly three hundred thousand volumes, many among them of far greater value than anything contained in the Yale library of my day; and as I revise these lines comes news that the will of Professor Fiske, who recently died at Frankfort-on-the-Main, gives to the library all of his splendid collections in Italian history and literature at Florence, with the addition of nearly half a million of dollars.
Beside these financial and other troubles, another cla.s.s of difficulties beset us, which were, at times, almost as vexatious. These were the continued attacks made by good men in various parts of the State and Nation, who thought they saw in Cornell a stronghold-first, of ideas in religion antagonistic to their own; and secondly, of ideas in education likely to injure their sectarian colleges. From the day when our charter was under consideration at Albany they never relented, and at times they were violent.
The reports of my inauguration speech were, in sundry denominational newspapers, utterly distorted; far and wide was spread the story that Mr. Cornell and myself were attempting to establish an inst.i.tution for the propagation of ""atheism"" and ""infidelity."" Certainly nothing could have been further from the purpose of either of us.
He had aided, and loved to aid, every form of Christianity; I was myself a member of a Christian church and a trustee of a denominational college. Everything that we could do in the way of reasoning with our a.s.sailants was in vain.
In talking with students from time to time, I learned that, in many cases, their pastors had earnestly besought them to go to any other inst.i.tution rather than to Cornell; reports of hostile sermons reached us; bitter diatribes constantly appeared in denominational newspapers, and especially virulent were various addresses given on public occasions in the sectarian colleges which felt themselves injured by the creation of an unsectarian inst.i.tution on so large a scale. Typical was the attack made by an eminent divine who, having been installed as president over one of the smaller colleges of the State, thought it his duty to denounce me as an ""atheist,"" and to do this especially in the city where I had formerly resided, and in the church which some of my family attended. I took no notice of the charge, and pursued the even tenor of my way; but the press took it up, and it recoiled upon the man who made it.
Perhaps the most comical of these attacks was one made by a clergyman of some repute before the Presbyterian Synod at Auburn in western New York. This gentleman, having attended one or two of the lectures by Aga.s.siz before our scientific students, immediately rushed off to this meeting of his brethren, and insisted that the great naturalist was ""preaching atheism and Darwinism"" at the university. He seemed about to make a decided impression, when there arose a very dear old friend of mine, the Rev. Dr. Sherman Canfield, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Syracuse, who, fortunately, was a scholar abreast of current questions. Dr. Canfield quietly remarked that he was amazed to learn that Aga.s.siz had, in so short a time, become an atheist, and not less astonished to hear that he had been converted to Darwinism; that up to that moment he had considered Aga.s.siz a deeply religious man, and also the foremost--possibly, indeed, the last--great opponent of the Darwinian hypothesis. He therefore suggested that the resolution denouncing Cornell University brought in by his reverend brother be laid on the table to await further investigation. It was thus disposed of, and, in that region at least, it was never heard of more. Pleasing is it to me to chronicle the fact that, at Dr. Canfield"s death, he left to the university a very important part of his library.
From another denominational college came an attack on Goldwin Smith. One of its professors published, in the Protestant Episcopal ""Gospel Messenger,"" an attack upon the university for calling into its faculty a ""Westminster Reviewer""; the fact being that Goldwin Smith was at that time a member of the Church of England, and had never written for the ""Westminster Review""
save in reply to one of its articles. So, too, when there were sculptured on the stone seat which he had ordered carved for the university grounds the words, ""Above all nations is humanity,"" there came an outburst. Sundry pastors, in their anxiety for the souls of the students, could not tell whether this inscription savored more of atheism or of pantheism. Its simple significance--that the claims of humanity are above those of nationality--entirely escaped them. Pulpit cushions were beaten in all parts of the State against us, and solemn warnings were renewed to students by their pastors to go anywhere for their education rather than to Cornell. Curiously, this fact became not only a gratuitous, but an effective, advertis.e.m.e.nt: many of the brightest men who came to us in those days confessed to me that these attacks first directed their attention to us.
We also owed some munificent gifts to this same cause.
In two cases gentlemen came forward and made large additions to our endowment as their way of showing disbelief in these attacks or contempt for them.