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TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
*^ 
 
i868 
 
 1893 
 
 PROCEEDINGS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF THE OPENING OF 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
 ITHACA, N. Y. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THB UNIVERSITY 
 
 1893 
 
Copyright 
 
 6 S'Ot 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY .' 5 
 
 The Programme 8 
 
 THE REUNION n 
 
 THE ADDRESSES 15 
 
 President Schurman's Address 17 
 
 Mr. Depew's Oration 18 
 
 Mr. Woodford's Address 43, 
 
 Chancellor Upson's Address 44 
 
 Professor Caldwell's Address 55 
 
 Mr. Hendrix's Address 64 
 
 Dr. Smith's Presentation 69 
 
 Professor Wilder's Response 75 
 
 Professor Huffcut's Presentation 77 
 
 THE DINNER 79 
 
 Ex-President White's Telegram \ 81 
 
 General Read's I<etter 82 
 
 Professor Goldwin Smith's Letter 83 
 
 The Toasts 86 
 
 THE SERMON 89 
 
 Bishop Doane's Sermon 91 
 
 The Service at Barnes Hall 117 
 
4 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VIEWS OF CORNEI,!. UNIVERSITY IN ITS 
 
 FIRST QUARTER-CENTURY 119 
 
 Cornell University in 1868. 
 ' The Original Facult3\ 
 ' The University from the Valley. 
 The Entrance to the Campus. 
 South University Building (Morrill Hall). 
 Cornell University in 1872. 
 The Campus, looking north. 
 Cornell University in 1S78. 
 The Campus, looking north. 
 The Campus, looking southwest. 
 Cornell University in 1887. 
 The Campus, looking north. 
 Cornell University in 1893. 
 The Campus, looking north. 
 The Campus, looking south. 
 -. Sage College. 
 ^ Barnes Hall. 
 The Armory (the G5minasium). 
 The University Library. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 In obedience to the provisions of its charter, Cornell 
 Universitj' opened its doors to students on Wednesda3', October 
 the seventh, 1868. 
 
 On June 15th, 1892, the Board of Trustees of the Univer- 
 sity, at their annual meeting in Commencement Week, adopt- 
 ed the following resolution : 
 
 Resolved^ That a committee, consisting of the 
 President of the University, the Chairman of this 
 Board, and three members to be named by the Chair- 
 man, be constituted for the purpose of arranging for 
 the appropriate observation of the twenty-fifth anni- 
 versary of the organization of Cornell University, 
 with full authority to invite guests in the name of 
 the Board, and to provide all necessary arrangements 
 for the proper commemoration of the event ; and the 
 Executive Committee is hereby authorized to make 
 special appropriation to defray such expenses as may 
 be determined upon by said special committee. 
 
 The committee thus created was completed by the nomin- 
 ation of the Hon. Alonzo B. Cornell, the Hon. Andrew Dick- 
 son White, UU.D., U-H.D., and Daniel Elmer Salmon, 
 D.V.M., to serve as its members with President Jacob Gould 
 Schurman, D.Sc, lyU.D., and the Hon. Henrj^ Williams Sage, 
 
8 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Chairman of the Board of Trustees. At the following annual 
 meeting, June 14th, 1893, Robert Henrj- Treman, B.M.E., 
 was appointed to the place on the committee left vacant by the 
 expiration of Dr. Salmon's trusteeship. 
 
 In pursuance of the action of the Trustees, there were 
 sent out in August and September, 1893, to some four thou- 
 sand friends of the Universit}' the following invitation : 
 
 The Trustees and Faculty of Cornell Univer- 
 sity request tlie honor of your presence at Ithaca, 
 New York, on Friday, Saturday, and Sunda}'^, Octo- 
 ber sixth, seventh, and eighth, eighteen hundred and 
 ninety-three, for the Public Exercises in Celebration 
 of the Twenty-fifth Anniversar}^ of the Opening of 
 the University. 
 
 The programme of exercises arranged for the celebration 
 ran as follows : 
 
 186S 
 
 PROGRAMME 
 
 OF THE 
 
 QUARTER-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 OF THE OPENING OP 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
 FRIDAY, SATURDAY, AND SUNDAY 
 
 October 6th, 7TH, and 8th 
 1893 
 
introductory. 9 
 
 Friday, October 6th 
 
 8-1 1 p. M. General Reception and Reunion in the University 
 Library , 
 
 Saturday, October jtk 
 
 The day will be opened with a Salute of twenty-five guns 
 at 8 A. M., and the Chimes will be played from 9 to 10 
 A. M. The Literary Exercises will be held in the Leefture 
 Room of the Library, beginning at 10 A. m., with the fol- 
 lowing programme : 
 
 Music 
 
 Prayer, The Rev. W. D. Wilson, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 Oration, Hon. Chauncey M. Depew, LL-D. 
 
 Music 
 Address, Hon. Stewart L- Woodford, LL.D. 
 
 Address, The Rev. Anson J. Upson, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 Chancellor of the University of the State of New York. 
 
 Address, The Rev. E. N. Potter, S.T.D., LL.D. 
 
 President of Hobart College. 
 
 Music 
 Address, Professor G. C. Caldwell, B.S., Ph.D. 
 
 Address, Hon. Joseph C. Hendrix 
 
 Presentation of Commemoratory Volumes : 
 
 I. To Professor Burt G. Wilder, B.S., M.D., on be- 
 half of his former Students, by Dr. Theobald 
 Smith, Ph.B., '81, with reply by Professor 
 Wilder 
 
lO INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 2. To the University, by 
 
 Professor Ernest W. Huffcut, B.S., LL.B. 
 Benediaion, The Rev. S. H. Synnott 
 
 Music 
 Immediately after the exercises the invited guests, alumni, and 
 officers of government, administration, and instruction 
 in the University will proceed to the Gymnasium, where 
 dinner will 'be served. 
 
 Sunday, October 8th 
 
 II A. M. Sermon, 
 Rt. Reverend W. C. Doane, D.D. Oxon., L,L,.D. Cantab. 
 This service will be held in the Armory. 
 
 7:30 Commemoratorj' Service of the Cornell University 
 Christian Association in Barnes Hall : 
 Doxology, By the Congregation 
 
 Scripture Reading and Prayer, 
 
 The Rev. Charles M. Tyler, A.M., D.D. 
 Music 
 What the Association has done at Cornell, 
 
 Professor Geo. L. Burr, A.B. 
 What our Aim should be, James P. Hall, '94 
 
 Music 
 What a Christian Association can do for a University, 
 
 John R. Mott, '88, Ph.B. 
 The Association in the Church, 
 
 Professor B. I. Wheeler, A.B., Ph.D. 
 Benediction 
 
THE REUNION 
 
THE REUNION. 
 
 On the evening of Friday, October the sixth, there gath- 
 ered at the reunion in the University Librar3^ together with 
 members of the University and many citizens of Ithaca, a large 
 number of guests from all parts of the country — old students 
 and alumni, early friends of the University, and eminent repre- 
 sentatives of sister institutions. They were received by Presi- 
 dent and Mrs. Schurman, by the Hon. Henrj- W. Sage, Chair- 
 man of the Board of Trustees, and by Mrs. Dean Sage, of 
 Albany. 
 
 Nearly all the rooms of the Library were thrown open to 
 the guests, and there were exposed for their inspection the 
 various official publications of the University and the most 
 notable recent accessions to its shelves— specimen volumes 
 from the Zarncke librarj-, lately bought and presented to the 
 University by Mr. William H. Sage, from the Dante collection 
 now being gathered for it as the gift of Professor Willard Fiske, 
 and, in the President White Eibrarj-, a body of handsomely 
 illustrated Russian works, sent for this anniversary, in token 
 of his continued interest, by Ex-President White. There was 
 also on exhibition, in the President White Eibrar}-, the newly- 
 completed portrait of Ezra Cornell, by Mr. J. Colin Forbes, 
 ordered by the Legislature of the State of New York for the 
 State Library at Albany. 
 
THE ADDRESSES 
 
THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 Saturday morning dawned fair and bright, a perfect Octo- 
 ber day, like that which it commemorated. Ushered in by the 
 artillery salute at eight and the chimes from nine till ten, the 
 literary exercises, in the great hall of the Univer,sity Library, 
 were opened by prayer, offered by the first Registrar of the 
 University, the Rev. William Dexter Wilson, D.D., I^L-D., 
 Iv.H.D., Professor Emeritus of Philosophy. 
 
 President Schurman then addressed the audience as 
 follows : 
 Honored Guests^ Ahiimti^ and Friends : 
 
 In tlie name of tlie University I bid you all a 
 cordial welcome ! We have invited you to join with 
 us in celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 
 opening of the University. When that event took 
 place, there was a complaint that nothing was fin- 
 ished. Replying to this criticism, the founder of the 
 University in his short but pregnant and memorable 
 speech expressed his own view and the view of the 
 Trustees regarding the future of the University in 
 words which I will now take the liberty of reading to 
 you. " I hope," said he, "we have laid the foundation 
 of an institution which shall combine practical with 
 liberal education, which shall fit the youth of our 
 country for the professions, the farms, the mines, the 
 
l8 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 manufactures, for the investigations of science and 
 for mastering all the practical questions of life with 
 success and honor." That was our founder's idea 
 of the new university. And in the presence of this 
 distinguished assembly, adorned with the presence 
 of so many representatives of other seats of learning 
 in the East and in the West, in the North and in the 
 South, I venture to say that Ezra Cornell's is the 
 final and absolute conception of the mission of a 
 university. With due modesty I confess we are far 
 from having attained unto the realization of our 
 founder's ideal. Something, however, has been 
 done ; though there is much still to do. Between 
 this task which beckons us on and that achievement 
 which is behind we stand to-day. It will, I am sure, 
 at once deepen our respect for the past and inspire 
 us with faith and hope for the future, if on this occa- 
 sion we consider, under the guidance of the eloquent 
 gentleman who will now address us, what has been 
 accomplished by Cornell University in the short 
 span of twenty-five years. And so it gives me pleas- 
 ure, as I also esteem it an honor, to present the orator 
 of the day, the Hon. Chauncey M. Depew, LL.D. 
 
 MR. DEPEW'S ORATION. 
 
 Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 This is an American anniversary. It celebrates a 
 life which is representative of American conditions 
 and opportunities, and a university founded to meet 
 
MR. DEPEW'S ORATION. 19 
 
 the practical necessities of American youth. Cornell 
 was the first of the great colleges to cultivate a field 
 outside the lessons and traditions of the mediaeval 
 schoolmen. The most exquisite of pleasures is con- 
 tact with the perennial youth of our alma mater. 
 Parties dissolve, friends grow cold, loved ones depart, 
 and age becomes a solitude, but a day with the col- 
 lege revives the enthusiasms and ambitions of the 
 past and puts us in touch with the hopes and aspira- 
 tions of the present. Patriotic or commemorative 
 celebrations are ephemeral. The centuries and their 
 divisions which mark the recurring natal days of 
 these great and ever growing centers of learning are 
 eternal. We admire or reverence past events, as we 
 do statues or monuments, only when we are in their 
 presence. The fresh and stimulating influences of 
 college life are ever with us. Ideas are companions ; 
 facts are mile-stones. Head and heart are united in 
 the sentiments and emotions of this day. 
 
 The life of Ezra Cornell is a lesson and an in- 
 spiration. The study of his struggles and success 
 is a liberal education. Our meeting would lose 
 much of its significance if it failed to enforce the les- 
 son of the career and commemorate the character of 
 the founder. Sixty-five years ago young Cornell, 
 who had just attained his majority and started out to 
 seek his fortune, after a walk of forty miles rested 
 upon one of the hills overlooking this beautiful lake. 
 This reticent Quaker was passionately fond of na- 
 ture, and he was entranced by the superb panorama 
 
20 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 spread out before liim. Few places on eartt possess 
 so man}^ scenic attractions. The only view I know 
 wliicli compares with this is the view from the Acrop- 
 olis at Athens, with the plain in front, the Pentelic 
 mountains behind, and the blue ^5i^gean in the 
 distance. 
 
 The young mechanic had neither friends nor ac- 
 quaintances in the village which nestled at his feet, 
 and his worldh^ possessions were all in a little bundle 
 on the end of the stick which served for staff and 
 baggage-wagon. He had no money and only a spare 
 suit of clothes, but with health, good habits, ambi- 
 tion, industry, and a perfect knowledge of what he 
 intended to do, and an equal determination to do it, 
 he entered Ithaca a conqueror. No delegation of 
 citizens met him at the gates, no triumphal proces- 
 sion bore him in a chariot, no arches spanned the 
 streets, but the man who was to make this then 
 secluded hamlet known throughout the world had 
 done for Ithaca the greatest service it could receive 
 b}' deciding to become its citizen. Though poor, he 
 was far removed from povertj^. His situation illus- 
 trates one of the hopeful features of American con- 
 ditions. Neither doubt nor despair was in his mind. 
 He had found his place and knew he could improve 
 it. He saw his ladder and began to climb it. It is the 
 genius of our people to get on, and it is the pleasure 
 of the community to help and applaud. Occasional 
 failures test the metal of the aspirant, and hard 
 knocks develop grit or gelatin. There are, unhappi- 
 
MR. DEPEW'S ORATION. 21 
 
 ly, suffering and helplessness incident to tlie prac- 
 tical workings of the doctrine of the survival of the 
 fittest, but vigor and manhood win their rewards. 
 
 Faith and works were the principles of Ezra Cor- 
 nell and the carpenter's bench a platform and pre- 
 paration for larger efforts. Adaptability and concen- 
 tration of effort have developed the resources of the 
 countr3^ They have opened mines in the mountains 
 and transformed the prairies from wild wastes to 
 fields rich with golden grain and dotted with happy 
 homes. They have suggested the inventions to meet 
 the necessities of the hour. The}^ are American 
 characteristics. The}' belong only to a people who 
 are not trained in grooves and are not taught to plant 
 their feet only in the deeply worn molds made in the 
 pathway of time by the steps of their ancestors. 
 With Mr. Cornell these qualities were superlative 
 gifts. As a carpenter he improved the methods of 
 his village master ; as a .mechanic he devised ma- 
 chines which overcame unexpected difficulties ; as an 
 unprejudiced practical man he became familiar with 
 the uses of electricity while the professor was still 
 lecturing upon its dangers. 
 
 Morse had discovered the telegraph, and if he 
 had lived in an earlier age he would have been either 
 incarcerated or incinerated. Bigots looked with sus- 
 picion upon this possibly sacrilegious trifling with 
 the lightning, scientists doubted the utility of the 
 invention and congressmen regarded it with distrust. 
 The inventor needed an undaunted and indomitable 
 
22 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 man of affairs to demonstrate to capitalists its possi- 
 bilities and to tlie public its beneficence, and he 
 found bim in Ezra Cornell, wbo saAv its future, and 
 upon bis judgment staked tbe accumulations of his 
 life and tbe almost superhuman labors of a decade. 
 He owned electric shares of the face value of mil- 
 lions and went hungry to bed because he had not 
 the means to pay for a meal, and his family suffered 
 because they could not be trusted for a barrel of 
 flour. But neither want nor debt nor the sheriff 
 could wrest from him his telegraph stock. I know 
 of no more dramatic scene in the lives of any of 
 our successful men than the spectacle of this po- 
 tential millionaire tramping through the highways 
 and byways of penury, suffering, and sickness, up- 
 held by his sublime faith in his work and the cer- 
 tainty of its recognition. Suddenly the darkness 
 was dispelled and the day dawned. People woke up 
 to the necessity of the telegraph for the government 
 and for commerce, and Cornell's faith had coined for 
 him a fortune. 
 
 In a country like ours, where so many accumu- 
 late great wealth, its proper use and distribution are 
 becoming questions of national as well as individual 
 interest. A half-centiiry ago the subject was un- 
 known ; a quarter of a century ago the public 
 thought little and cared less about it ; but to-da}^ it 
 threatens to become the incentive to or the solvent of 
 socialism. The concentration of riches and the cul- 
 tivation of agrarianism have advanced with equal 
 
MR. DEPEW'S ORATION. 23 
 
 pace. The recent political movements, which in 
 some states defeated both the national parties, were 
 the expression at the polls of the silent forces whose 
 growth and strength had been unnoticed. Though 
 the principles of the new faith are vague, incoherent, 
 and apparentl}^ absurd, the itnderlying power which 
 welds and wields them is hatred and distrust of 
 property. 
 
 The objective point is at present the corporation. 
 But, as the operation and necessity of this device for 
 transacting a business in which all as stockholders 
 can participate is better understood, the millionaire 
 becomes the target. It is at once the anomaly and 
 the danger of the crusade, that it enlists those who 
 are themselves property-holders, as farmers or house- 
 owners or tradesmen, against those who have more. 
 Selfish and ostentatious wealth is the most potent 
 agency for promoting the methods for its own dimi- 
 nution and destruction by legislation, while the wise 
 and generous use of money builds barriers for its 
 protection. 
 
 The most arrogant and offensive manager of 
 money is often the man who has endured and suf- 
 fered adversity and finally becomes a success. He 
 proudly boasts, "I owe nothing to the world," and "no 
 one ever did anything for me." He is neither sym- 
 pathetic with the struggling nor sensitive to duty. 
 As a money-making machine he incurs the enmity 
 of his fellows and cares nothing for their good will. 
 With an increasing contempt for those who fail to 
 
24 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 get on ill business comes a growing disparagement 
 of the value of the work or services of others. He 
 pays grudgingly, and gives regretfully only under 
 the resistless pressure of his surroundings. In the 
 lending of money he practices the arts of the usurer, 
 and in speculation those of the gambler. The world 
 gains nothing by his life, and his heirs are his only 
 beneficiaries at his death. Such a man does iniinite 
 harm. He is at once the excuse for and the irritant of 
 the combination of the elements, which, either blind- 
 ly or viciously, labor for the destruction of our insti- 
 tions and laws. He has existed under all forms of 
 government and society, but it is in a republic that 
 he becomes peculiarly obnoxious, and the methods of 
 reaching him seem more accessible. 
 
 There are men who so use their wealth that the 
 whole community rejoices in their good fortune and 
 applauds the management of their trusts. Their 
 course sharply differentiates between property and 
 its administration. They draw the fire from vested 
 interests, upon whose integrity and safet}^ the struct- 
 ure of society depends, and concentrate it upon the 
 unworthy steward who defies the written laws of 
 God and the unwritten ones of men. A most noble 
 and brilliant representative of this class was the 
 founder of this university. Prosperity made him 
 neither an idler nor a voluptuary. It added fresh 
 vigor to his work, enlarged his vision, and broad- 
 ened his sympathies. No mawkish sentimentality 
 nor theatrical surprises were in his character. He 
 
MR. DEPEW'S ORATION. 25 
 
 determined to devote a portion of his fortune to 
 the welfare of his countrymen and countrywomen 
 and decided that the best way was to give them the 
 education and training with which to help them- 
 selves. He had the self-made man's belief that a 
 successful career is possible to every one who tries, 
 but he knew from sore experience how difficult is prog- 
 ress for the poorly equipped in the sharp competi- 
 tion of life. He did not give up money-making. On 
 the contrary, the more beneficent purposes to which 
 he found it could be applied, the harder he worked 
 to gain more. His was the ideal of the divine injunc- 
 tion to be "diligent in business, serving the Lord." 
 In great crises in the history of nations and in 
 the conjunction of events which produce revolutions 
 in the moral, the mental, or the physical conditions 
 of a people, God always provides the man for the 
 emergency. The causes which produce him and the 
 results which follow his actions may form an epoch 
 in the development of the race or only contribute to 
 characteristics which mark a century. A Caesar, a 
 Hannibal, a Napoleon, a Peter the Hermit, a Luther, 
 are eras in the story of the world. The generations 
 which live in the period of the activities of such 
 phenomenal genius are either consumed by the 
 burning heat of the sun or blinded by its radiance. 
 Centuries must elapse before we can calmly contem- 
 plate their powers or achievements, forgetting the 
 frightful sufferings and calamities through which 
 their work assumed form and permanence. 
 
26 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 It is our happier lot to celebrate one of those mi- 
 nor events which is not a revolution, but an evolu- 
 tion. The government of the United States suddenly 
 discovered that it had a duty to perform toward the 
 education of the people. The federal constitution 
 made it necessary to act through the states. Con- 
 gress gave for this purpose a large grant of land, 
 and nearly a million of acres came to New York. 
 Schools struggling in financial difficulties, localities 
 ambitious for an institution of learning, and specu- 
 lators seeking the possession of the prize threatened 
 the confiscation or dissipation of the trust. The 
 friends of higher education, who had hoped for great 
 benefits to the commonwealth from the wise admin- 
 istration of this fund, were in despair. The wisdom 
 and generosity of Mr. Cornell saved the honor of 
 the state and rescued the national gift for education. 
 He said: "Concentrate this endowment, which is 
 the only way to get its benefits, and I will add a half 
 million dollars to it from my own fortune." It is 
 a significant commentary upon the ignorance and 
 greed of the times and the progress indicated by this 
 celebration that the state of New York exacted from 
 Ezra Cornell $25,000 as a forced tribute for the priv- 
 ilege of giving $500,000 of his own money for the 
 permanent benefit of her people. 
 
 The selection and placing upon the market b}^ 
 the several states of these lands had reduced their 
 price so low that but a fraction of the sum intended 
 was realized. Then the same business sagacity, 
 
MR. DEPEW'S ORATION. 27 
 
 foresight, and indomitable courage which had carried 
 the telegraph to success again came to the public 
 service. The foimder contracted with the state to 
 carry these lands and bear all the burdens of main- 
 tenance and taxation until their value should be 
 commensurate with the purposes for which they were 
 dedicated. The trust impaired his fortune, increased 
 his cares, and brought upon him a storm of criti- 
 cism and slander, but the strength and grandeur of 
 this great and growing university are the living 
 monuments which vindicate his name and fame. 
 
 The figures and results marvelously demonstrate 
 the wisdom and sagacity of Kzra Cornell. The land 
 grant to all the states was 9,597,840 acres, of which 
 New York's alone was 989,920 acres. The whole 
 grant realized the sum of $15,866,371, of which New 
 York's part brought $6,661,473, or nearly one-half 
 of the money for one-tenth of the land. Truly in 
 this, as among the many events which have made 
 New York the Empire State of the Union, when the 
 clock struck the hovir the man among her people 
 who was equal to the occasion answered, "Willing 
 and ready." 
 
 It was my privilege as a young man and the 
 youngest member of the Legislature to sit beside Kzra 
 Cornell. I learned to love and revere him. In those 
 days, so full of the strife and passions of the civil 
 war, it was a wonder and inspiration to listen to the 
 peaceful plans of this practical philanthropist for the 
 benefit of his fellow men. The times were big with 
 
28 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 gigantic schemes for the acquisition of sudden for- 
 tunes, and his colleagues could not understand this 
 most earnest and unselfish worker. To most of 
 them he was a schemer whose purposes they could 
 not fathom, and to the rest of us he seemed a dream- 
 er whose visions would never materialize. These 
 doubters of a quarter of a century ago esteem it a 
 high privilege to stand in this presence and an hon- 
 or to have the opportunity to contribiite a chaplet to 
 the wreaths which crown the statue of Ezra Cornell. 
 I remember that a scheme had been perfected 
 whose ramifications extended all over the state and 
 embraced the strongest men of both parties to raid 
 the treasury upon a false assumption of the needs of 
 the canals. The measure was sprung suddenly tip- 
 on the house, and as chairman of the committee of 
 ways and means it was my duty to fight it. I was 
 almost wholly unprepared for the task. When the 
 enemy seemed about to triumph, Mr. Cornell opened 
 his desk, took from it a carefully arranged mass 
 of figures and statistics, and placed them before me. 
 "I have been gathering these for several weeks," he 
 said, "in order to make a speech against this bill, 
 but you need them now." They gave such full and 
 complete refutations of the claims of the combination 
 that at the close of the debate the proposed act was 
 defeated and its advocates so completely routed that 
 it was never revived. He cared more for the triumph 
 of the triith than for any fame he might gain as its 
 advocate. It was this utter oblivion to self which 
 
MR. DEPEW'S ORATION. 29 
 
 led him to sacrifice everything for this university 
 when once he had become convinced of its necessity 
 and laid its foundations. 
 
 It was the highest public spirit which moved him 
 to contribute a half million of dollars to concentrate 
 and preserve the congressional land grant. It was 
 the nobility which rises above natural and justifiable 
 indignation that made him submit to the toll of 
 $25,000 for the privilege of grandly giving of his own. 
 It was the spirit of which martyrs are made that in- 
 spired him to carry the land grant through years of 
 financial depression, periling his fortune and impair- 
 ing his health with the burden until finally the trust 
 which would have brought only thousands realized 
 millions. It was the martyr to the purest and loftiest 
 sense of duty to his country and mankind, who 
 buried the larger part of his estate building the rail- 
 roads which connected his university with the trans- 
 portation facilities of the country. But he secured 
 for the people a seat of learning which will be ever 
 increasing in strength and beneficence, and for him- 
 self the gratitude of all succeeding generations and 
 immortal fame. 
 
 Text-books and lectures are only part of an ed- 
 ucation. There is more growth without than within 
 the class-room. The faculty may be ever so faithful 
 and learned — there is still much beyond them. The 
 spirit of a college indelibly impresses its students. 
 With the century-old foundations, it is the treasured 
 memories and traditions of a brilliant past. It is the 
 
30 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 force of the accumulated achievements and examples 
 of generations of alumni who have illustrated and 
 illumined the progress and glory of the republic. It 
 matters little to Yale or Harvard that their founders 
 are scarcely more than names with which nothing 
 tangible can be connected. It is much — it is every- 
 thing — to young Cornell that her sons can be in- 
 spired by such a founder. 
 
 The main object of higher education through all 
 the ages had been to prepare men for the next world. 
 It had not been thought necessary to do much for 
 women, either for earth or heaven. The Puritans 
 started the college with the settlement, but it was to 
 train young men for the Christian ministry. We 
 have not yet entirely recovered from the belief that a 
 university career is worse than useless, except for 
 the pulpit, law, and medicine. But the founder of 
 this institution profoundly believed that the better 
 fitted a man was for his life-work, the better his 
 preparation for an existence beyond the grave. A 
 successful worker, in a nation of workers, cared 
 nothing for speculative philosophies, but had un- 
 bounded faith in the possibilities of an educated 
 farmer or mechanic. 
 
 The materialism of our time is frequently de- 
 nounced and eloquently assailed. It is in a sense 
 the protest of the present against the past ; of the 
 practical progressists against the musty schoolmen. 
 It gives our people more and better homes. Its in- 
 ventions add immeasurably to the comfort and happi- 
 
MR. DEPEW'S ORATION. 3 1 
 
 ness of our lives. Its enterprise and energy develop 
 our resources and increase our national wealth. 
 Gross materialism, which sacrifices everything to the 
 mere accumulation of money, merits the censure it 
 receives, but the real benefactors of the world in our 
 age of hard struggles and hot competition are those 
 who do most to fit both heads and hands for the 
 needs of the hour. Whatever blessings have be- 
 longed in the past to him who made two blades of 
 grass to grow where only one did before, are equally 
 earned by the man whose locomotive or electrical de- 
 vice or machine or engine have multiplied power and 
 simplified labor. Every scientific or mining, tech- 
 nological or manual-training school is the outgrowth 
 of and contribution to our higher materialism. The 
 new learning is not an assault upon but an enlarge- 
 ment of the old. The splendid results of ancient 
 methods keep firm their hold upon the colleges. The 
 training they give is equally beneficial for business 
 and the professions. 
 
 It is the liberal education for ordinary pursuits 
 which this university has demonstrated to be one of 
 the great aims of teaching. "I would found an insti- 
 tution where any person can find instruction in any 
 study," was the motto of the founder. It embraces 
 in its catholic hospitality both sexes and all condi- 
 tions in life. It is a trite truism that intelligence 
 and virtue are the safety of a republic. For our 
 period intelligence requires a broader interpretation. 
 The ordinary equipment of the school is not sufifi- 
 
32 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 cient now, though it might have been with our fa- 
 thers. It must be supplemented by both practical 
 and scientific training for one's chosen vocation. 
 
 The rule of the thumb was the orthodox faith of 
 the past and is the transparent weakness for the 
 present. Greek and Latin will continue to occupy 
 leading places in a liberal education. These lan- 
 guages may be dead as spoken tongues, but they 
 embalm the priceless treasures of the past which 
 have more than once rescued learning from the dark- 
 ness and led the mind of the age to the light. It is 
 not everyone who has the time, the disposition, or 
 the ability to master the classic curriculum and its 
 attendant requirements. There was no place for 
 them within a period so recent that it hardly ante- 
 dates the day we celebrate. 
 
 The academy of Plato flourished at Athens for 
 nine hundred years. It preserved and stimulated 
 the intellectual life of the civilized world through 
 all those centuries. Justinian prepared the way for 
 the dark ages by closing this venerable seat of learn- 
 ing and confiscating its endowments. But his prac- 
 tical education perished with the classical teaching 
 which he thought useless. 
 
 In this university Plato's academy and the new 
 education can dwell harmoniously and work benefi- 
 cently on the same campus. The student has his 
 choice between higher education for mental discipline 
 and intellectual strength and pleasure, and higher 
 education specifically for his vocation. His diploma 
 
MR. DRPEW'S ORATION. 33 
 
 informs the Avorld precisely what his alma mater has 
 given. A review of the courses prescribed and per- 
 mitted here would have paralyzed Duns Scotus, 
 amazed Erasmus, and shocked Abelard. They would 
 have felt that they had touched the base earth and 
 its ignoble occupants. But we could not live in the 
 clouds of the middle ages. With us the earth is the 
 Lord's, and its dwellers his children, with equal 
 rights and share in its blessings and opportunities. 
 All work in it or on it is noble. 
 
 This experiment was hailed with derision and 
 distrust. It had been settled by Plato's academy, 
 and never after doubted, that repose and retirement 
 from the activities of life were essential to study and 
 thought. The venerable grove and the moss-covered 
 and ivy-crowned hall were the symbols of learning. 
 "The roar of the steam engine, the shriek of its 
 whistle, the clatter of machinery, the fascination of 
 the electric motors, the handiwork of the architect, 
 the engineer, the surveyor, the farmer, the artisan, 
 upon the campus will destroy," said the teachers, "all 
 concentration upon text-books and reflection upon 
 lectures." The issue was confidently met and cour- 
 ageously fought. We are here to celebrate the suc- 
 cess of the idea of which Cornell is the chief expo- 
 nent. From the chairs of the faculty of many col- 
 leges, from the bench, the bar, the pulpit, the doctor's 
 office, and the editorial sanctum ; from the field, the 
 farm, and the factory ; from the counting room, the 
 telegraph, and the railway, the alumni of Cornell 
 
34 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 university are gathered to do loving and reverent 
 honor to the gifts which have lifted them into both 
 the practice and enjoyment of their several pursuits. 
 
 Sir William Hamilton declared that "none of our 
 intellectual studies tend to cultivate a smaller num- 
 ber of the faculties in a more partial and feeble man- 
 ner than mathematics." Dr. Whewell writes that 
 "mere classical reading is a narrow and enfeebling 
 education," while Herbert Spencer solves in his large 
 way the whole problem of study by his compact 
 statement that "to suppose that deciding whether a 
 mathematical or a classical education is the best in 
 deciding what is the proper curriculum, is much the 
 same thing as to suppose that the whole of dietetics 
 lies in ascertaining whether or not bread is more nu- 
 tritive than potatoes." The wise liver finds food in 
 the life and products of the land, the water, and the 
 air, and selects that which nourishes him best. And 
 so classics and mathematics, — history, literature, and 
 philosophy, — physics, botany, zoology, physiology, 
 and the structure of the mind, — politics, economics, 
 and science, — intellectual development and manual 
 training, are the component parts of the equipment 
 which the new learning offers to the student for his 
 choice and needs. The variety and excellence of the 
 world, the multiplication and beneficence of its activ- 
 ities, are due to the fact that what is meat for one 
 man is poison for his neighbor. 
 
 The marvelous quarter of a centur}^ behind us 
 has no srreater distinction than the advance in the 
 
MR. DEPEW'S ORATION. 35 
 
 education of woman. The doubts which surrounded 
 the movement have been dispelled by the splendid 
 demonstration of her ability to successfully compete 
 with her brothers in any and every field of intellect- 
 ual study and research. It is now urged that, when 
 returning home, she is so much better educated than 
 the village swain, she either rejects him and fails in 
 her mission, or, as his wife, despises him. Ignorance 
 is no excuse for keeping others ignorant. The 
 alumnae of our female colleges will see to it that 
 their boys are educated, and they are more and more 
 every year the most active and effective workers for 
 greater facilities and freer opportunities for study. 
 Their co-education at Cornell with the young men 
 has c;iltivated the best traits and most chivalric 
 characteristics of American manhood. Their ambi- 
 tion and success have stimulated every department 
 of the university to more earnest effort and higher 
 ideals. 
 
 The emancipation of woman from the crushing 
 slavery of a few overcrowded and wretchedly remu- 
 nerated industries has increased incalculably both the 
 sum of human happiness and the well-being of our 
 communities. Education has fitted her for fields 
 which needed her labor, and the world is enriched 
 by her skill and fidelity, and the better for her inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 The eighteenth century produced only two inven- 
 tions — Franklin's lightning-rod and a machine for 
 the manufacture of nails. The nineteenth, with the 
 
2,6 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 telegraph and teleplione, the sewing macliine and 
 the cotton gin, the railway and the steamship, and 
 the thousands of other motors of progress, has re- 
 deemed and regenerated the globe. These marvels 
 have changed the relations of men to each other and 
 revolutionized their standing with the state. They 
 have proved hotbeds of democracy and encouraged 
 despotism. The pace has been too rapid for human- 
 it}^ to adjust itself to the new conditions. Both so- 
 ciety and the commonwealth require educated intelli- 
 gence for their safety. The fathers built their 
 republic upon the individual. His independence was 
 the keystone of the arch which supported their insti- 
 tutions. The mighty forces which the inventions 
 have made obedient to the service of man have so in- 
 creased productive power and energy that we live in 
 an era of great combinations. 
 
 Organization threatens the destruction of the in- 
 dividual. The corporation or the trust says he shall 
 not do business except as their employee or by 
 merging his plant in theirs, and the labor union says 
 he shall not work unless he does so by its rules and 
 with its permission. Aggregated capital, united to 
 build up and carry on important enterprises, causes 
 labor to create counter forces for protection. The 
 one attacks the small producer or manufacturer and 
 drives him out of business, and the other prohibits 
 the artisan from individually accepting employment, 
 no matter what his skill, his desire or necessities. 
 The same concentration of power has invaded the 
 
MR. DEPEW'S ORATION. 37 
 
 sphere of politics. Our cities are governed by one or 
 more powerful leaders, who, without the responsibil- 
 ities of of&ce, command the unquestioning obedience 
 of the ofEce-holders, and our states are rapidly run- 
 ning into the same conditions. 
 
 In 1862 Abraham Lincoln had upon his desk the 
 emancipation proclamation and the land grant bill to 
 promote education. He signed them both. The one 
 was an essential complement of the other. Without 
 education, emancipation does not emancipate. The 
 freedman exchanges one thralldom for another. The 
 tendencies of our times are much plainer than the 
 remedies. It is utterly inconsistent with the welfare 
 of our people that conflicts between capital and labor 
 should always end in the primitive barbarism of a 
 condition of war, with either the citizen soldiers un- 
 der arms or semi-military private organizations doing 
 police duty. Educate, educate, educate, is the na- 
 tional necessity. It takes time for emigrants coming 
 to our shores to fully absorb the principles of Amer- 
 ican liberty, but their children can be so firmly 
 grounded in its truths in the schools that they will 
 be the best and bravest citizens of the state. 
 
 The grand mission of institutions like Cornell 
 is the training and graduating of men of indepen- 
 dent thought and action. The self-reliance which 
 comes from the conscious mastery of one's calling is 
 independence, and when supplemented by the teach- 
 ings and touch of the universit}^ is liberty. Every 
 youth who goes out into the world from any depart- 
 
38 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 ment of this college becomes in the community 
 where he settles an influence for right thinking and 
 right acting. He is a standard for better work in 
 his vocation. One of the diiEculties of our situation 
 is the mass of half educated and badly trained 
 young men who come every year from our schools. 
 Their equipment is too superficial for the professions 
 or for business, and they have no preparation for the 
 trades. They emphasize by their necessities and 
 their careers the call for every possible extension of 
 the new learning. It is both a commentary upon 
 the public necessity for education and a comfort for 
 the future that there can be found in the ranks of 
 socialism or anarchy in the United States scarcely a 
 single graduate of any high school — classical, tech- 
 nological, or manual-training. 
 
 Cornell gives free education to nearly six hun- 
 dred students, the representatives of the assembly 
 districts of the state of New York. In doing this 
 she fulfills in fourfold measure the spirit and letter 
 of her foundation. But the Empire State should not 
 permit her sons to be a drain upon resources which 
 have been so wisely husbanded and so admirably ad- 
 ministered. It should generously recognize the 
 splendid work done at Cornell and appropriate the 
 means for the tuition of those who are here and 
 those who wish to come. Then there would grow up 
 on the shores of Cayuga lake a student republic 
 rivaling those which greeted the middle-age revival 
 of learning and instinct with the life and energy 
 
MR. DEPEW'S ORATION. 39 
 
 and aspirations of to-day. The picture and the pros- 
 pect should thrill the people of New York with loyal 
 pride. 
 
 A few years ago the University of Heidelberg 
 celebrated its five-hundredth anniversary. The heir 
 to the throne of the German empire presided. 
 Princes responded to the sentiments, and around the 
 great hall hung the banners and armorial devices 
 of the hereditary rulers of the land. The spectacle 
 was brilliant and imposing, and the dazzling display 
 of the emblems of rank and power made it a memo- 
 rable pageant. When your eyes had become accus- 
 tomed to the sheen of the armor and weapons and 
 jewels, and your ears to the blare of the trumpets, 
 you instinctively queried, What lesson of these five 
 centuries does this ceremonial teach ? You saw the 
 baron in his castle on the Rhine, with his vassals at 
 his feet ; you felt the power and glory of Teutonic 
 valor and achievements ; you knew of the scholars 
 and learned men who had passed the portals of the 
 university : but you felt that the political, the social, 
 and the material conditions of the age of invention 
 and democracy were not represented. 
 
 It is the proud boast of Cornell that she is not 
 only, abreast with the times, but is leading them. 
 No traditions retard her growth, and no legends ob- 
 scure for her the truth. She feels the movement of 
 the intellectual activities of the country and the 
 throbbing pulse of our industrial development. Her 
 twenty-five years are coincident with the unparalleled 
 
40 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 progress of the United States since the close of the 
 civil war, and her wonderfnl growth has been stimu- 
 lated by its impulse. 
 
 Said Mr. Gladstone to me: " If I had to select 
 from all the half-centuries of recorded time the fifty 
 years in which to pass my active life, I Avould choose 
 the fifty years in which I have worked. It has been 
 fifty years of emancipation." What is true of this 
 most remarkable and potential statesman is still more 
 applicable to this university. Her quarter of a cen- 
 tury is the high-water mark of intellectual activity, 
 scientific discovery, realizq,tion of liberty, and mate- 
 rial progress. Hero-worship is the happiness and 
 inspiration of youth, and we have for this period 
 Lincoln and Grant and Sherman and Sheridan in 
 statesmanship and arms in our own country, and 
 Gladstone, Bismarck, Von Moltke, Thiers, Cavour, 
 and Gambetta abroad. Literature has been enriched 
 by Ruskin and Hawthorne, Taine and Emerson, 
 Longfellow and Tennyson, Bancroft and Green, 
 Whittier, Lowell, and Holmes. Scholars and scien- 
 tists, too numerous for record in the limits of this 
 address, have irradiated this era with the results of 
 their genius. 
 
 Edison and Bell and others have demonstrated 
 the limitless possibilities of electricity. The spirit 
 of invention and discovery has broken down the 
 doors which safe-guarded the secrets of nature and 
 let loose the imprisoned forces of resistless energy 
 and remorseless power and tamed and trained them 
 
MR. DEPEW'S ORATION. 41 
 
 to the service of man. The emancipation of the 
 slave and the reconstruction of the states, the educa- 
 tion of the freedmen and the restoration of national 
 unity and national patriotism, are our object lessons 
 in philanthropy and statecraft of priceless value to 
 this and coming generations. 
 
 In the heroic age its honors and renown were 
 for those who had been most successful in killing 
 their fellow human beings. In our prosaic one, they 
 are reserved for those who do most and best to pre- 
 serve the lives, improve the health, increase the hap- 
 piness, and promote the welfare of the men and 
 women of the present and the future. Philanthropy 
 has by natural evolution grown from an impulse to a 
 science. The indiscriminate giving which pauper- 
 ized has become the wise endowment for restoration 
 to independence or the training for leadership. Our 
 benefactions assume two forms, the one for repairs 
 and the other for construction. In the first are hos- 
 pitals, homes, and asylums, and in the second the 
 school, the college, the university, and the library. 
 Money yields its most satisfactory return when it is 
 spent to open and smooth the pathways of youth to 
 opportunity and careers. The investment com- 
 pounds, and in compounding reduplicates its benefi- 
 cence with each generation of students, while the 
 benefactor has his fame freshened and enlarged by 
 every recurring class till the end of time. 
 
 The enduring monuments of those who have 
 promoted the growth of Cornell are fast filling the 
 
42 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 campus. Tliey are the buildings devoted to liberal 
 learning which they have erected or furnished and 
 endowed. Next to the name of the founder comes 
 the benefactor Henry W. Sage, and then that noble, 
 far-sighted, and unselfish woman whose eyes closed 
 in death in the belief that she had done all she could 
 for the university which she loved. Boardman and 
 Barnes and White and Sibley head the roll of honor, 
 which will increase with the annual celebration of 
 the founder's day. 
 
 " I would found an institution where any person 
 can find instruction in any study" is the chart, the 
 compass, and the beacon light for Cornell. It shows 
 all the oceans and continents of knowledge, it points 
 the course of safety, according as the student would 
 sail close to shore or fearlessly venture upon the 
 boundless deep, and it warns him to keep and per- 
 mits him to remain within the lines for which he has 
 the ability, taste, and time. It is a motto under 
 which the sons of the laborer and the millionaire, of 
 the lawyer and the merchant, of the farmer and the 
 mechanic, meet for the enjoyment of its equal gifts 
 and opportunities. Cornell rounds her first quarter- 
 century with a record of growth, maturity, and 
 power unequaled in the histor^^ of colleges. Superb 
 as is her youth, it is still only the promise of the 
 splendors of her maturity and the ripened and soft- 
 ened grandeur of her age. 
 
MR. Woodford's address. 43 
 
 At the end of Mr. Depew's oration President Scliurman 
 said : 
 
 We had expected on this occasion to have with us the 
 President of the United States. He cordially accepted the in- 
 vitation of the University ; but in a letter which I hold in my 
 hand, dated September igth, Mr. Cleveland sa3'S that, owing 
 to the condition of public business in Washington, it will be 
 impossible for him to be present with us. He sends us, how- 
 ever, his greeting, which I am sure you will all be glad to re- 
 ciprocate. 
 
 When the University was opened, the State of New York 
 was represented at the exercises by her Lieutenant-Governor. 
 From that day to this, that gentleman has been among our 
 warmest friends, among our most devoted Trustees. He was 
 then j'oung, full of faith and hope, endowed with the gift of 
 speech, and interested in public affairs. He is still a public 
 man, still eloquent, still sympathetic, and, in spite of the lapse 
 of time, still young. He will now address you, — the Hon. 
 Stewart L. Woodford, LL.D. 
 
 MR. WOODFORD'S ADDRESS. 
 
 My friends, I hardly dare trust myself to say a 
 word. Of all the men who stood at the cradle of 
 Cornell University only twenty-five years ago, there 
 are but two living : Andrew D. White, our first Pres- 
 ident, now serving the Republic in distant lands, and 
 myself. Ezra Cornell, our founder, Horace Gree- 
 ley, are dead. Brastus Brooks, George W. Schuyler, 
 Sibley, Barnes, Boardman, all have gone across the 
 river. From the tower above this great library ring 
 the chimes that first rang out that October afternoon 
 
44 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 twenty-five years ago, and slie whose spirit voice 
 seems to speak to us in those chimes is in the better 
 land above. I have no words. Heart, memory, hope, 
 are all too full. Cornell has more than answered the 
 promise of her childhood — God grant that in the 
 centuries to come she may do good work, true work, 
 loyal work, for education, for humanity, for the Re- 
 public. 
 
 President Schurman then said : Cornell University is 
 one of the sisterhood of colleges, universities, and institutions of 
 higher learning, over which in the State of New York we 
 have that unique and venerable institution known as the Uni- 
 versit}' of the State of New York. The next speaker is the 
 Chancellor of the University, the Rev. Anson J. Upson, D.D., 
 I.I..D. 
 
 CHANCELIvOR UPSON'S ADDRESS. 
 
 Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 Personally I have no right to address this distin- 
 guished audience. Only my official position in the 
 educational system of this state Avould justify your 
 Trustees in giving me the privilege of representing 
 here the Regents of the University of the State of New 
 York. I am encouraged, however, by the fact that 
 Cornell University has recognized frequently, in the 
 most friendly way, the work of our Board. It might 
 have been otherwise. The work of the Regents is 
 supervisory and nothing else. This institution, very 
 naturally, might have refused to be thus supervised. 
 It was not chartered by the Regents, but by the. 
 
CHANCELLOR UPSON'S ADDRESS. 45 
 
 Legislature. Its endowments, in tlie beginning, were 
 large, and soon became mucb larger than those 
 of any other college in this state. Its educational 
 methods were somewhat peculiar. All these things 
 and others like them, naturally might have created 
 and fostered a spirit of independence or indifference. 
 But Cornell University has shown no such indepen- 
 dent spirit. From the beginning, you have courte- 
 ously and loyally transmitted to Albany very full 
 and most suggestive and valuable annual reports. In 
 the annual convocation of the teachers of New York, 
 in the capitol, none of our colleges has been more 
 frequently and fully represented. The Presidents of 
 the university, without exception, have honored us by 
 their dignified presence. They have benefited the 
 teachers of the state by their wide experience and 
 stimulated them by their inspiriting eloquence. Your 
 professors have contributed largely to the interest 
 and usefulness of the convocation, by giving us the 
 results of their scholarship in erudite and sometimes 
 profound papers, and in vigorous and influential dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 For all this and much more, permit me in the 
 name of the Regents of the University to express 
 our thanks. And you will also permit us to share in 
 the congratulations of this occasion. We would 
 unite with you in paying deserved honor to the wor- 
 thy examples embalmed in your history. 
 
 I need not repeat the familiar facts in the life of 
 your founder who gave you his name. The whole 
 
46 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 world has recognized already his worth. As you, 
 Mr. President, have quoted from the historian Froude, 
 giving to the words your own significant endorse- 
 ment : "a sublime figure anywhere," says the histor- 
 ian, " he seems to me the most surprising and vener- 
 able object I have seen in America." I need not tell 
 any of those who hear me what a broad-minded, sym- 
 pathetic, unselfish, self-sacrificing, original philan- 
 thropist he was. But I may remind you that all his 
 beneficent work was done to give to young men and 
 young women the best possible education ; and by 
 whom ? By a man whose own early ediicational op- 
 portunities wei'e quite limited. What an example is 
 this of broad-minded magnanimit}' ! thus providing 
 for others far more than he himself had received ! 
 
 And Ezra Cornell has not been the only benefac- 
 tor here. The names attached appropriately to these 
 libraries, these buildings for religious service and in- 
 struction and for legal education and for scientific 
 teaching in philosophy and the arts ; and the names 
 given appropriately to the various endowments of the 
 University — such names as Morrill and Sage and 
 Sibley and McGraw and Barnes and Fayerweather 
 and Boardman — all these not only keep in mind- the 
 memory of j^our benefactors, but they perpetuate the 
 influence of their noble example. 
 
 While I would honor every one who has contrib- 
 uted to the usefulness and glory of this great uni- 
 versity, I cannot deny myself the privilege, taking 
 advantage of his absence, of paying deserved honor 
 
CHANCELLOR UPSON'S ADDRESS. 47 
 
 at this time, to my life-long friend Andrew Dickson 
 White, the intimate associate of Mr. Cornell in the 
 organization of this university, a munificent donor 
 towards your endowments and your library and who 
 for seventeen years was your President. The inher- 
 itor of large wealth, highly educated, he might have 
 given himself up wholly to self-indulgence, to the 
 refined enjoyments of a dilettante. Rather, by his 
 own preference, he devoted many years of his life 
 largely to the laborious work of education. Such an 
 example, as uncommon as it is beneficent, deserves 
 grateful recognition here and now. 
 
 But this university, within the past twenty-five 
 years, has enriched the world in other ways equally 
 essential to its own life and growth. Many of your 
 professors have increased the treasures of good learn- 
 ing by their published books in philosophy, in his- 
 tory, in the sciences theoretical and applied, in peda- 
 gogy, in literature ancient and modem. 
 
 And especially would I congratulate the univer- 
 sity upon the large number of faithful teachers, who 
 may or may not have published books ; but who have 
 given to you and your graduates long years of faith- 
 ful service — the best years of their lives — with a de- 
 votion like that of a sailor to his ship, or a soldier to 
 his regiment, or a patriot to his country. All honor 
 to the steadfast devotion of your loyal instructors, 
 not always remembered as they should be on occa- 
 sions like the present ! 
 
 Besides, many of your educational methods have 
 
4« THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 attracted attention and promoted educational reform. 
 Cornell University was among the first, if not the 
 very first, of our colleges to recognize and practice 
 the principle that " students should be expected to 
 govern themselves in a spirit of manly self-respect." 
 Let me congratulate you on the siiccess of this man- 
 ly method. In your collegiate discipline and in your 
 examinations, you appeal to the student's honor. 
 You have no proctors. I am glad to testify that your 
 example has modified, if it has not abolished, in 
 many institutions a degrading and deceit-encouraging 
 method of college government. 
 
 Still further, a true college, in its spirit, is the 
 purest democracy in the world. In no community 
 will a young man be estimated at his true value — 
 find his level — so soon as in a college. This will be 
 true, unless extraneous circumstances, such as wealth 
 or social culture or the ofiicial rank of members of 
 the young man's family or the reputation of his an- 
 cestry, are permitted to interfere with the natural 
 characteristics and tendencies of collegiate life. 
 Now, in the spirit of your founder, this has been a 
 school for the education, pre-eminently, of young 
 men and young women of limited means of support. 
 And in the organization of this universit}^, "the 
 Trustees pledged themselves to use every effort to 
 prevent any caste spirit in any department." Unless 
 I have been misinformed, their efforts have met, thus 
 far, with unprecedented success. And it is for me a 
 matter of congratulation to-day that the example of 
 
CHANCELLOR UPSON's ADDRESS. 49 
 
 this institution has been largely influential in re- 
 straining, if not in destro3dng, such degrading and 
 destructive tendencies in other colleges in this and 
 in other states. 
 
 With some experience and observation as a col- 
 legiate instructor, you will permit me to say further, 
 that, in my judgment, the method of religious in- 
 struction here provided in Sage Chapel is well adapt- 
 ed to accomplish the best results. It has been said 
 that this listening, Sunday after Sunday, to succes- 
 sive preachers, representing various forms of Chris- 
 tian faith, will encourage only the habit of making 
 comparisons constantly. It has been said that this 
 habitual criticism will destroy the practical effect of 
 the discourses preached. There may be some truth 
 in this. No method can be unobjectionable, wholly. 
 But if a single chaplain give instruction by himself 
 alone, the advantage of variety is lost. And I be- 
 lieve that variety is very attractive and interesting, 
 especially to the young. Variety also is more influ- 
 ential practically than monotony. Monotony cer- 
 tainly will not prevent criticism. It will encourage 
 it rather. 
 
 And so I believe that in a large institution like 
 this, which has no distinctive denominational aflilia- 
 tions, and where students of many forms of faith are 
 assembled, — in a large institution like this, — the es- 
 tablishment of various ethical and denominational 
 societies like those established here, such as "The 
 Baptist Circle," "The Brotherhood of St. Andrew," 
 
50 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 "The Catholic Union," "The Methodist Alliance," 
 "The Presbyterian Union" — all these will afford 
 abundant opportunities for religious worship and in- 
 struction and for Christian activity. 
 
 Few thoughtful persons can stand on this mag- 
 nificent campus, surrounded by these stately halls, 
 amidst all these inspiriting examples of beneficent 
 devotion to the good of humanity, rivaling in their 
 glory even the beauty of the fair landscape of valley 
 and lake and near and distant hills, under a sky of 
 "everlasting blue," which nature here presents to our 
 sight, — no thoughtful person can stand here and not 
 ask himself what will be the future of this remarka- 
 ble creation, the growth of only twenty-five years ? 
 The inevitable answer and the encouraging answer 
 will be : you cannot kill a college : you cannot move 
 a college. 
 
 So long as there are young men and young wom- 
 en who are not willing to be ignorant, so long as 
 there are devoted teachers ready to give their lives to 
 instruction ; so long will institutions like this bless 
 the world. 
 
 I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, yet I 
 venture to predict that, in all the future centuries of 
 the life of this university, there will be no less atten- 
 tion paid than is now given to classical study. 
 Teachers and scholars here will never find a better 
 way than by training in the classics, to gain a vigor- 
 ous and comprehensive judgment, a ready and reten- 
 tive memory, a sensitive and refined taste. 
 
CHANCELLOR UPSON'S ADDRESS. 5 1 
 
 I venture to predict also that hereafter in your 
 halls there will be given no less instruction than now 
 in religious truth. No sectarian control, under 
 whatever name, liberal or orthodox, it may conceal 
 itself, no such control will be tolerated here. And 
 yet, so long as God and man exist, so long will in- 
 struction be demanded and instruction continue to be 
 given, more and more, in those eternal verities which 
 express God's relations to us and our relations to 
 Him and to each other. 
 
 I do not think either that you will ever have too 
 large a library. Thanks to the wisdom of your bene- 
 factors, the library has not been the last thing thought 
 of in this institution, and never will be neglected. 
 
 You will not charge me with reactionism, if I 
 take the liberty to predict also that elective studies in 
 your curriculum, now so free to all who enter the 
 university, will be more restricted, as experience may 
 teach that restriction is necessary. This great free 
 university is not a slave to its own precedents. No 
 college curriculum hitherto has been more open to 
 revision. It is not impossible that, in order that 
 your students may pursue profitably your courses of 
 study, the need of more thorough previous disci- 
 pline will become so apparent and so urgent, that you 
 may increase and advance your requirements for en- 
 trance, until they shall equal the requirements for 
 graduation at other colleges. Thus yours may be- 
 come the post-graduate university of the State of 
 New York. 
 
52 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 But, Mr. President, wliatever educational metliods 
 experience may teach us as to these matters of de- 
 tail, about which educational authorities may differ, 
 sure I am that every institution in this State, under 
 the supervision of the Board of Regents, has but one 
 object, essentially, and that is to improve, in every 
 possible particular, its own method of education. 
 No large institution desires to crush out the smaller. 
 The small and the great are fulfilling equally their 
 purpose. 
 
 And yet in educational affairs, as in many other 
 particulars, we are deficient in state pride. As a 
 people, in educational matters certainly, we are too 
 cosmopolitan. We love our neighbors better than 
 ourselves. We do not provide sufficiently for our 
 ow-n. We give millions to elementary education. I 
 would give no less to the common schools ; but high- 
 er education, so called, in this commonwealth, has 
 cost the State — the people — through taxation com- 
 paratively nothing. Each tax-payer pays less than 
 one cent a year for so-called higher education ! The 
 endowments, insufficient as they are, of high schools, 
 academies, and colleges in our State, have not come 
 from the State, but from lotteries, private individuals, 
 or from the United States Government. In this 
 matter, the people of Michigan, and the people of 
 Wisconsin and other western States do much better 
 than we do. In those States, in " the wild west " if 
 you please, the policy of the people is much more 
 liberal towards themselves. 
 
CHANCELLOR UPSON'S ADDRESS. 53 
 
 It is not surprising, therefore, that some of our 
 neighbors of other states estimate the value of our 
 higher education by the estimate we seem to put 
 upon it, — by what we give to it. Our neighbors 
 acknowledge our commercial supremacy. Our polit- 
 ical power is admitted. The learning and wisdom 
 of our legal decisions are respectfully recognized. 
 And yet, somehow, many of our near neighbors, in 
 other states, seem to think that to live in the State 
 of New York is evidence, prima facie yet conclu- 
 sive evidence, of intellectual inferiority and of com- 
 parative ignorance, or, at the best, of incapacity for 
 the highest mental achievements. I hope you will 
 not doubt my word : I speak the plain truth when I 
 tell you that, when I lived in Albany a few years 
 ago, a Boston teacher actually said to me, to my very 
 face, " Why, sir, I have listened to you in private con- 
 versation and in public addresses, and really, sir, for 
 a New Yorker you speak very good English." You 
 may smile at the absurd compliment, but it implies 
 a peculiar state of opinion — an opinion which ought 
 to stimulate us in our educational work. 
 
 Let us say no more that higher education in this 
 State costs too much. Mr. President, the value of a 
 thoroughly educated man is incalculable. Did John 
 Marshall cost the State of Virginia too much ? — Mar- 
 shall, whose education raised him from an obscure 
 plantation to be a Chief Justice of the United States, 
 whose opinions vitalized and perpetuated the United 
 States Constitution, making it paramount and un- 
 
54 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 changeable by ordinary legislation ? Did Thomas 
 Jefferson cost the State of Virginia too much? — Jef- 
 ferson, the peaceful purchaser for his country, for a 
 comparatively trivial sum, of what was then a vast, 
 unknown territory vaguely called Louisiana ; did 
 Thomas Jefferson cost the State of Virginia too 
 much? — Jefferson, the au^thor of the Declaration of 
 Independence and of the statute of Virginia for re- 
 ligious freedom, and the founder of the University 
 of Virginia; himself a graduate of the college of 
 William and Mary, in accordance with an injunction 
 left by his father on his death-bed, a circumstance 
 which his son always remembered with gratitude, 
 saying that, if he had to choose between the educa- 
 tion and the estate his father left him, he would 
 choose the education ? 
 
 Did Daniel Webster cost the State of New Hamp- 
 shire too much ? — Webster, whose education at Dart- 
 mouth College transformed the New Hampshire 
 farmer's boy into the great constitutional expounder 
 whose doctrines preserved the integrity of the 
 Union ? 
 
 Did Alexander Hamilton cost the State of New 
 York too much ? — Hamilton, whose education at Co- 
 lumbia College developed in him the ability at seven- 
 teen years of age to electrify the citizens of New 
 York City, in a fervid speech for colonial rights, and 
 afterwards to write the Federalist ? 
 
 I might ask similar questions with the same 
 answer about the cost to the State of New York of 
 
PROFESSOR CALDWELL'S ADDRESS. 55 
 
 the education of DeWitt Clinton and William H. 
 Seward and Horatio Seymour. To make such in- 
 quiries is needless. All these questions, each and 
 every one, answer themselves. 
 
 Please accept, Mr. President, my thanks for your 
 courteous patience in listening to my words. And 
 permit me to renew to yourself and your honored 
 colleagues and to the authorities and benefactors of 
 the university the cordial congratulations of the 
 Board of Regents, with expressions of our most sin- 
 cere good will. 
 
 President Schurman then said : The next speaker was to 
 have been the Rev. Dr. Potter, President of Hobart College, 
 but I regret to say that at the last moment he has found him- 
 self unavoidably detained. 
 
 The eloquent Chancellor has referred to the fact that nei- 
 ther money nor buildings nor collections make a University, 
 although the Universit}' without them is impossible. A Uni- 
 versity exists for the sake of the instruction of youth and the 
 enlargement of human knowledge, and to these ends those 
 things are but instruments and means. 
 
 The work of the University is done for men and by men. 
 In this sense, the Faculty is the University. It is therefore 
 not only appropriate, but necessaiy, considering the function 
 of the Universit}', that the Faculty should be represented on 
 this occasion ; and I have the pleasure now of presenting the 
 first professor ever appointed in Cornell University, Dr. G. C. 
 Caldwell. 
 
 PROFESSOR CALDWEUL'S ADDRESS. 
 
 On the twenty-second day of September, twenty- 
 five years ago, about a dozen men, of whom but 
 
56 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 three are now in the Faculty, assembled in a small 
 room of the Cornell Library building down in the 
 town, where the light was almost as scanty as in a 
 photographer's dark room, and held the first meeting 
 of the Faculty of Cornell University. A little later 
 other appointments were made, so that the first Reg- 
 ister gave a list of twenty-three professors, of whom 
 six are now here. On the sixth of October, the first 
 entrance examinations were held in a large basement 
 room of the same building, where the supply of 
 light and air was not much more liberal than in the 
 temporary Faculty room, under the general direction 
 of our first Registrar, Dr. Wilson, whose kindly face 
 and friendly greeting would have been sadly missed 
 by the older alumni on this occassion. 
 
 The English examinations were held in one 
 corner of the room, the examination in mathematics 
 in another corner, the geography in another, and, 
 when all the corners were filled where there was 
 light enough to write by, the lesser examinations 
 were sandwiched in between. In these examinations 
 all helped ; a professor of chemistry had charge of 
 the orthography. It might have been wise to have 
 first examined the professor himself in that branch 
 of English ; indeed, the earliest records of the Fac- 
 ulty present incontrovertible evidence that the spell- 
 ing of at least one of its members was not altogether 
 beyond criticism. But there was no time for an}^ 
 such test of the ability of the examiners to do the 
 work assigned to them, and they had to be taken on 
 
PROFESSOR CALDWELL'S ADDRESS. 57 
 
 trust. A professor appointed to teach in one of the 
 departments of natural history had, I believe, to look 
 after the examination in algebra ; and so one and 
 another of us was temporarily drafted into this un- 
 anticipated service. 
 
 The crudity of this arrangement for the entrance 
 examinations, as compared with the present meth- 
 ods, was no greater than the crudity of everything 
 else in those days. Rickety barns, and slovenly 
 barn-yards offended the senses where the extension 
 of Sibley College is now going up ; the second uni- 
 versity building, now called White Hall, simply pro- 
 truded out of an excavation, the top of which reached 
 nearly to the second-story windows at one end. The 
 ventilation of the chemical laboratory, in the base- 
 ment of Morrill Hall, was partly into the library and 
 reading room above it ; readers there, not being 
 chemists, did not find the chemical odors agreeable. 
 An ancient, Virginia rail fence traversed the site of 
 this building and its neighbor, Boardman Hall ; the 
 minutes of the Faculty show that before the end of 
 the first year the modest request was made of the 
 Founder of the University, that he permit said fence 
 to be moved 150 feet further to the south, in order 
 that there might be a sufficiently large piece of level 
 ground adjoining the campus for the military evolu- 
 tions, and for ball games. 
 
 Bridges, sidewalks, and even a road between the 
 one university building and Cascadilla, the one home 
 where almost everybody connected with the Univer- 
 
58 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 sity lived, either did not exist at all, or were only 
 partially completed. It was a long time before 
 the multitude of foot-tracks was obliterated, made by 
 the passing of teachers and students down and up 
 the banks of the ravine north of the site of the 
 gymnasium ; when snow, slush, and mud alternated 
 with each other in November, even a professor some- 
 times forgot his dignity and slid down the bank, and 
 by inadvertence not always all the way down on his 
 feet, either ; the hearty sympathy bestowed upon 
 such an unfortunate by student spectators can be 
 imagined, if not believed in. 
 
 What those teachers and students wpuld have 
 done without Cascadilla for shelter it would be hard 
 to say ; for the people of the town had apparently 
 not then learned that there was money in taking 
 boarders ; nor were there hardly more than a dozen 
 dwelling houses nearer the University than half-way 
 up Bast Hill. So Cascadilla was full from basement 
 to attic ; and a professor who had not lived there at 
 all was, in later times, hardly considered by his col- 
 leagues as having fully earned his right to be a pro- 
 fessor in the University. 
 
 Of that original Faculty three have died : the 
 genial William Charles Cleveland, before he had had 
 a fair opportunity to develop his department of civil 
 engineering at all ; Bvan Wilhelm Evans, a man of 
 few words, but words always to the point, and most 
 serviceable in Faculty councils ; enthusiastic Charles 
 Frederick Hartt, for whom the splendid opportunit}^ 
 
PROFESSOR CALDWELL'S ADDRESS. 59 
 
 to carry on investigations in Brazil for a time, in liis 
 chosen field of work, was too tempting to be resisted, 
 and in whicli he sacrificed his life ; and mention 
 should not be omitted in this connection of Charles 
 Chauncey Shackford, whose portrait a grateful class 
 placed in our library ; though not of the original 
 Faculty, he came in so early as to be almost as fully 
 identified with the first beginnings of the life of the 
 University as those of us who began our work only 
 three years earlier. 
 
 At the beginning there were also with us as lec- 
 turers three of the most eminent and delightful men 
 then living, Louis Agassiz, James Russell Lowell, 
 and George William Curtis, all now dead also ; by 
 their presence and their lectures, they added greatly 
 to the interest of the beginning of that opening 
 year, students and the people of the town crowding 
 to hear them in Library Hall — as well they might, 
 for no such treat has since been offered here in so 
 brief a time. 
 
 With that small Faculty meeting in a back room 
 of Library Hall, and those hurried examinations in 
 the dim basement near by, Cornell University start- 
 ed out to do great things, under the enthusiastic and 
 hopeful lead of Andrew D. White, who of all others 
 among the living should be here on this anniver- 
 sary. He and the ever honored Founder of the 
 University never, I believe, even in her darkest days, 
 faltered in their confidence that she would do great 
 things. That confidence is fully justified ; the thou- 
 
6o THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 sand and more students that they so undoubtingly 
 predicted came sooner than at least many of us 
 dreamed that it would ; and so manifest is her des- 
 tiny, apparently, that the number goes climbing 
 steadily upward to the two thousand mark, in spite 
 of business depressions and panics. 
 
 That liberality in all things, which was made so 
 prominent a feature in the very charter of the Uni- 
 versity, has been cordially accepted by the Faculty 
 from the beginning as its policy. Men of all creeds 
 and parties have worked together without question as 
 to each other's views on religion or politics. But this 
 liberality has not meant to them indifference in re- 
 ligious matters ; the University Christian Associa- 
 tion has become one of the strongest in the country, 
 partly through the cordial co-operation of members 
 of the Faculty ; and they have, besides, done their 
 full share for the support of religious organizations 
 in the town. The largest measure of personal free- 
 dom consistent with the best welfare of the students 
 has been allowed. Cordial relations have been main- 
 tained with the public school system of the State, 
 while at the same time the University has contribu- 
 ted largely towards the gradual elevation of the 
 standard of education throughout the State, in pro- 
 portion as its own standards have been raised in 
 like gradual manner. 
 
 Co-education, even if not heartily endorsed by 
 all, has nevertheless been given a fair trial. With 
 its first appearance in the University I was perhaps 
 
PROFESSOR CALDWELL'S ADDRESS. 6 1 
 
 somewhat more familiar than many of my colleagues. 
 A more fortunate selection could not have been made 
 for its introduction than Miss Eastman, who, before 
 its legal authorization by the Trustees, pursued her 
 work in chemistry at her place in the laboratory, in 
 a dignified and unassuming way that won the respect 
 of all her teachers. Being afterwards allowed by 
 the Faculty to present her work done in various de- 
 partments prior to actual admission of women as stu- 
 dents, she was able to graduate in 1S73, after only 
 four terms of attendance as a regular student. 
 
 In this spirit of liberality the Faculty did all it 
 could, consistently with what the best interests of 
 the real educational work of the University seemed 
 to require, to help in carrying out the Founder's 
 cherished idea that self-support of students by labor 
 of some kind shall be a leading feature of the Uni- 
 versity. This idea had made a strong impression on 
 young men seeking an education, and even on some 
 seeking a livelihood besides. One of these wrote to 
 inquire if, besides supporting himself, he could also 
 support his mother and sister while getting his edu- 
 cation. 
 
 Mr. Cornell wished to see some kind of a factory 
 on the university grounds, where all students desir- 
 ing employment would find it. But all experienced 
 educators in the Faculty knew that self-support 
 while pursuing a college course had been too often a 
 failure, to leave any hope of its success here, except 
 in a few cases combining unusual pluck and unusual 
 
62 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 ability to learn. Mi:ch to the disappointment of Mr. 
 Cornell, all schemes of this kind had to be soon 
 abandoned. 
 
 In the relations of the Faculty to the Trustees 
 and its Executive Committee, there has been from 
 the beginning that quiet confidence of each body 
 that the other was doing all it could, in this same 
 liberal spirit, for the promotion of the best interests 
 of the University ; and this mutual confidence has 
 fostered a cordial feeling between these two organiza- 
 tions, both alike vitally interested in the welfare of 
 the University, that of itself cannot but have con- 
 tributed much towards the grand success that has 
 already been attained in so short a time. 
 
 I am supposed to speak on this occasion for the 
 Faculty as it is at present. But this Faculty num- 
 bers seventy, while there are hardly more than a 
 dozen of us here who toiled through that early period 
 of the life of the University. It were a far easier 
 matter to speak as might be expected of me by the 
 Faculty as a whole, if a larger proportion of those 
 whom I represent had been with me then. What I 
 naturally feel is not as they feel who, in all the vigor 
 of a fresh manhood, have within these later years 
 begun their career here, with prospects of success 
 in the winning of high professional rank much more 
 certain in their promise than appeared before us 
 when we began our work. Only with the help 
 of a vivid imagination can the younger men of to- 
 day create for themselves a truthful picture of the 
 
PROFESSOR Caldwell's address. 63 
 
 University as it was in our first days. Tliey may 
 liave good ground for expecting that, when the next 
 quarter-centennial comes to be celebrated, the Uni- 
 versity will be as much greater and more prosperous 
 than now, as it is now greater and more prosperous 
 than it was at the outset and for many years after- 
 wards. To us who know so well what it was and 
 what it is, the realization of any such great expecta- 
 tions seems beyond a reasonable possibility. 
 
 Many of my younger colleagues may take part 
 in the jubilation of 1918, and look back on twenty- 
 five years of successful work accomplished, that gave 
 them happiness in the doing of it, and brought them 
 honor and fame as further reward ; we their old asso- 
 ciates heartily wish all this for them. But, even 
 while wishing it, our hearts cannot but be saddened 
 by the thought that twenty-five years added to our 
 lives, if so much it may be, means a very different 
 thing for us ; in the inevitable course of events it 
 means that at least some of us will have been obliged 
 to give up our places to others, fresher and more vig- 
 orous in body and mind — to give up to them the 
 rooms, the haunts, and the pleasant homes on this 
 beautiful campus, all made very dear to us by the 
 happy associations of many years. But so it must be 
 everywhere — the older making way for the younger, 
 so that the work of the world shall be ever fresh and 
 vigorous ; and it would be unreasonable, and only a 
 selfish contention against the inevitable, if we should 
 not most cordially wish for those who take our 
 
64 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 places, when we shall no longer be deemed able to fill 
 them Avith sufficient credit to the University, all the 
 success they can attain with the far more ample 
 means to sustain them than fell to our lot during the 
 larger part of our first quarter of a century. 
 
 In return, may we not ask them to remember 
 us kindly, at that next quarter-centennial, and allow 
 for us at least some share of the glory for what the 
 University may then have come to be, in that we 
 helped to launch it on its career, and with an abiding 
 faith in its success helped to carry it through a 
 period in its history in all probability far more criti- 
 cal, and fraught with danger to its very existence, 
 than any other period ever will be. 
 
 President Schurman said : The first speaker to-day com- 
 mented on the curriculum of our University and the variety of 
 the professional callings for which men are fitted here. That 
 very fact created a difficulty for the Committee of Arrange- 
 ments in selecting a representative of the student body, old 
 students, and alumni. The speaker whom we have chosen 
 has rendered distinguished services, both to his city and to the 
 nation, in journalism, in politics, in education, in finance. He 
 is still a leader in the world of business and a Member of Con- 
 gress, — the Hon. Joseph C. Hendrix. 
 
 MR. HENDRIX'S ADDRESS. 
 
 Mr. President., Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 An old student of the early seventies comes upon 
 this scene, after an absence of twenty years, to be 
 delighted and to be amazed. The Yale freshman 
 
MR. HENDRIX'S ADDRESS. 65 
 
 who in his endeavors to snbdue the English lan- 
 guage in a composition-exercise wrote, "The Senator 
 stood speechless with amazement," was rebuked by 
 his professor, who said: "My boy, always get your 
 facts straight. A Senator may stand amazed, but 
 speechless — never." It is not permitted to me to be 
 speechless in amazement, as I view the wonderful 
 progress of Cornell, but perhaps the reminiscences 
 of the old days may pass in part for a speech. How 
 they come back — and what a contrast! Why, I 
 landed here on a freight train ! It wound its melan- 
 choly way along- a geometrical diagram on yonder 
 hill-side, and it seemed to be sinking deeper and 
 deeper into the soft-looking valley below the further 
 it went ; and, when it came to a stand-still and I 
 alighted, my future college home — then two stone 
 buildings — seemed not only far off, but far up. You 
 can imagine the feelings of a child of the prairie, as 
 he measured with his eye the distance that he had to 
 climb with his feet. Of course I thought it best to 
 walk on the level until I reached a point opposite the 
 buildings, but this brought me to the foot of a steep 
 sand-bank. My first thought was, " How am I ever 
 to get up?" I literally approached Cornell on my 
 hands and knees. At the top of this first terrace, an 
 Ithacan peasant informed me that it was easier to 
 reach Cornell through a grave-yard. When I en- 
 countered the pundits at the gates holding entrance- 
 examinations my next thought was, " How am I ever 
 to get in ? " When I did get in, confronted by a con- 
 
66 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 dition and not by any theory, I thought, " How am I 
 ever to get through ? " Later on, when some precon- 
 ceived and fondly cherished scientific notions which 
 I brought from the West proved unacceptable to my 
 teachers, my thought was, " How am I ever to get 
 out ? " The Faculty had a way of making this rea- 
 sonably easy. Then I thought, " How am I ever to 
 get away ? " The luxury of a railroad pass and the 
 friendly loan of a ten-dollar bill enabled me to get to 
 New York, where there was a budding demand for 
 college men in journalism, the preference being for 
 those with not too much education — not for men edu- 
 cated beyond their intellects, as the Mugwumps are 
 said to be. As this hill-climbing and the experience 
 with all of the discomforts of Cornell in its early days 
 had made me able-bodied and given me great powers 
 of endurance, I was assigned to report the speeches 
 of Chauncey M. Depew. I am glad to get back and 
 look over these scenes again. I cau but wonder now 
 that any young man came here in those early days ; 
 for going to college is a serious epoch in any man's 
 life. A student does not go to college like Mr. De- 
 pew does nowadays, by stepping into his private car 
 and being whirled along amid surroundings of com- 
 fort. Oh no ! He must get his parents into a will- 
 ing mood ; and in the day of the ascendancy of de- 
 nominational colleges this was not so easy. Colleges 
 had long tentacles over the land, drawing young men 
 to them, along lines of religious, sectional, or local 
 preferences. The young men who came here were 
 
MR. HENDRIX'S ADDRESS. 67 
 
 accordingly of an adventurous type, earnest, self- 
 centered, determined. They made up a strong body 
 of young men. Some came to work, and they 
 worked as best they could here while studying. The 
 influences about them were democratic and helpful. 
 We had the silent old Quaker founder alive then, 
 and it was no unusual thing to see him among the 
 boys, standing over them like a fond and anxious 
 father. Andrew D. White had a friendly word for 
 all who approached him, and no old student will for- 
 get Goldwin Smith — a young Oxford professor who 
 left the comfort and ease of a professorship at an an- 
 cient seat of learning to come to the frontier life on 
 the outposts of the new education in America, and 
 was to all of us a great-heai'ted elder brother. He 
 shared in the discomforts of the early days, but was 
 the most undaunted spirit among us all. How the 
 scene has changed ! Here is magic indeed. Instead 
 of the small beginning, here is a luxury of equip- 
 ment, — and, all about us, cathedrals of learning. 
 How we old students envy the new ones and wish we 
 were boys again. The children of this Alma Mater 
 are scattered far and wide. I cannot assume to 
 speak for them, for I bear no credentials from the 
 Alumni. I am one of the half-baked, but I am all 
 the more free to tell you, Mr. President, that where 
 the world's work is being done, amid the stir, the 
 vigor, and the activity of our industrial civilization, 
 the men from Cornell are doing full duty, such as 
 men do who are educated for the time in which they 
 
68 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 live, and who approach the affairs of men with the 
 confidence of those whose attitude toward life as it is 
 has never become warped or distorted. They cher- 
 ish fondly sentiments of gratitude toward their col- 
 lege and the lofty purpose which has crowned it 
 from the outset. As they pass along life's path, 
 achieving and conquering, they may sometimes have 
 presented to them, by way of contrast, the gentle 
 and affectionate favor of other colleges as they be- 
 stow upon their representatives the blue ribbons of 
 distinction ; but, if Cornell is the Spartan mother, 
 her boys feel that she establishes a plane of self- 
 respect and independence, whereon they may stand 
 free to approach her either in love or reason as the 
 passing years and occasions may warrant. Rest as- 
 sured that sentiments worthy of manly men abide 
 with those who have gone hence, endowed by the rich 
 gifts which this institution bestows, and that, as the 
 old Cornell students busy themselves with the affairs 
 of men, the old song which itsed to wake this cam- 
 pus keeps saying for them : 
 
 " We honor tliee, Cornell, 
 We honor thee, Cornell, 
 While breezes blow and waters flow, 
 We honor thee, Cornell. ' ' 
 
 President Schurman said : The next exercise is the pre- 
 sentation of commemorative volumes, — first to Professor Burt 
 G. Wilder, on behalf of his former students, b}' Dr. Theobald 
 Smith. 
 
DR. smith's presentation. 69 
 
 DR. SMITH'S PRESENTATION. 
 Professor Burt G. Wilder : 
 
 The very pleasant task has been assigned me to 
 present to you to-day, on the happy and successful 
 close of a quarter-century of service in this univer- 
 sity, the congratulations and good wishes of your 
 former students. To make their expression of re- 
 gard toward their teacher something more than a 
 matter of mere form, this volume has been put into 
 my hands to present to you. It is made up of original 
 contributions to science from fifteen of your former 
 pupils. Its dedication reads as follows : " To Burt 
 Green Wilder, B.S., M.D., Professor of Physiology, 
 Vertebrate Zoology, and Neurology in Cornell Uni- 
 versity, this volume is dedicated by his former pupils 
 as a testimonial of their appreciation of his unselfish 
 devotion to the University, and in grateful remem- 
 brance of the inspiration of his teaching and exam- 
 ple." 
 
 This dedication will leave no doubt in your mind 
 concerning the character of this volume. It is what 
 has been known for some time in German univer- 
 sities as a Festschrift. It is a newcomer to American 
 university life, and as yet without a fitting name. 
 
 We might have couched our congratulations in 
 some form which would have been of more personal 
 value to you, or which would have tended to more 
 display and less labor on our part, or which would 
 have included as active participants a larger number 
 of the 3261 students who, at one time or another, 
 
70 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 have come under your personal instruction. But we 
 assumed that the form chosen would best serve our 
 University and meet your cordial approval at the 
 same time. We knew that the most unselfish, the 
 most widely useful offering would reflect best your 
 attitude toward others. Our gift is therefore one 
 which, inspired by your teaching and brought to suc- 
 cessful completion in contemplation of the pleasure 
 and satisfaction it was to bring you, is yet of no 
 more value to you than to any other person who is in 
 a position to make use of its contents. 
 
 But the lesson of unselfishness is not the one we 
 intended to emphasize. This volume has a few other 
 thoughts to express, which I shall try, however inad- 
 equately, to voice for its authors. 
 
 It is, first of all, a witness to the fact that orig- 
 inal research has always been an integral part of 
 your work. However insignificant your facilities, 
 however crowded your quarters, however burdensome 
 the instruction, the long list of articles, monographs, 
 and books prefixed to this volume, bears ample testi- 
 mony that you did not relinquish for a moment the 
 development of new ideas under circumstances which 
 would have discouraged many from rising above the 
 level of a commonplace routine. It has been said 
 that it was a fortunate thing for us that your labora- 
 tories were so small and crowded, because all of your 
 work was done in the presence of your pupils, and 
 we could not very well escape the infection of your 
 enthusiasm. This may be true, but we would not 
 
DR. smith's presentation. 71 
 
 recommend therefore the old regime^ any more than 
 hygiene would recommend that all the members of a 
 family should live in the same room if others could 
 be put at their disposal. 
 
 In looking over the list of your publications 
 (comprising over 135 separate titles) beginning with 
 the year 1861 and extending into the present year, 
 we notice a wide diversity of subjects which involve 
 the evident desire to utilize for pure biology as well 
 as for its application in medicine all new facts and 
 ideas which might be of service to both the science 
 and the art. We are especially pleased to note that 
 in latter years your original work has been restricted 
 more or less to Neurology. This, we trust, is an in- 
 dication that your varied burdens are being shifted 
 in part to other shoulders, and that your energies 
 may be applied uninterruptedly to the most congen- 
 ial subjects. 
 
 The quarter-century which lies behind you has 
 been trying in more than one direction. I need but 
 point to the great change — I would almost say revo- 
 lution — which has come over the attitude of the in- 
 tellectual classes, during the latter years of your 
 term of service, toward biological problems which 
 reach out toward those of human destiny. The 
 dawning conception of a process of evolution going 
 on in the universe, while staring the true biologist in 
 the face as an inevitable reality that had come to 
 stay, was attacked by almost every other class and 
 profession as inimical to the highest interests of hu- 
 
72 THF< ADDRESSES. 
 
 manit3^ But how dififerent to-day. The best thought 
 has surged up to the level of that of the older biolo- 
 gists and even submerged it. The popularizing of 
 the doctrine of evolution is being pushed earnestly 
 by such men as Henry Drummond and Lyman Ab- 
 bott, men of the truest Christian spirit. Your own 
 course during this trying period has been entirel}^ 
 consistent, highly honorable to yourself as a man, 
 and very creditable to your biological instincts. 
 
 We would not be accredited biologists if we did 
 not glance for a moment into the past to note the 
 causes which aided in the unfolding of those biologi- 
 cal instincts that developed and made permanent in 
 you the strong desire to get beyond the alwa3'-s de- 
 fective knowledge of the present. We have your 
 own testimony as to the guidance and close personal 
 friendship of Louis Agassiz and Jeffries Wyman. It 
 is not for me, of a more recent generation, to dwell 
 upon the formative influence exerted by these Amer- 
 ican pioneers of the now all-pervading scientific 
 spirit. We know that this influence was strong, that 
 it is dearly cherished, and we simply desire to pay 
 tribute on this day to the most graceful ornament as 
 well as the greatest power of the teacher's vocation, 
 his personal influence over posterity. 
 
 We would also gratefully recall on this occasion 
 the services of those of your colleagues who have 
 successfully fought with j^ou the ups and downs of 
 this first quarter-century. Traces of their moulding 
 and stimulating infiuence are not wanting in the 
 
DR. smith's presentation. 73 
 
 pages of this volume, and we feel sure that you will 
 give them full recognition. 
 
 In this volume there is also embodied a message 
 to the University. I believe that I voice the senti- 
 ment of its authors when I say that a university is 
 the only true place for research, and that, when this 
 spirit and its fruits are absent, a university does not 
 deserve the name. It is true that original investiga- 
 tion may spasmodically show itself through private 
 munificence or under government auspices, but the 
 difficulty will always lie in the atmosphere, the envi- 
 ronment. Those who devote themselves to the solu- 
 tion of problems whose virtues, like those of Emer- 
 son's weeds, have not yet been discovered, cannot 
 hope to get light in an atmosphere befogged by a 
 false utilitarianism. 
 
 But this is not the occasion for any disquisition on 
 the value of original research, or on the supposed 
 antagonism between what has been popularly de- 
 nominated the theoretical and the practical. To me 
 the main difference seems to be that the latter minis- 
 ters to the immediate present, the former to the fu- 
 ture rather than to the present. Original research has 
 in itself therefore all the elements of service to man- 
 kind if rightly viewed. The economic progress of 
 to-day is based upon the discoveries of men devoted 
 to science for its own sake one or more generations 
 ago. And so the unfolding of a new fact to-day may 
 relieve or aid indirectly in relieving a pressing want 
 of our immediate posterity. 
 
74 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 The ideals of a university are thus in entire ac- 
 cord with those Avhich stimulate research. Cornell 
 University has provided liberally for the mainten- 
 ance of these ideals. The message of this volume is 
 therefore two-fold : It transmits the sincere thanks 
 of its authors to the trustees and benefactors of this 
 institution for what has been done to plant the seeds 
 of which this volume is the early fruitage. It fur- 
 thermore embodies the earnest Avish that, as this now 
 great institution expands still more, original research 
 may always be regarded as its main function ; and 
 that any one who comes with the true ability and the 
 genuine desire to search for the truth in any direc- 
 tion whatsoever, may receive a cordial welcome and 
 find a comfortable and well furnished home. 
 
 It still remains for me to put this volume into 
 your hands. We hope that your critical sense will 
 deal leniently with its shortcomings. Much of it is 
 the outgrowth, not of leisure, bi:t of busy, preoccu- 
 pied lives, and the signs of haste and incompleteness 
 must be ascribed to want of that most important aid 
 to original thought, time. May it add happiness to 
 your life whenever you turn to its pages, and when 
 you shall have reached the age of three score and 
 ten we shall look for the coming of another, larger 
 Jubelband to find a place by its side. 
 
PROI^ESSOR WILDEr'S RESPONSE. 75 
 
 Professor Wilder responded as follows : 
 
 PROFESSOR WINDER'S RESPONSE. 
 
 My former student^ my later assistant^ my long-time 
 friend : 
 
 My acquaintance with this volume is but ten days 
 old, but I learn that the movement for its production 
 was begun in July, 1892. Here are five hundred 
 pages of text, with the equivalent of thirty-eight 
 plates, including an engraving by a master in the art. 
 
 The subjects are all important. Here are repre- 
 sented geology, botany, bacteriology, medicine and 
 surgery, comparative anatomy, entomology, evolu- 
 tion, and social science. With some of these topics my 
 relation is very remote, and the honor radiating from 
 this volume must fall in great degree upon my col- 
 leagues and upon the University as a whole. 
 
 Like most Cornell graduates, the contributors are 
 busy men and women, fully occupied indeed with 
 duties to institutions, to the state, and to the nation. 
 In every case what was regarded as a labor of love has 
 nevertheless been accomplished at a sacrifice of 
 much needed rest and in some instances under most 
 trying conditions. I assure you these sacrifices 
 would not be acceptable to me but for the conviction 
 that, in both intention and effect. Science and Cornell 
 are glorified rather than my humble self. 
 
 Among the contributors are artists, instructors, 
 physicians, ofl&cers in government departments, pro- 
 fessors in medical colleges and in universities, and a 
 
76 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 university president. One of the artists is a woman, 
 highly accomplished in the drawing and engraving 
 of natural history objects, a work demanding the 
 difficult subordination of the artistic sense to the sci- 
 entific conscience. Another woman contributes an 
 article second to none in fact, philosophy, or illustra- 
 tion. This paper alone refutes all assumptions as to 
 the incompatibility of the feminine constitution 
 with delicate manipulation, close observation, accur- 
 ate delineation, clear description, logical reasoning, 
 intellectual initiative, and persistent endeavor. In 
 this connection, and perhaps as exemplifying the 
 transmission of acquired tendencies, it may be add- 
 ed that the child of this woman, the father being 
 also an anatomist, when only five years old declared 
 that his brain was to be given to Dr. Wilder ; it is 
 more probable that he will examine mine. 
 
 My pardonable pride on this occasion is tempered 
 by an ever present realization of shortcomings in 
 ability and method, although never, I think, in pur- 
 pose. But there is one feature of the Anatomical 
 Department upon which we may reflect with satisfac- 
 tion unalloyed. There has been always mutual con- 
 fidence and cordial cooperation. Never at our table 
 has sat " suspicion poisoning his brother's cup." 
 Bach has been kept informed of what all were doing, 
 and we have never harbored that osteological bug- 
 bear, a " skeleton in the closet." 
 
 Naturally these articles have been written by 
 those who like yourself have taken advanced work 
 
PROFESSOR HUFFCUT'S PRESENTATION. ']'] 
 
 in the department. For the rest of the 3261 stu- 
 dents whom it has been my duty and privilege to in- 
 struct, I have no higher wish than that they may 
 resemble you and your collaborators. For I believe 
 you have not cultivated the True and the Beautiful at 
 the expense of the Good. In your lives you declare 
 that above all intellect is character. You are expo- 
 nents of the idea that the highest function of a uni- 
 versity is — without neglecting the increase and 
 dissemination of knowledge — to set the world an ex- 
 ample of industr}^, justice, and purity of life. 
 
 Upon this, the silver anniversary of my union 
 with Cornell University, speech seems to have been 
 expected and I comply. Should I live to see the 
 fiftieth return of the day, I trust there may be given 
 me wisdom to maintain a golden silence, only point- 
 ing to the achievements of the pupils of those who 
 have made this precious book. 
 
 President Schurman then announced the presentation by 
 Professor Huffcut of his history of the University. 
 
 PROFESSOR HUFFCUT'S PRESENTATION. 
 
 Circumstances made me some years ago the tem- 
 porary historiographer of Cornell University. What 
 was then begun under a sense of obligation has 
 since been continued with increasing interest and 
 admiration. The fruit of these investigations I now 
 place in your hands in the hope that it may ease the 
 
78 THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 labors of some worthier successor. Suffer me to add 
 that I rise from these studies of the history of 
 Cornell impressed with the conviction that, while she 
 owes much to a large body of earnest and devoted 
 friends, she owes most of what she is and what she 
 promises to three men, one of whom has gone to his 
 reward, one of whom serves his country in a far 
 distant land, and one of whom we have happily with 
 us on this occasion ; — but the work of all three now 
 firmly and forever established ! 
 
 President Schurman responded : 
 
 This useful and appropriate offering of an hon- 
 ored alumnus to his Alma Mater, I accept in the 
 name of the University with pride and pleasure. 
 
 The President then added : The benediction will now be 
 pronounced by the Rev. Mr. Synnott. 
 
 THE BENEDICTION. 
 
 May the blessing of Almighty God rest upon us 
 and upon our purposes, through Jesus Christ, now 
 and forever, Amen. 
 
THE DINNER. 
 
THE DINNER. 
 
 At the close of the addresses, it benig now past one o'clock, 
 the invited guests and the alumni, under the escort of the 
 Trustees and Faculty of the University, made their wa}' from 
 the lyibrary to the University Gymnasium, where the dinner 
 was in waiting. There sat down to the table some four 
 hundred persons ; and, so happy had been the forecast as to 
 numbers, there were few vacant seats. On the dais, at the 
 north side of the hall, were the President of the University, 
 the orator of the day. Chancellor Upson and Regent McKelwa}', 
 the Hon. Oscar S. Straus, Trustees Cornell, Woodford, lyord, 
 Carnegie, Barnes, Synnott, Williams, Halliday, Hiscock, 
 Kerr, Treman, Turner, and Francis, while the Faculty was 
 represented by Professor Crane, the old students and alumni 
 by the Hon. Joseph C. Hendrix and Seward A. Simons, Esq., 
 and sister institutions by President Low of Columbia, Presi- 
 dent Northrop of the University of Minnesota, President 
 Taylor of Vassar, Chancellor Snow of the University of 
 Kansas, President Hervey of St. L,awrence University, and 
 President Crowell of Trinity College, N. C. 
 
 During the meal President Schurman read to the assem- 
 bled companjr this telegraphic greeting : 
 
 St. Petersburg, Oct. 6th, 1S93. 
 
 President Cornell University ^ Ithaca^ N. V. : 
 
 Most hearty congratulations and best wishes. 
 Andrew D. White. 
 
82 THE DINNER. 
 
 This message from Ex- President White was received with 
 great applause, and, at the suggestion of President Schurman, 
 there was sent the following response : 
 
 Ithaca, Oct. 7TH, 1S93. 
 
 American Mun'ster^ St. Petersburg, Russia : 
 
 Cornell sends heartiest greetings to her first 
 President. 
 
 Schurman. , 
 
 Of the many greetings received from others who were 
 unable to be present at the anniversary, two at least should be 
 here added to that of the first President of the University. 
 From Paris, General John Meredith Read, the only surviving 
 member of the original Board of Trustees of Cornell Univer- 
 sity, wrote : 
 
 General Meredith Read has the honor to acknowl- 
 edge the kind invitation of the Trnstees and Faculty 
 of Cornell University, to attend on Friday, Satur- 
 day, and Sunday, October 6th, 7th, and Sth, 1S93, 
 the public exercises in celebration of the twenty-fifth 
 anniversary of the opening of the Universit}'. It is 
 with extreme regret that he is obliged to decline, 
 owing to absence from the country. 
 
 The Government of the University can readily 
 understand the deep interest with which the only 
 survivor of the ten named in the Charter of the 
 University takes in its present and future welfare, 
 and the justifiable pride which he feels in looking 
 
GENERAL READ'S LETTER. 83 
 
 back Upon the rise and progress of sucli a magnifi- 
 cent fountain of varied learning. 
 
 Paris : 
 
 128 Rue la Boetze, 
 
 Chavips Elysees. 
 22 September, 1893. 
 
 And from Toronto came the following letter from Professor 
 Goldwin Smith, who brought to Cornell Universitj^ as a mem- 
 ber of its Faculty at the outset and for many years, an experi- 
 ence as organizer and as teacher at the oldest of English 
 universities which made him the most valued adviser of its 
 founders : 
 
 The Grange, 
 
 Toronto, 
 4th October, 1893. 
 To 
 
 Dr. Jacob Gould Sclmrtiian^ D.Sc, LL.D., 
 
 President of Cornell University^ 
 Ithaca : 
 My dear President^ — 
 
 My inability to be witb you on tbe twenty-fifth 
 anniversary of the opening of our University is my 
 second great regret. My first was that I missed by a 
 few days being present at the opening itself. Mar- 
 vellous is the change since the day in November, 
 1868, when, coming from England, I landed at Ithaca 
 
84 THE DINNER. 
 
 and was taken by our Founder to the hill now 
 crowned by the numerous and stately buildings of 
 the University. The hill bore at that time, if I 
 recollect aright, only a single finished building. The 
 dulness of a cloudy November morning added to the 
 crude and unpromising aspect of the scene. But 
 behind the clouds was the sun, in the brightness of 
 which we now rejoice. In those days we lived a good 
 deal on hope, which these days have gloriously 
 fulfilled. 
 
 Of those connected with the Universit}^ who stood 
 on the hill twenty-five years ago not many are left. 
 Our Founder sleeps in honour, and most of those 
 who originally shared his enterprise are dead or have 
 gone elsewhere. But some of our original staff 
 remain and will be with you on this occasion to tell 
 the story of the struggle and success. One who will 
 not be with you personally, as he is serving the state 
 on a distant mission, will be present to the thoughts 
 of all. Any one who remembers the early days will 
 say that by his self-devotion and his generoiis effort, 
 not less than by his munificence, Andrew White 
 earned the title of a co-founder. Personally I have 
 special reason to be grateful to him, since I owe to 
 him my connection with Cornell. 
 
 Mr. Cornell's original idea, that of combining 
 manual labour with study, so that the student, while 
 working with his brain, might sustain himself with 
 the labour of his hands, proved not to be feasible on 
 a large scale. The fund of nervous energ}'. will not 
 
PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH'S LETTER. 85 
 
 meet both demands. But we owe perhaps to the 
 attempt and the character which it impressed on us 
 an industrious and frugal race of students. 
 
 It has been my duty as a Lecturer on the Consti- 
 tutional History of England to show American 
 students that their country has a history, though 
 that history commenced on the other side of the 
 Atlantic, as the history of the Mother Country her- 
 self commenced on the other side of the German 
 Ocean. Let us not withhold our debt of gratitude 
 from the past. If in treating of English History 
 before Americans I have ever contravened American 
 tradition, perhaps I have not thereby done much 
 harm. Of the liberties, as we call them, though per- 
 haps they should rather be called re-distributions of 
 political power, which by all these revolutions and 
 convulsions the world has won, some must be deemed 
 still to be on their trial. But liberty of opinion is 
 clear gain ; it is the surest pledge of progress, and it 
 means freedom from the yoke of popular prejudice 
 as well as from that of intolerant laws. 
 
 An Englishman and an Oxford ex-Professof resi- 
 dent in Canada and holding a Chair in an American 
 University seems to be at a point of junction. The 
 old quarrel is now very old, and the feelings of all 
 good and sensible Englishmen and Americans 
 towards each other betoken the moral reunion of our 
 race. For the race at large, scattered as it is over 
 the world, more than moral reunion seems impossi- 
 ble. For the two sections of the race which dwell 
 
86 THE DINNER. 
 
 together on this continent nature seems to design a 
 closer bond, if statesmanship will do its part. A 
 united continent shutting out war and devoted to 
 industry and progress appears at least a rational as 
 well as a generous aspiration. But aspiration be- 
 longs to the young hearts which will fill your Hall 
 rather than to those who like myself have come to 
 the end of their days. 
 
 May your celebration be all that you can desire, 
 and may it open an era if possible of increased pros- 
 perity and honour for Cornell. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 GoLDwiN Smith. 
 
 The toasts and speakers announced for the dinner were as 
 follows : 
 
 1. The University: 
 
 {a) The Trustees, 
 
 {b) The Faculty, 
 
 2. The Commonwealth, 
 
 Hon. Chauncey M. Depew 
 
 3. Sister Institutions of the East, 
 
 President Seth I^ow 
 
 4. The Earlier Students, 
 
 Hon. D. H. McMillan 
 
 5. Theosophy and Education, 
 
 General A. C. Barnes 
 
 Hon. Henry W. Sage 
 Professor T. F. Crane 
 
THE TOASTS. 87 
 
 6. Pra6lical Education, 
 
 Andrew Carnegie 
 
 7. Sister Institutions of the West, 
 
 President Cyrus Northrop 
 
 8. The University and the Press, 
 
 St. Clair McKelway 
 
 9. The Education of Women, 
 
 President James M. Taylor 
 
 10. The College Graduate and the Man of Affairs, 
 
 Hon. Oscar S. Straus 
 
 11. The Eater Alumni. 
 
 Seward A. Simons, A.B., '79 
 
 In the absence of Mr. Sage, the response on behalf of 
 " The Trustees " was made by the Hon. Samuel D. Halliday ; 
 and the Hon. Joseph C. Hendrix took the place of Senator 
 McMillan as the spokesman of ' ' The Earlier Students. ' ' 
 
 It was nearly seven in the evening when the dinner 
 reached an end, and the guests scattered for the night. 
 
THE SERMON 
 
THE SERMON. 
 
 At eleven on the morning of Sunday, the 8th, the mem- 
 bers of the University, with their guests, again gathered at 
 the Armory, to listen to the anniversary sermon by the Bishop 
 of Albany, the Right Reverend William Croswell Doane, 
 D.D. Oxon., LE-D. Cantab., Vice-Chancellor of the Univer- 
 sity of the State of New York. 
 
 BISHOP DOANE'S SERMON. 
 
 Ephesians IV, 17 : This I say therefore, a7id testify hi the 
 Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the 
 vanity of their mind. 
 
 Certainly not the least striking feature, in this 
 earnest exhortation of the apostle to his Ephesian 
 converts, is its perpetual reiteration of complement- 
 ary truths ; by the observance of vi^hich, only, can 
 any real completeness of character be attained. It is 
 not merely a series of prohibitions and a succession 
 of negative statements ; but they are accompanied 
 by a statement of positive duties, and a set of definite 
 commands. It seems to me that this may well be 
 taken to be the essential principle of any true rule of 
 life. The kind of character that is produced by the 
 mere avoidance of wrong is one-sided and imperfect, 
 to say the least of it ; and, from the very first out- 
 going of the law, God's revelation to man of duty. 
 
92 THE SERMON. 
 
 not merely says " thou shalt not," but begins really 
 witb " thou shalt." All that goes to make back-bone 
 in character consists in positiveness. The prevailing 
 habit of our day, the sort of boneless and inverte- 
 brate attitude toward truth and duty, grows out of 
 this wrong method of facing facts. If you begin at 
 the very beginning, you will find that the apostle 
 urges his people to energy and activity in the Chris- 
 tian life. He does not say " that ye henceforth walk 
 ;/(9/'," but " that ye henceforth iva/k^ not as other 
 Gentiles walk;" implying, to say the least of it, 
 what is absolutely true, that the same hot and eager 
 pursuit of their old pleasures, "lasciviousness,unclean- 
 ness, and corruptness," ought to mark the Christian 
 life and character ; eager and earnest for good, as 
 they had been earnest and eager for evil. The next 
 statement is stronger and clearer still. They must 
 "put off the old man," and the^i^ being "renewed in 
 the spirit of their mind," they must " put on the 
 new ; " and this is the cardinal and central statement 
 of all. Think of it in the illustration that is so 
 familiar to us all. The dail}' routine, with which we 
 deal with our physical bodies, consists, one may say, 
 in putting off for the purpose of putting on : the 
 change of dress from day to night and then again 
 from night to day ; or finer still, the illustration of 
 that statement which St. Paul makes elsewhere in 
 his teaching about the great fact and power of the 
 resurrection, that we are to be, not merely " un- 
 clothed," stripped of all that is merely mortal and 
 
BISHOP DOANE'S SERMON. 93 
 
 poor, of the flesh which clothes the better nature of 
 the inner man, — but are to be " clothed upon " with 
 that new resurrection body, identical in one way, so 
 far as individual conditions and individual recogni- 
 tions are concerned, but "a body of glory," a body 
 in which we shall wake up after His likeness and be 
 satisfied with it. We are too much content with put- 
 ting off the bad habits, — which are the same thing as 
 clothes, — and leaving ourselves naked of any posi- 
 tive virtue and unclothed with any real grace. Be- 
 yond this, if one takes the simple application with 
 which St. Paul develops this idea, it will work itself 
 out in practical suggestions of undoubted value to 
 every life. " Put away lying." Why ? In order to 
 speak truth, with plainness and courage and posi- 
 tiveness. The thief is not only " not to steal," but 
 he is to set his hands, which had been used for the 
 base purpose of dishonesty, to honest labour, not 
 merely for labour's sake, but that "he may have to 
 give to him that needeth." The mouth is not only 
 to be cleansed from all corrupt communications, pro- 
 fane, impure, unkind, untrue ; but it is to set itself 
 to the good speech of edifying words which " may 
 minister grace unto the hearer." And in like man- 
 ner bitterness must give place to kindness one to 
 another^ and wrath and anger and clamour and evil- 
 speaking must not only be rooted out ; but the heart 
 on which they lay like stones, and out of which they 
 grow like thorns, must be softened until it is tender. 
 And when all malice has been put away, we must 
 
94 THE SERMON. 
 
 learn that other and greater lesson of the active 
 virtue of forgivingness, " forgiving one another even 
 as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you." Further 
 than this, I do not desire to work out the whole of 
 this great passage of the Word of God, but only to 
 lay down underneath the teaching, which it is my 
 privilege to give to you this morning, this principle, 
 of evil overcome, of sin given up, of vice abandoned, 
 in order that goodness and holiness and virtue may 
 be attained, as lying at the root and being the founda- 
 tion of all efforts at the making of character ; which 
 I take to be the true purpose of the training of every 
 man. It is all well enough to have gathered into bot- 
 tles, and put upon shelves, and labeled with the utmost 
 accuracy, the different drugs which have been first 
 compounded by the aid of chemistry ; but, after all, 
 the value only comes, when men have learned to take 
 the separate elements so gathered and so marked, 
 and put them together into something that shall 
 minister to the healing of disease, and the getting 
 back of strength and health instead. And so the 
 only true effect of any real education is, not to have 
 sorted out and pigeon-holed and marked, either in a 
 commonplace book or in the separate compartments 
 of the mind, this or that formula of science or of 
 philosophy, this or that fact of history, this or that 
 phrase of literature ; but to have taken away from 
 here such portions of learning as may become means 
 and ministries for higher things ; and then to use 
 them for the , great purpose which the Founder of 
 
BISHOP DOANE'S sermon. 95 
 
 this University had in mind, the training and the 
 preparation of men and women, for the work in life 
 " into which it shall please God to call them." 
 
 Taking the sentence, " sententia," to be what it 
 certainly ought to be, the expression of a thought, 
 and measuring size by substance and not by super- 
 ficial extent, I do not think it is too much to say, that 
 few larger sentences have ever been written, few 
 larger thoughts ever conceived, than the sentence 
 and the thought expressed by the far-seeing man 
 who established Cornell University as "an institu- 
 tion where atty person might find instruction in any 
 study." Large, it seems to me, the sentence and the 
 thought are, because of their comprehetisiveness ; 
 not only their comprehension of numbers of men, 
 but their comprehension of the width of study : '"''Any 
 person in any study." Coming as I am to-day to 
 speak at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the found- 
 ing of this University, I may perhaps claim that I 
 stand here in two relations ; partly, as one, a large 
 part of whose life has been given to the practical 
 business of education ; and partly, as honoured by 
 the State of New York by a position in the Board of 
 Regents of its University. So that, when your 
 President gave me the opportunity of sharing in the 
 thoughts and the thanksgivings of to-day, I was very 
 glad to avail myself of it ; both to bring to you the 
 greeting of the Regents ; and to assure you of the 
 sympathy of an educator, whose last venture dates 
 from the same year in which Cornell University was 
 
96 THE SERMON. 
 
 founded. In 1869 I was consecrated to the Episco- 
 pate, and began instantly, as a pressing part of my 
 official duty, the founding of St. Agnes' School. And 
 in 1869, that wise and practical mind whose name 
 finds its highest among many honours, and its ten- 
 derest among many memories, in the University 
 which he first created and then saved, brought to the 
 focus of its beginning the Institution which has so 
 abundantly justified the end of its founding and the 
 wisdom of its plan. It will be enough for me, I 
 think, to say that in my various means of intercourse 
 with the University, and the men who have made it, 
 and are making it still, I have come more and more 
 to feel, with every visit here and with every evidence 
 of the growth and advancement of its work, that its 
 brief history is brilliant, and its long future full of 
 noble promise for the best interests of learning. 
 
 It would be neither honest to myself nor just to 
 you, if I did not frankly say, at the start, that I have 
 the strongest convictions of the grave necessity and 
 absolute importance of definite religious teaching, in 
 anything that goes to make the complete education 
 of a human being. I feel this, not merely because of 
 my position as a religious teacher, nor merely 
 because I must represent the uniform belief and prac- 
 tice of the Holy Catholic Church ; but because it 
 seems to me that it inheres in the actual make-up of 
 every human being, that no education is proportion- 
 ate, which does not take hold of each distinct and 
 separate element in human nature. The overween- 
 
BISHOP DOANE'S sermon. 97 
 
 ing attention to athletic sports, at the expense of 
 proper cultivation of the mind, or the absorption in 
 intellectual pursuits which burns not only the 
 midnight oil, but burns the oil all out of physical 
 force and mental vigour, are both of them to be con- 
 demned and avoided ; not merely because of their 
 evil results, but because they are developing one 
 part of a man at the expense and to the neglect of 
 the other. And in the same line of reasoning, it 
 seems to me impossible to accept the man as an edu- 
 cated man, whose will is left untrained, whose con- 
 science is inactive, whose mind is not led to contem- 
 plate the great mysteries of revealed truth ; and who 
 is not reminded that even his physical powers are 
 given him not merely for digging and delving in the 
 earth, but for the devotion of those powers to the 
 glory of God. In an ideal and Utopian condition of 
 society ; if Christianity were undivided ; if we agreed 
 among ourselves upon even the fundamental princi- 
 ples of the Christian Faith ; if there were only two 
 ecclesiastical systems to be dealt with, namely, 
 Roman Catholicism, and what is called Protestant- 
 ism or evangelical Christianity, this matter could be 
 very readily dealt with. Because each one of these 
 two great lines of thought, the one of which is based 
 upon the tyranny of authority and the other upon 
 the license of individualism (whereas really individ- 
 ualism is liberty under law and not license, and 
 authority is a co-ordinate matter, a limited monarchy, 
 a constitutional government) ; if, I say, we had only 
 
98 THE SERMON. 
 
 these two opposing principles before us, the matter 
 could be easily arranged by letting Roman Catbolics 
 educate tbeir own children in their own peculiar 
 views of religious belief, and letting other Chris- 
 tians train their children, in their way. But no such 
 state of things exists or is likely to exist. Some- 
 times I think there will be a unification of all the 
 Protestant bodies against the political, educational, 
 and ecclesiastical assertions and assu.mptions of 
 Rome. But he is a bold dreamer who hopes for 
 such inherent unity in work and worship, as will 
 enable the gathering together of all un-Roman chil- 
 dren into common religious schools. I believe, then, 
 that each religious body is bound to provide for the 
 complete training in all matters, moral and spiritual, 
 of its own children ; and in the next place that the 
 Christian Church, using it in its largest meaning, 
 is bound to supplement, in all the various ways in 
 which it can be supplemented, the training that is 
 given in non-religious institutions. I should be 
 thankful if here, under the shadow and wing of this 
 great University, and under the shadow and wing of 
 every great University of America, the Church of 
 which I am a minister could have its own Hall, its 
 own Chapel, its own religious teachers, carefully 
 selected, to develop and present the educational sys- 
 tem of the Church ; while at the same time the stu- 
 dents in these Halls could get the enormous advantage 
 of access to the lecture-rooms and libraries of the 
 larger Institutions. Failing of that, and failing of 
 
BISHOP DOANE'S sermon. 99 
 
 any ability to meet that great demand for instruction, 
 which stirred the mind of Ezra Cornell, and certainly 
 must stir the mind of every thoughtful and intelli- 
 gent citizen, it seems to me the duty of Christian 
 men and Christian Churches, to recognize the value, 
 and advance the interests of the whole system of 
 public education, beginning with the Common School 
 and ending with the University ; and to be diligent 
 in season and out of season, in Church and family, 
 in Sunday-schools and Christian organizations of 
 every sort, to consecrate for God the learning and the 
 acquirements which are obtained in schools, that bear 
 no special religious name and have no special relig- 
 ious influence or intention. 
 
 I feel that I am authorized, and I think it is im- 
 portant, to repudiate the impression that a school 
 without definite religious teaching is therefore what 
 is commonly called a godless or irreligious school. 
 The report of your last President for the academic 
 year 1891-92 contains a clear and striking statement 
 in regard to this matter, which I was glad to see and 
 which I am glad to quote. 
 
 "I have always regarded it as a mark of special 
 
 wisdom that in the organization of this University 
 
 provision was made to secure its perpetual exemption 
 
 from political and religious partisanship. The clause 
 
 in the original charter providing that ' at no time 
 
 shall a majority of the Board of Trustees be of one 
 
 religious sect or of no religious sect ' would seem to 
 
 indicate that, while, on the one hand, the University 
 LofC. 
 
lOO , THE SERMON. 
 
 could never drift into the control of any one denom- 
 ination, on the other, it was forced to have a funda- 
 mental bias in favour of Christianity. While this 
 interpretation is not inconsistent with perfect free- 
 dom on the part of teachers and pupils, it is essen- 
 tial to a widespread confidence on the part of a 
 Christian community. While, therefore, there has 
 been a perfect religious freedom in every department 
 of the University, I have always regarded it as 
 strictly within the legitimate scope of my duties as 
 President, to encourage in every way practicable the 
 voluntary religious activities of professors and stu- 
 dents." 
 
 There certainly can be no question of two things : 
 first, that there can be no religious education which 
 is not based upon the teaching of positive and defi- 
 nite dogma and truth. The theory that education is 
 made religious by the reading of a few verses of the 
 Bible at the opening of the school day, or that the 
 schools have become irreligious by the exclusion of 
 the Bible from them, I have felt for many years to be 
 a great mistake. I believe it would have been wiser, 
 years ago, to have yielded to the insincere demand 
 which was made for the exclusion of the Bible from 
 the public schools ; because it would have removed 
 at the same time even the apparent justice of the 
 claim, on the part of any single religious body, to 
 use the public tax moneys, raised for purposes of 
 public education, in their special interest. And be- 
 cause it stands, I think, to reason, that veneering. 
 
BISHOP DOANE'S sermon. IOI 
 
 even with the costliest and choicest of foreign wood, 
 can never make the plain pine stuff on which it is 
 put anything but plain pine. On the other hand, 
 while a secular school could not be made religious by 
 the reading of the Bible, nor irreligious by its exclu- 
 sion, I believe it to be also true that the underlying 
 principles of national morality, to which Washington 
 alluded in his farewell address, and which must be 
 taught of course in all educational institutions, must 
 be based upon general religious principles, as the 
 only real motive to the practice of morality. While, 
 therefore, strictly speaking, religion can not be 
 taught, and while, as a result from this conclusion, 
 the authorized teachers of religion must be most 
 careful to supplement the imperfect education which 
 trains merely the mind, it seems to me that no ethics 
 or morals, or philosophy, or history, or science can 
 be taught in any way, except on the underlying 
 basis of general religious truth. Christianity is the 
 atmosphere in which we think and speak and teach 
 and learn and live. It is the influence which has 
 substituted courtesy and consideration for the intoler- 
 ance, or the worse thing, mere toleration, of the He- 
 brew people ; and it is the power which gives to the 
 agnostic the liberty of his false prophesying and the 
 security and sanctity of his property, his person, and 
 his home. And we have the right to claim, that 
 with all the necessary avoidance of the technical 
 teaching of definite truth, there shall be the abso- 
 lute prohibition of any effort, either directly or indi- 
 
I02 THE SERMON. 
 
 rectly, to sap the instinctive and natural tendency of 
 a man's mind to belief. Dr. Strong, in his remarka- 
 ble book, " Our Country," quotes Plutarck's famous 
 saying, " There never was a city of atheists. You 
 may travel all over the world and you may find cities 
 without walls, without king, without mint, without 
 theatre or gymnasium, but you will nowhere find a 
 city without a god, without prayer, without oracle, 
 without sacrifice. Sooner may a city stand without 
 foundations than a city without belief in the gods." 
 
 Having said this much, I beg to throw myself 
 with all the earnestness I am capable of into the estab- 
 lishment of two things : first, to assert the bounden 
 duty of the State to rescue all its citizens from the 
 misery of ignorance, which is the inevitable mother 
 of vice ; and secondly to press home upon the minds 
 of the young men to whom it is my privilege and 
 responsibility to speak to-day, the debt which their 
 nature as God made it, and their opportunities as 
 God gives them, lay upon them, to learn the duties, 
 and fit themselves to discharge the duties, of Chris- 
 tian citizenship in a. Christian State. It is better to 
 face the fact that, and the reason why, the State is 
 obliged not only to establish common schools and 
 support them by a compulsor}- tax, but also to com- 
 pel the attendance of children in them. And the 
 basis of the whole argument rests, it seems to me, at 
 its foundation, upon drawing the distinction between 
 what we are very fond of talking of, namely the 
 rights of citizens, and the dtities. both of citizens and 
 
BISHOP doane's sermon. 103 
 
 of tlie State. I do not mean to make too sweeping a 
 statement as to rights. There are certain things 
 which are called rights, inherent in man. The three 
 great elements in the Declaration of Independence, 
 " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," may in 
 a way be called the rights of men. That is to say, 
 they are the things which God gives them of His 
 goodness and which no government has a right to 
 take away. But the ground and reason for popular 
 and universal education is not the 7-ight of the citi- 
 zen, but the duty of the State to itself. It must pro- 
 tect its own existence, and the life and liberty and 
 happiness of its people, by providing against the 
 brutality which belongs to ignorance. And it can 
 only do this, by establishing Common Schools, that 
 is schools for all, and by compelling the attendance 
 of its children in them. In a way it is true — and I 
 believe we ought to be more than we are on our 
 guard against extravagance and excess — that only a 
 limited amovmt of education is necessary to accom- 
 plish this end ; that it would be sufficient to ground 
 all children in the elements of education, and to let 
 what lies beyond that take care of itself. I am not 
 sure that we are not in danger of risking the stabil- 
 ity and usefulness of our public system of education, 
 by allowing it to get into the higher regions of a 
 somewhat sentimental theory. I am quite sure, that 
 in certain cases and in certain ways the free provi- 
 sion of an almost compulsory system of higher edu- 
 cation has worked and will work harm. The child of 
 
I04 THE SERMON. 
 
 ordinary capacity, passed on as a matter of course 
 from one school to another, to learn all departments 
 of knowledge, which it is capable neither of accept- 
 ing or appreciating, brings a charge upon the State 
 with no adequate result or return. The over-education 
 of children whose lot in life is likely to lie among 
 what are called the industrial pursuits, sometimes 
 unfits the character for contentment and the cheerful 
 undertaking of the duties of their state of life. It 
 seems to me that we ought to guard, by the insist- 
 ence of careful and thorough examination, against 
 the idea that every child who has gone through the 
 primary school must necessarily pass on to the High 
 School and the University. Sifting, I believe, is 
 needed, not for the first entrance into any, but for 
 every exit from every grade of our schools. Other- 
 wise we are wasting time and money and educating 
 people into unfitness for their work in life, and dis- 
 content with their position. But I am very clear, 
 that with the broad and splendid opportunities that 
 open in a country like ours, for everybody, no matter 
 where he begins, it must be true that every child who 
 can receive and use it, ought to have the opportunity 
 of receiving from the State the very highest and 
 completest education that can be given. And there- 
 fore not only this University here, and the High 
 School everywhere, but where there is not time for 
 these the system which the Regents have so warmly 
 endorsed, of what is miscalled "university exten- 
 sion," is the highest wisdom for the State of New 
 
BISHOP DOANE'S sermon. 105 
 
 York and for the great Republic in which she holds 
 so honorable a place. Let us have no uncertain 
 mind, and speak with no uncertain voice, about the 
 first principle, that the State must for its own preser- 
 vation reclaim and rescue every child from igno- 
 rance ; and open to every citizen every opportunity for 
 learning which he shall prove himself able to 
 receive. 
 
 And so I pass to consider the question of the 
 duties of Christian citizens to a Christian State. 
 With all my heart I thank God, that, by the very 
 essential principles of the organization of this gov- 
 ernment, there is no possible complication between 
 Church and State. I should be as sorry to see the 
 ■Church established here, as I should be sorry, for the 
 sake of the State of Old England, to see the Church 
 dis-established there. But while we rejoice in the 
 entire freedom from all state control in ecclesiastical 
 matters, and while we are bound to repudiate, come 
 from what quarter it will, any attempt at ecclesiasti- 
 cal interference in state matters, I do not think I 
 need be at any pains to argue the position, that the 
 State in America is Christian. In the first place, 
 Christianity is only the other and higher name for 
 civilization. Even the mere dreams of Christ among 
 the higher heathen of the old time, and the clear 
 prophecy of him among the Hebrew people, were all 
 that gave its tinge and tone to even the imperfect 
 civilization of Hebrew, Roman, and Greek. And 
 where the nobler, truer civilization is, it is only the 
 
Io6 THE SERMON. 
 
 under side and human name for Christianity. It is 
 the Lord Christ, claiming the kingdoms of the world 
 for His own ; imperfectly, as I believe, imless He 
 stands clearly recognized and known, in the familiar 
 lineaments and outlines of the Catholic Creed ; but 
 yet plainly enough and powerfully enough, wherever 
 He is known, or His name is named at all. He is in 
 the midst of, and he is the maker of everything that 
 we value, of liberty, of society, of home-life, of the 
 dignity of womanhood, of the reverence for child- 
 hood, of the care of the sick and the poor, of the 
 sanctity of oaths, of the stability of government. 
 And the more plainly and the more perfectly he is 
 known and recognized, the more perfect and complete 
 the civilization is. 
 
 Apart from this inherent principle, there are the 
 very highest and wisest American authorities for the 
 statement that this government is based upon Chris- 
 tianity. Chief Justice Story sa3'S that " Christianity 
 is part of the common law, from which it seeks the 
 sanction of its rights and b}' which it endeavors to 
 regulate its doctrine." And our great constitutional 
 interpreter, Daniel Webster, says " there is nothing 
 we may look for with more certainty than the gen- 
 eral principle that Christianity is part of the law of 
 the land." And if civilization is Christianity, if the 
 civitas is Christian, then it must be that the true 
 civis, the complete citizen, must be Christian too. 
 To claim and reclaim for Him the humanity which 
 He lifted by lowering Himself to enter into it, is the 
 
BISHOP DOANE'S sermon. 107 
 
 supreme obligation and the splendid opportunity of 
 every American. We have been living for five and 
 twenty years in dangerous times ; times of enormous 
 material prosperity, when the great wave of recuper- 
 ation from the disaster and distress of the civil war 
 has risen to the flood tide, of such accumulation of 
 wealth, such absorption in the hot haste to get rich, 
 such discoveries in applied science, such opening of 
 avenues for making money, as are rapidly leading us 
 to gross materialism — to the worship of the calf of 
 gold, to a belief in the omnipotent ability of wealth 
 to secure happiness and satisfy the whole nature of 
 man. It must be that the same elements are latent 
 and lurking, which, in the sad surprise of a sudden 
 call for the preservation of the Union, made armed 
 men leap like the fabled phalanx from the teeth 
 which Cadmus sowed. What we need is the call to 
 arms, the consciousness of truth, the summons to 
 defend the right. And all these are really sounding 
 in your ears. When you have learned the lesson, 
 that the selfish life is the ignoble life, — that every 
 talent hidden in a napkin, no matter how clean the 
 name of the napkin may be, is really soiled by being 
 buried in the dirt, — you will begin to look for the 
 place and the way in which your life is to be spent 
 for the advancement of your fellow-men. Next to, 
 and part of, the great and ruling principle of the 
 love of God, comes, it seems to me, the principle 
 which is only its complement, that of loyalty to 
 country. It is quite unpardonable, that because there 
 
Io8 THE SERMON. 
 
 is no one incarnate, personified, presentation of the 
 principle of loyalty, that we should lack it in our 
 great republic. I remember the thrill, which stirred 
 me to the depths of my nature, when, at the opening 
 of the Imperial Institute in London last year, I 
 heard Her Majesty, the Queen, as she^sat crownless 
 and undistinguished except by the extreme simplicity 
 of dress from anybody in that great multitude, say 
 at the end of her speech, in a voice which filled the 
 room and stirred the hearts of all who were present, " I 
 hope that the opening of this Imperial Institute will 
 advance the unity and the loyalty of viy empire." I 
 am here to claim, that, by the very principles of this 
 republic, every citizen of America has the right not 
 only, but the duty, to claim with an equal conscious- 
 ness of definite right that the United States of Amer- 
 ica is his empire. The famous saying of the great 
 martyred President, that the principle of America 
 was "a government of the people, by the people, for 
 the people," means this, and it means more than this. 
 Because it means, in the first place, that the people 
 are to be governed in order that they may be govern- 
 ors. And ' the people ' stand simply for the accumu- 
 lation of individuals ; and if they are to be governed 
 it must be by the attainment of self-government on 
 the part of every separate one. The problem which 
 faces us to-day is intensely the problem of the people, 
 because the great dangers of the Republic grow out 
 of the fact that we are in that process, which makes 
 even boa-constrictors sleepy and indifferent, of 
 
BISHOP DOANE'S sermon. 109 
 
 attempting to digest, into tlie body politic, an enor- 
 mous mass of alien substance. Tbe foreign immigra- 
 tion into America, which first crowds and then con- 
 trols our cities, and in that way by sheer brute force 
 of numbers controls the country and the towns, is 
 under our existing conditions a perpetual menace. 
 Alien in religion, in training, in habit of thought, 
 swinging, under the old pendulum law, from the 
 extreme of tyranny, both civil and ecclesiastical, to 
 the extreme of license in belief and life, they are 
 nevertheless, in many of the greatest cities of the 
 country, the governing majority of the population. 
 I am not a believer in restricted immigration ; and, 
 when it is applied to the exclusion of the Chinese 
 exclusively, it seems to me a violation both of Chris- 
 tian law and Christian duty, and of the fundamental 
 principles of the government. There are far worse 
 elements, which our present laws invite to enter our 
 Republic, than the " heathen Chinese." And if we 
 can establish a quarantine which will keep out the 
 plague-spot, the escaped criminals and convicts, the 
 ignorant, the idle, the vicious, the scum and outcast 
 of the world, we shall have done a wise thing. But 
 the point, I am sure, of chief protection and chief 
 importance is to break down the theory of the wis- 
 dom of the rapidity of naturalization. It is a diffi- 
 cult thing to make a citizen, and it ought to take 
 more time. You and I, native born, have to wait for 
 one and twenty years to attain an age not only of 
 personal but of national discretion, before we are 
 
no THE SERMON. 
 
 trusted with tlie responsibilities of citizensliip. And 
 it seems to me a defiance of justice and of common 
 sense, to make a brief residence, witli a careless and 
 casual oatb, a substitute for our long years of train- 
 ing and our lifelong associations witli the birtbrigbt 
 of our freedom. I should be thankful if America 
 would once rise to the fact that she will welcome to 
 the abundant opportunities of liberty and of labour 
 all who are disposed to come ; that she will keep 
 them strongly within the control of the constitu- 
 tional principles of her government ; that she will 
 protect them in the discharge of their duties and 
 assure to them the possession of their natural rights ; 
 but that she will give to them the privilege of shar- 
 ing in the administration of the government, only 
 when they have been long enough here to have 
 unlearned the foreign habits of thought and life, and 
 have come of age, have come to an American major- 
 ity, come to be real Americans, in thought and life 
 and feeling and affection and responsibility. I can 
 not see why twenty-one years, if it is not too long for 
 a native born American to become a full citizen, is an 
 hour too long to convert a foreigner into an Ameri- 
 can. There is a story told of an election held in 
 Cincinnati, at which three foreigners, a German, a 
 Scandinavian, and a Dane, declined to allow a native 
 born American citizen to vote because he could not 
 produce his naturalization papers. I hope the time 
 is coming when three American citizens will stand 
 at every poll, and, according to law, forbid the votes 
 
BISHOP DOANE'S sermon. Ill 
 
 of any who are not naturalized, — not b}^ naturaliza- 
 tion papers, but by training and steeping in the 
 atmosphere of our republican principles. It rests 
 with you, I am quite sure, young men, to see to it 
 that the whole thought of citizenship is illustrated 
 and enforced in your lives. 
 
 I believe that what we need to learn more and 
 more is a sense of the dignity of labour ; that idle- 
 ness is an ignoble thing ; that work, so far from be- 
 ing part of the curse and consequence of evil, was 
 the iirst privilege that was given to man when he 
 stood freshly created in the image of God ; that the 
 only leisure class in America, as an American 
 woman once said, are what we call tramps. There 
 are two things to be remembered. In the first place, 
 that there is labour which leaves no mark of hard- 
 ness on the hands ; labour of brain, and heart, and 
 soul ; labour of care and anxiousness and responsi- 
 bility ; labour that comes often to those who seem to 
 the shallow conception of ignorance to be the lei- 
 surely people in the world. I mean the men of 
 wealth, upon whose judgment in the administration 
 of their great possessions rests in large degree the 
 prosperity and safety of their fellow men. This late 
 financial crisis has brought to the fore the fact, that 
 the bankers and business men of America, weighed 
 down with the tremendous sense of the trusts they 
 are administering for others, have had to bear the 
 heaviest brunt of the burden that such crises impose 
 upon men ; and I believe that you and I have need to 
 
112 THE SERMON. 
 
 recognize, witli unreserved thankfulness and with 
 great pride, how they have come, many of them with 
 loss of personal possessions, clean and unscathed 
 from all dishonour or unfaithfulness to trust. 
 
 To those of us whose line of labour lies in some- 
 thing beside manual toil, there must come home the 
 sense of the great need of higher standards in the 
 professions. No matter what the calling may be, 
 theology, law, medicine, engineering, architecture, 
 mining, anything, the man who enters it is bound to 
 realize that if he seeks merely some selfish and per- 
 sonal gain he is degrading the profession which he 
 has entered ; while, on the other hand, he is help- 
 ing and ennobling mankind, advancing civilization, 
 adorning and building up the State if he mines hon- 
 estly, — if he builds true and honest houses, — if he 
 argues his causes with true deference to equity as well 
 as to the technicalities of law, — if he avoids the 
 secrecy and sham of quackery, — if he preaches and 
 lives the truth. Set up your standards and set them 
 high, and then live up to them, not for your own 
 sakes merely, but that in this way you may do your 
 duty as Christian citizens in a Christian state. 
 
 Nor, I think, may we be unmindful of the fact 
 that this same dignity of labour and this same duty 
 of honesty about it needs to be impressed upon Avhat 
 are commonly called the industrial classes. It is one 
 of the painful and anxious facts of our time, that the 
 best bone and muscle hastens from the country to 
 the city, and leaves fields untilled and farms deserted. 
 
BISHOP DOANE'S sermon. II3 
 
 that it may crowd into what is too often the un- 
 healthy stimulus of an anxious and uncertain city 
 life. It is part of the honour of the intention and 
 of the accomplishment of this University, that it 
 tends to advance and elevate the dignity and impor- 
 tatice especially of agriculture. While we are bound 
 to insist that men do work, whose implements are 
 others than spades and ploughs, we are also bound to 
 insist that, since the first man was set in the garden 
 to till it and dress it, there is no more honorable 
 occupation than that which sets itself to wring from 
 the reluctant earth harvests for the comfort of man- 
 kind ; and that there is no greater opportunity of 
 service to America and to the world, than in the en- 
 largement and improvement of the crop-bearing por- 
 tions of our splendid inheritance. 
 
 Indeed, there is a sort of sublime opportunity of 
 restitution in the cultivation of the ground. The 
 groans and travail of creation until now, the thorns 
 and briers which cumber and cui'se the earth, are the 
 reflection, on material nature, of the sin of its lord. 
 What better service can man do, redeemed him- 
 self from the curse by the sweat and blood of the 
 second Adam, than to rescue and reclaim for gracious 
 harvests the waste places and the weedy places of 
 the earth ? It is our share in, and our complement of 
 the Lord's redemption of the world. 
 
 And all the while what is to be the aim and the 
 ambition of your work ? Be careful of this, my 
 friends. There is no more searching statement in 
 
114 THE SERMON. 
 
 all the Master's utterances than this, " They have 
 their reward." The people who give alms to be seen 
 of men, the people who fast and pray with long faces 
 and the repetition of long prayers where men can 
 see them, and the people who look only to Him that 
 seeth in secret, of all these it is true " they have 
 their reward." That is to say, what a man gets de- 
 pends ixpon what he works for. High standards, 
 high aims, high ambitions, set these before you from 
 the start. Money, if you will, but not for its mere 
 having; political place, if you will, but not for self- 
 seeking ; literary reputation, if you will, but not for 
 mere popularity. 
 
 Every faculty, every endowment, every attain- 
 ment, every advancement, to the true man is for 
 some further step and for some higher end. Every- 
 thing that is gained is to be used not merely to gain 
 more of the same kind, but to gain something better 
 than it is by the use of it. 
 
 Highest of all aims is the advancement of the 
 glory of God, the spreading of His Kingdom on the 
 earth, bringing men into obedience and allegiance to 
 Him ; and this is not merely vagueness and vapidity 
 of words, because God's highest glory is the fact 
 that He seeks the happiness of the creatures whom 
 He has made ; and we shall serve Him best and best 
 promote His glory when we set ourselves, after the 
 pattern of His incarnate Son, to the service of our 
 fellow men. 
 
BISHOP DOANE'S sermon. II5 
 
 The speech of to-day is naturally and necessarily 
 set in a more serious and soberer tone than the 
 "thoughts that breathed" in "words that burned," 
 yesterday ; for the preacher has to deal with deeper 
 truths and in more solemn ways. Yesterday was the 
 day of recollections. This is the day of resolutions. 
 And what recollections they were, — of a great faith, 
 a noble purpose, an irresistible persistence, an un- 
 conquerable energy, an inextinguishable hope ; of 
 such a growth as staggers us, in even that fractional 
 part of results which figures can compute, till an 
 income of more than half a million of dollars enables 
 one hundred and fifty scholars to teach two thousand 
 young men, in noble buildings furnished with the 
 most perfect appliances that gracious gifts and wise 
 administration can secure ; recollections of names 
 that neither patriotism nor grateful affection will let 
 die, Cornell and Sage, Sibley and McGraw, White 
 and Gold^Yin Smith and Adams, and, not least, 
 Ostrander, whose name lives in the avenue of his 
 elms ; men who have had the rare power not only to 
 found, but to build on and add to other men's founda- 
 tions, content to let the whole sum of their service 
 and spending gather about the name of the Founder ; 
 of whom it is true, that he is not less honoured in 
 the University that he founded, than in the friends 
 he found ; recollections not only of foundation and 
 accumulation but of the administration of a great 
 trust with that splendid unselfishness which watches 
 and cares for capital from which no personal benefit 
 
Il6 THE SERMON. 
 
 accrues, in the spirit that exceeds the law, by loving 
 one's neighbour better than one's self. 
 
 These are the recollections which are your inher- 
 itance, young men, to-day. Respondete natalibus ! 
 
 What shall be done with them ? They are too 
 precious to be treated as mere mummied memories 
 of a dead past. They are too alive with love and 
 zeal and energy, to be arranged like fossils on an 
 archaeological shelf. They are too enduring to evap- 
 orate in the echoes of your College Song : 
 
 "Hail ! all hail, Cornell !" 
 
 The noblest past has no value but as it passes 
 through the smelting of an eager present, into the 
 coinage of a finer future. Birthrights are worse 
 than nothing if they do not become the life-rights of 
 their inheritor. 
 
 Take, then, the great recollections of this silver 
 wedding of a good name with a good cause, and turn 
 them into the stern resolves : to make your lives as 
 theirs were, who have been making your life here, 
 earnest and helpful, strong in faith and hope and 
 love, unselfish and true and real, 
 
 ' ' Not afraid to dare and do, 
 And arrayed in every fight 
 On the battle side of right 
 With the knowledge that is victory and power," — 
 
 " the knowledge of the only true God and Jesus 
 Christ whom He has sent " ; for this is life eternal. 
 
THE SERVICE AT BARNES HALL. II7 
 
 On Sunday evening, at Barnes Hall, was held the com- 
 memoratory service of the Cornell University Christian Asso- 
 ciation. All its exercises took place as announced ; and with 
 this service the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of 
 the opening of Cornell University was at an end. 
 
VIEWS OF 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
 IN ITS 
 FIRST QUARTER-CENTURY 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY IN i5 
 
 THE FOUNDER AND THE ORIGINAL FACULTY 
 
These photographs of the Founder and the original Facultj' 
 of Cornell University were taken (with the exception of those 
 forming the topmost row in the picture) by Purdy and Frear 
 at Ithaca, in the first year of the University, and were thus 
 grouped by them. The photograph of Professor Agassiz used 
 in the group was from a painting, and is here replaced by one 
 more satisfactorj'. 
 
 The five portraits in the upper row of the present picture 
 were for various reasons lacking to the group, and are now sup- 
 plied from other contemporary photographs. With this addi- 
 tion the roll of the resident Faculty is complete ; and, of the 
 non-residents, Agassiz, Curtis, Dwight, Gould, and Lowell 
 are here. 
 
 The numbers of the following key correspond to those of 
 the plate : 
 
 I. Ezra Cornell. 2. Andrew D. White. 
 
 3. Theodore W. Dwight. 16. Homer B. Sprague. 
 
 4. WiLLARD FiSKE. 1 7. ZiBA H. POTTER. 
 
 5. Evan W. Evans. i8. John L. Morris. 
 
 6. William C. Cleveland. 19. William D. Wilson. 
 
 7. Burt G. Wilder. 20. William C. Russel. 
 
 8. Joseph H. Whittlesey. 21. Goldwin Smith. 
 
 9. Lewis Spaulding. 22. James Russell Lowell. 
 ID. James Law. 23. George William Curtis. 
 
 11. Eli W. Blake. 24. James M. Crafts. 
 
 12. Chas. Fred Hartt. 25. T. Frederick Crane. 
 
 13. Louis Agassiz. 26. Albert N. Prentiss. 
 
 14. George C. Caldwell. 27. Albert S. Wheeler. 
 
 15. James Morgan Hart. 28. John Stanton Gould. 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY IN 1868 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY FROM THE VALLEY 
 
The view is from the cupola of the CUnton House, look- 
 ing toward East Hill. On the crest of the hill, at the left-hand 
 upper corner of the picture, maj' be seen Morrill Hall (then 
 called "South University"), the one building completed. Just 
 to the right of it the temporary shelter of the chime is nearly 
 hidden by the trees. Near the right-hand upper corner appears 
 Cascadilla Place, built for a watercure establishment, but 
 given to the university at its opening and of the utmost ser- 
 vice in its early years. To the right of this, in the background, 
 the "Giles Place" (now Cascadilla Cottage, the residence of 
 Professor Corson). On the left of the picture, beyond Casca- 
 dilla gorge, the village burying-ground is seen, and, crossing 
 it, the footpath, then as ever since the favorite short-cut to 
 the Campus. 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY IN 1868 
 
 THE ENTRANCE TO THE CAMPUS 
 SOUTH UNIVERSITY BUILDING (MORRII.L HALL) 
 
The first bridge over Cascadilla gorge, at the entrance to 
 the Campus. It was a wtjoden structure, crossing at the same 
 point as the present bridge, but much nearer the stream. 
 
 "South University" (now Morrill Hall), as seen from the 
 centre of the Campus, looking southwest. The shed-like 
 structure projecting from its northern end is the power-hoaise 
 sheltering the engine which ran the University printing-press. 
 At the left of the picture appears the temporary tower for the 
 chime. In the foreground, just at the right of the embank- 
 ment, maj' be seen a spring much used by the students. The 
 white object across the road from Morrill Hall is a trough for 
 the watering of horses. 
 
""^ 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY IN 1872 
 
 THE CAMPUS, LOOKING NORTH 
 
This view is from near the site of the present Boardraan 
 Hall (the school of law). It was taken in early May of 1872, 
 and was distributed by the Cornell Era as a gift to its sub- 
 scribers. Each of the twelve negatives taken had a differ- 
 ent group of students in the foreground. Merrill Hall (then 
 "South University"), McGraw Hall, and White Hall (then 
 "North University") appear at the left, Sibley College in the 
 background, and at the right the temporary wooden building 
 used as a chemical laboratory and familiarly known for years 
 as the "Old Lab." Sundry farm buildings of the University 
 mav be seen behind. 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY IN 1878 
 
 THE CAMPUS, LOOKING NORTH 
 THE CAMPUS, LOOKING SOUTHWEST 
 
These two views, taken in the summer of 1878 from Sage 
 College, the one looking north, the other southwest, show all 
 the buildings of the Campus proper except Sage College itself. 
 
 In the upper view appear in the foreground Sage Chapel 
 and the house of Professor Babcock ; at the left, behind, Mor- 
 rill (South University), McGraw, and White (North Univer- 
 sity), with the lake in the distance ; in the centre, half-hidden 
 by the trees, Sibley College ; and, at the right, the Old Lab- 
 oratory with the farm buildings in the background. 
 
 In the lower view are seen the residences of Professors 
 Crane, Shackford, and Morris, and, still further to the left, the 
 barn-like old Gymnasium, owned by the students. Beyond 
 may be dimly made out Ithaca in its valley with the surround- 
 ing; hills. 
 
CORNEIvL UNIVERSITY IN 1887 
 
 THE CAMPUS, LOOKING NORTH 
 
Again a view from Sage College. In addition to the older 
 buildings, a new physical laboratory (now Franklin Hall) looms 
 up at the northwest corner of the Campus, in the angle be- 
 tween White and Sibley ; and over the top of the "Old Lab" 
 (become the Civil Engineering Building) are visible the roofs 
 and tall chimne}' of the additions to Sibley- College. The 
 strange mast seen over the western gable of Sage Chapel is the 
 pole of the University's weather signal station. Beyond it, on 
 thebrowof the hill, overlooking the lake, appears the McGraw- 
 Fiske mansion. In the immediate foreground, at the left, may 
 be seen preparations for the erection of Barnes Hall. 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY IN 1893 
 
 THE CAMPUS, LOOKING NORTH 
 
The view is again from Sage College, but with striking 
 changes. Be}'ond Sage Chapel, at the left, the new University 
 Library, with its bell-tower ; at the right, the new law build- 
 ing (Boardman Hall). In the background, over the roofs of 
 McGraw and at its left is seen the chemical laboratory (Morse 
 Hall). Sibley College, in the centre, has doubled its original 
 size, and is flanked by lesser buildings, its workshops. The 
 old laboratory has disappeared, and looking past its site one 
 sees instead the new college of Architecture and Civil Engineer- 
 ing (Lincoln Hall). 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY IN 189^ 
 
 THE CAMPUS, LOOKING SOUTH 
 
Looking south from Sage Chapel. At the left. Sage Col- 
 lege, the residence of the women of the University. In the 
 foreground, Barnes Hall, the home of the Universit}' Christian 
 Association. At the right, further back, the combined Gym- 
 nasium and Armory, flying its flag. Over the roofs of Barnes 
 Hall and Sage College may be seen the homes of professors. 
 The tall building in the distance, at the left of the Armor}-, is 
 that of the Cascadilla School. 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY IN 1893 
 
 SAGE COLLEGE 
 
 BARNES HALL 
 
 THE ARMORY (THE GYMNASIUM) 
 
Sao;e College, from the southwest. 
 
 Barnes Hall, from the northwest. Sage College and the 
 Armory in the background. 
 
 The Armory (the Gj'mnasium) from the northwest. 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY IN 1893 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
The University Library-, from the Campus, looking south- 
 west. At the left, its bell-tower for the chime and clock. 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 (From the Minutes of the Board of Trustees, April 24, 1894.) 
 
 The President of the University presented a 
 final proof of the publication reporting the Proceed- 
 ings and Addresses at the Quarter-Century Celebra- 
 tion, and offered the following resolutions, which 
 were unanimously adopted : 
 
 Resolved^ That the cordial thanks of the Board 
 be, and the same are hereby, tendered to Professor 
 George L. Burr for the labor, care, and taste with 
 which, in fulfillment of the editorial task laid upon 
 him by the Board, he has accomplished the prepara- 
 tion and illustration of the volume containing the 
 Proceedings and Addresses at the Twenty-Fifth 
 Anniversary of the Opening of Cornell University. 
 
 Further Resolved^ That Professor Burr be 
 directed to publish this minute as a postscript to 
 the volume. 
 
029 923 185 9