LD 3875 - B 483913 I cl, h KI5 I s?9 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN IN MEMORIAM L1& HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN IN MEMORIAM THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS 32 WAVERLY PLACE, NEW YORK CITY 1923 Copyright 1928, by Nzw YoBax UNIvseITY THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS APTJEX HuNTINGTON NASON, PH.D., DIuECTOB THE KENNEBEO JOURNAL PBESS AGUSTA,, MAnma j) A CONTENTS PART I. HENRY MITCHEILI, MACCRACKEN, A BloGRAPHICAI SKETCH. By John Henry MacCracken, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Lafayette College.................................... I PART II. EXERCISES IN MEMORY O THE LIFE AND SERVICES oP CHANCELLOR MACCRACKEN, MAY 3, 1919 9.............................15 INVOCATION. By the Reverend Charles Lemuel Thompson, D.D., LL.D., Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions.... 17 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. By Elmer Ellsworth Brown, Ph.D., LL.D., Chancellor of New York University........................ 20 CHANCEILLOR MACCRACKEN AS RE-CREATOR 01P NEw YORK UNIVERSITY. By the Reverend George Alexander, D.D., President of the Council of New York University......... 23 CHANCEILOR MACCRACKEN AS MAN. By Francis Hovey Stoddard, Ph.D., Dean Emeritus of the College of Arts and Pure Science of New York University................... 30 CHANCEMLOR MACCRACKEN AS CITIZEN. By the Reverend Henry Sloane Coffin, D.D., Pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church 40 vi CONTENTS CHANCEýLLOR MACCRACKEN AS EDUCATOR. By Samuel Black McCormick, D.D., LL.D., Chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh 49 PART III. THE PLACE OF CHANCELLOR MACCRACKEN IN THE HISTORY ovI NEw YORK UNIVERSITY. By Professor E. G. Sihler, Ph.D., Litt.D., Historian of New York University.................... 59 PART I HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH By JOHN HENRY MACCRACKEN, PH.D., LL.D., President of Lafayette College BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH HENRY MITCHELL MACCRACKEN was born September 28, 1840, at Oxford, Ohio. He was the eldest son of the Reverend John Steele MacCracken and of Eliza Hawkins Dougherty Welch, and the great-grandson of Henry MacCracken of Sunbury, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, who was killed by the Indians in the Revolution on the Upper Susquehanna, September 24, 1780. On the maternal side, he was a great-great-great-grandson of the English Colonel Charles Hawkins of Exeter, who was killed at the siege of Gibraltar, 1704. He came, therefore, of fighting blood. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the homes of the MacCrackens and Wilsons were about twenty miles north of Cincinnati; but the spirit of the pioneer was still strong, and, in the early part of the century, the MacCrackens moved to Greene County, Ohio, again doing the work of pioneers HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN building a house and farm buildings out of hewn logs, and raising sons as stalwart and vigorous as the great trees they felled. Henry MacCracken's father, a minister of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, had received his education at Miami College, Oxford, Ohio, and his mother had taught in Dr. Beatty's Seminary in Steubenville, and subsequently in Oxford. Henry Mitchell MacCracken entered the sub-freshman class at Miami in the year 1852 when only twelve years old, and was graduated five years later in July, 1857, before he had reached his seventeenth birthday. He stood fifth or sixth in his class, and was awarded a Commencement oration which he delivered, on the subject "Our Inquisition." The inquisition in question was the public press. Perhaps it was this early turning of his attention to the public press that laid the foundations for the skill shown by him in later years in handling the publicity of a great institution. The first year after graduation, he spent as principal of Grove Academy at Cedarville, Ohio, and the two following years as superintendent of schools at South Charleston, Ohio. In the summer of 1859, A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH he paid a visit to relatives at Springfield, Illinois, and seriously considered applying for a position as clerk in Mr. Lincoln's law office. In the meantime, however, his father had moved to Xenia, Ohio, and was anxious to have his son make his home with him. He resigned, therefore, as superintendent of schools at South Charleston to take a position as Classical teacher in the high school in Xenia and at the same time pursue certain studies at the United Presbyterian Theological Seminary in that city. During the year, he reached the decision to become a minister, and was received under the care of the Presbytery in October, 1861, having decided to identify himself not with the Reformed Church or the United Presbyterian Church-the churches with which his family had been connected up to this time-but with the larger organization now known as the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. The county in which he was living more than filled its quota of volunteers for the Civil War; so the theologian continued his studies, caring for a church in Toledo, Ohio, for two months in the summer of 1862 and going to Princeton Theological Seminary to complete the last year of his theological course in 1863. HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN Shortly after (being now 23 years old) he was called to be pastor of the Westminster Church at Columbus, Ohio, and filled that important pulpit during the stirring days of the war and until 1867, when the time seemed ripe for him to fulfill his long-cherished desire of studying abroad. He secured leave of absence, without salary, for six months, and sailed on a side-wheel steamer for France, visiting the first Paris Exposition, the General Assemblies of the Established Church and' of the Free Church in Scotland, and the Irish Assembly in Belfast-spending the summer in Switzerland and the winter in study at Tiibingen and at Berlin. To help meet his expenses, he wrote weekly letters as a foreign correspondent to the Daily Gazette of Cincinnati. While in Europe, he had resigned the pastorate at Columbus so as to be free to stay beyond his six months' leave of absence. On his return, some friends urged him to become a candidate for the professorship of Church History at what is now McCormick Theological Seminary. He decided, however, to continue in the pastorate, and accepted a call to the First Church of Toledo, Ohio, the same A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH church in which he had served as supply as a theological student six years earlier. When a separate Synod of Toledo was organized, he was appointed Stated Clerk of the Synod. He continued his work as a writer, his sermons appearing weekly in the local newspaper, The Toledo Blade; and, in 1875-6, at the suggestion of Dr. Charles A. Briggs of New York, he undertook the translation of Ferdinand Piper's book, Die Zeugen der Wahrheit, adding to it the lives of certain American denominational leaders. Under the title of The Lives of the Leaders of the Church Universal, the book was published and republished by a number of denominational publishing houses in this country, and by T. & T. Clark in Edinboro. On July 2, 1872, he married at Columbus, Ohio, Catherine Almira Hubbard, daughter of the Reverend Thomas Swan Hubbard of Rochester, Vermont. The College of Wittenberg conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity upon him in 1878. As a member of the Synod of Ohio, Dr. MacCracken had maintained his interest in education, serving as one of the Committee of the Synod 7 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN appointed to arrange for the establishment of the College of Wooster. In 1881, upon his election as Chancellor of the Western University of Pennsylvania at Pittsburgh, he resigned his pastorate to give the rest of his life to educational work. The position at Pittsburgh combined the duties of professor of Philosophy with the administrative duties of the chancellorship, and made it necessary for him to fit himself to give courses in that subject. During his administration, the University of Pittsburgh sold its property to the county for a Court House, and removed to Allegheny where it remained for a time in temporary quarters, returning in a later administration to the splendid new site which it now occupies in Pittsburgh's great civic center. In 1884, he was elected to the chair of Philosophy in the University of the City of New York, made vacant by the death of the Reverend Dr. Martin. In visiting the universities of the country, Dr. MacCracken had been impressed by the possibilifies for expansion and development offered by the University of the City of New York; and, while he was unwilling to go to the University merely as professor of Philosophy, he told the members of the 8 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Council that if they would combine with the professorship of Philosophy an opportunity to carry out his ideas for the enlargement and development of the University, he would accept the appointment. The plan was approved by the authorities: Dr. MacCracken went to the University as professor of Philosophy in 1884, and, in the following year, the office of Vice-chancellor was created, with powers which made him the active executive of the University, under the nominal chancellorship of Dr. John Hall. In 1891, when the University was confronting the great task of removal to a new site, Dr. John Hall tendered his resignation as Chancellor, in order that Dr. MacCracken's efforts might be reinforced by the added dignity and authority which the title of Chancellor would give, and Dr. MacCracken was unanimously appointed to the position. Of his work at the University, account will be given in this volume. After twenty-six years of service, Chancellor MacCracken carried out the intention which he had formed sometime previously, of retiring on his seventieth birthday, which he felt the more free to do as the munificent bequest of HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN John S. Kennedy had cancelled the obligations incurred in the period of removal and expansion, and had left the University not only an institution of over four thousand students with property of over $5,000,000, but in sound financial condition. Up to the time the University moved to University Heights, Chancellor MacCracken had continued to do more or less teaching, and to retain the responsibility for the Department of Philosophy, both in the undergraduate college and in the Graduate School. For several years, he gave up every Tuesday evening at his home to his graduate seminary in Philosophy. After the removal of the undergraduate college to University Heights, Chancellor MacCracken continued to conduct the daily Chapel exercises, and interested himself in the efforts that were made to establish a local church, preaching himself each Sunday through one entire winter. He was vice-president and an active member of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, and supported Dr. Howard Crosby and later Dr. Parkhurst in various movements for reform of civic conditions. After removal to University Heights, he identified himself with the interests of the Bronx, and was, I0 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH until his death, president of the Bronx Society of Arts and Sciences. In 1900, he devised the plan for the Hall of Fame as an educational agency for American youth, edited and published the official book of the Hall of Fame, and continued active in its administration and in the development both of the physical structure and of its educational and national functions until his death. In 1908, Chancellor MacCracken visited the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish universities as the first Exchange Professor of the American-Scandinavian Foundation. On his resignation, he was appointed Chancellor Emeritus, retaining his seat as a member of the Council. He devoted the first year of his release from responsibility to a trip around the world, interesting himself particularly in the careful study of educational conditions in Japan and China and India, and publishing, on his return, a booklet on "Urgent Eastern Questions." With the leisure afforded by his retirement, he turned again to his life-long interest in history, and delivered several historical addresses, among them, II HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN those on the occasion of the dedication of the Saratoga Battle-Field Monument; at the memorial services of Andrew H. Green; at the Centennial of Miami University; and at the Centennial of Princeton Theological Seminary. His last public address was his sermon preached at Lafayette College on September 29, 1918, the day following his seventy-eighth birthday, on the text, "He that would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Less than three months later, he was taken suddenly ill at Winter Park, Florida, and died after a week of unconsciousness, in the hospital at Orlando, Florida, December 24, 1918. Funeral exercises were held in the University Auditorium at University Heights, December 27, in the building to which he had given so much thought and beneath the window which he had planned, to show to college youth the three essentials of perfect manhood-strength, justice, and goodness-and with its Greek inscription "To those who seek for glory and honor and immortality." He was buried in the plot which he had himself selected in the southwest corner of Woodlawn Cemetery, so that he might rest, as he wished, as 12 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH near as possible to the University which he had done so much to build. 13 PART II EXERCISES IN MEMORY OF THE LIFE AND SERVICES OF HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN SIXTH CHANCELLOR OF NEW YORK UNIVERSITY In the Auditorium at University Heights Saturday, May Third Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen INVOCATION T -HOU, 0 Lord, hast been our dwelling place in all generations; forever Thou hast formed the earth and the world; even from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God, and turnest men from destruction. A day in Thy courts is better than a thousand. We are here, O Lord, to praise Thee this day that Thy church has not failed, from generation to generation, to have those Thou hast called to lead on the work of Thy Kingdom. Prophets and apostles have had their successors; and, one generation after another, Thy kingdom has been pushed on. We praise Thee, O Lord, for all Thy sons-those who have fallen asleep, and whose works abide. For all Thy saints who from their labors rest Thy name, 0 Jesus, be forever blest. We meet to speak to Thee, our Father, and to one another, of Thy servant whom Thou hast called to the higher service of Thy kingdom above. We 17 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN praise Thee for all that he was to Thy Church and to the cause to which he gave his life, for his inheritance and his training, his gifts and his work. We bless Thee for the fortitude and courage displayed amid difficulties, for his unfaltering faith in God, and for his vision of what might be done for Thee and Thy kingdom. We thank Thee for the vision he had of this City on the hill, this place in which he builded intellectual and spiritual influences which went abroad to all men, through all the world. We praise Thee to-day for his service. His spirit will walk among these walls in years to come, and his name will be recalled here, and these buildings will be a memorial to his vitality and his vision. Our Father, we invoke Thy blessing on those who have entered into his labors: upon Thy servant, the Chancellor of this University, on the vision he has, and the buildings he has raised on foundations which have been laid here, moral and spiritual. May his ideals be fully realized in many years of happy and fruitful service. Lord, grant Thy blessing on the faculties and trustees of the University, and on the friends who, directly or indirectly, have recognized here a chance to exert influences which shall 18 INVOCATION tell on generations yet unborn and which shall reveal power and sanctified knowledge as it goes out into the world. And, our Father, we pray for Thy blessing especially, with tenderest sympathy, on her, Thy servant, his companion in the great partnership of life, and pray that grace and mercy and peace may abound in her heart in the days of her loneliness, that that loneliness may be brightened by memories of the blessed past and by the hope of a glorious future. Remember, we pray Thee, the young men who are treading in the steps of their honored father, and may they find inspiration for daily service in the memory of the ways which he pointed out to them; and on the daughter and on her ministry in the manse. May the blessing of the Lord be graciously given unto her, and may all that family be cheered as they look toward the gathering place on the other side. We commend them all to Thy keeping, praying for the forgiveness of our sins and for the gracious acceptance of our prayers, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Who taught us to pray, saying: [The Lord's Prayer] i9 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS CHANCELLOR BROWN T is an occasion of regret that it is not possible to read the letters that have come from friends who desire to be here this afternoon and who are prevented from coming. Many of the letters are very touching in the message they bring. They will be turned over to the family of Chancellor MacCracken, and there will be no attempt to read them at this point. I should speak, however, of a message that came to me by telephone from Albany shortly before I came here, from Doctor Finley, President of the University of the State of New York, who had expected to be here, and desired especially that explanations should be made that he was imperatively prevented from coming. He who has in him the spirit of a pioneer, may find anywhere the frontier of civilization, from which he may adventure into an unknown wilderness: nowhere more than in a great city; and chiefly in New York, where alien standards of living and 20 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS of life, in one throng after another, are making incessant inroads upon our American society. We are met to-day in memory of an American pioneer. At a time when exploration and settlement were bringing to an end their first wide movement over the western reaches of this continent, this pioneer turned toward the East, to take his part in the struggle of light with darkness at the gateway of America. He who has in him the spirit of a maker and creator, shall take for his use whatever material time and circumstance may bring to his hand. It is his glory, not simply to build-with new tools and new materials, on new ground-a structure unrelated to the past: but rather to refashion what is old and worn and it may be all outgrown, as great trunk lines of railroad have been made from little roads, the bankrupt disappointments of earlier ventures; or as Sophocles and Shakespeare quarried in tradition for the groundwork of their creations. We are met to-day in memory of a master-builder, who laid his hand upon an older institution, tottering toward ruin but cherishing unforgotten dreams from its beginnings, and transformed it into a mod21 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN em university, renewed in its original spirit and with more spacious purposes suited to the present age. How sound and genuine was the plan toward which he worked, his successor in administrative office may testify. By whatever means and methods he could compass at the time, he carried the institution forward toward a conception pedagogically true and serviceable, embodied in forms that should appeal to the finest and most elevated imagination. In the memorial volume that will in its due time appear, the relation of Chancellor MacCracken's work to the broad history of the University will be set forth by Professor Ernest Gottlieb Sihler, whose studies in the history of the University are widely known, along with his more comprehensive studies in the history of Roman civilization. In the same volume will appear the addresses of his long-time friends and associates to be presented here this afternoon. The first of these will be that of the Reverend Dr. George Alexander, President of the Council of the University. 22 CHANCELLOR MAC CRACKEN AS RE-CREATOR OF NEW YORK UNIVERSITY DOCTOR ALEXANDER WE have assembled to put ourselves for an hour under the spell of an invisible presence and to reflect upon a finished life. It should be our endeavor to borrow from the contemplation of the workman and his work strength and courage for our own tasks. Thronging memories make it difficult for me to refrain from striking the personal note; the temptation is strong to indulge in retrospective of a friendship stretching over nearly half a century and of association in councils, and plans for the advancement of the Church of God. I recall years in which it was my privilege to be the pastor of the Chancellor's family, admitted to the sanctities of an ideal home. But these academic surroundings admonish me to dismiss such pleasing recollections in order that 23 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN I may give what can be only a glimpse of the recreator of New York University. Very briefly I will speak of the preparation of the man for his task, of the task that awaited him, and of the realization of his vision in the fulfilment of his task. The preparation of the man: a Scotch-Irish, psalm-singing, Bible-loving ancestry; a boyhood and youth rigidly disciplined in the doctrine and the faith of the Covenanters which kept flashing before his soul those two great ideas-God and duty: in these lay the hiding of his power. He was a precocious youth, having been graduated from college at the age of seventeen. The first essay of his young manhood was in the realm of education. For four years, he was acquiring and exercising the art of teaching; then a deep spiritual experience laid upon him the sense of a definite vocation, and thrust him into the Christian ministry. At twenty-three, we find him standing in the fierce light that beat upon an outstanding pulpit in the capital of his native state, in familiar association with that group of distinguished men in control of Ohio politics during the last half of the 24 AS RE-CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSITY Civil War. Two or three years later, responding to the call within him for more complete equipment, we find him resorting to German universities at a time when German universities had not suffered the blight of German imperialism. Returning to his sacred calling, he labored until his prime in the office of instructor and church administrator, and in the cure of souls. Doctor MacCracken always placed a high estimate upon the Christian ministry as a training-school for men of affairs. For a man destined to be engaged in college administration, it does furnish a discipline of rare value; for the Christian minister is under constant constraint to husband resources, and feels inevitably the pinch of straitened circumstances. This painstaking pastor did not intermit his scholarly pursuits. The issue of a notable volume entitled Lives of Leaders of our Church Universal, in part a translation from the German, in part the product of his own pen, perhaps called attention to his fitness for academic service. At any rate, about that time he was summoned to a professorship and chancellorship in the University of Western Pennsylvania. There he served three years, just long 25 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN enough to familiarize his hand with the tools of his trade. He was ready for his life work. The task was one which might well have appalled the most doughty spirit. A metropolitan university conceived and initiated by men of unusual enterprise and breadth of views, had failed to fulfil the expectations of its founders. It had attracted professors of far more than average ability. It had a roll of alumni that would compare favorably with any similar body of college graduates. But the close of its first half century found it in a state of arrested development. In order to husband its meager resources for the support of its faculty, the nominal headship was devolved upon men of great distinction who were willing to assume that position without compensation and give to it the fag ends of their time. Its poverty discouraged them, and, in addition, the immediate prospect of being submerged by the inrushing tide of alien population. To such a school, the Chancellor of the University of Western Pennsylvania was called with a meager salary and with a vague intimation that functions of an executive character would gradually be assigned to him. He was forty-four years of 26 V - iwm." AS RE-CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSITY age, and a man of commanding presence. Two features never failed to impress even the casual observer-his piercing eye and his elastic tread; they were typical. He was a man of vision and a man of action. He would have been appalled by his task but for that peculiar blend of impetuosity and prudence which is very apt to be revealed when Scottish canniness and endurance is touched with Celtic fire. He accepted the challenge. Why? Because he felt the pulsing life of a mighty city, soon to be the mightiest aggregation of humanity on the face of the earth; and he had his vision, the vision of a university not for the delectation of the cloistered few, but a university that should touch every element of this motley city, touch it with the light of learning and with the ideals of civic excellence and grandeur. For six years, he served in a subordinate capacity, all the while studying his problem, kindling the interest of men and women who were capable of seeing his vision; and then, with a sure hand, he grasped the helm for a voyage of adventure and peril. The years from 18go90 onward were years of fever27 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN ish activity. This beautiful and commanding site was acquired with almost prophetic vision. Building was begun. The demolition of the old home on Washington Square gave notice that old things had passed away and that all things were to become new. The creation of a new centre and the reconstruction at the old had to be carried forward at the same hour. Who can forget that tumultuous winter when the youth of the University drank of the Pyrean springs in boxes of pine distributed through the steel skeleton of the Washington Square building, with the clang of the riveters all around? It was a period of stress and toil. But the Chancellor was not wholly preoccupied with the problems of finance or of architecture. He was, beyond all question, the most adventurous pioneer in the educational life of the city. To the ancient disciplines, he added, in swift succession, the School of Pedagogy, the Graduate School, the School of Commerce, Accounts, and Finance, the Summer School, the Extramural Division. He set a pace for other institutions which they were compelled to follow. Such expansion made the resources of the University seem pathetically inadequate. They were so inadequate that men of finance in the Council shiv28 AS RE-CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSITY ered in contemplation. Then came a magnificent bequest from a great citizen to whom many interests in this country and in far lands owe a deep debt of gratitude. That lifted the burden. The Chancellor, having arrived at the Psalmist's limit of age, felt that the time had come for him to lay down his charge. The Council asked him to withdraw his resignation, but he wisely refused, deciding to spend the remaining years in travel and study in many lands, in reviewing his own life work, in philosophizing on current events, and in setting his house in order for the great adventure. I have spoken of his courage and his imagination, of his patience, his endurance; but these would have been an inadequate equipment for his task were it not for his whole-hearted consecration. He stopped at nothing for the University; nothing seemed too good or too large to ask or to be expected. Twenty-five years is not a long period in the life of a great university; but, if New York University should flourish for a thousand years, it will not know a quarter of a century so vital, so significant, as the quarter of a century in which it felt the invigorating touch of Henry Mitchell MacCracken. He rests from his labors, and his works follow him. 29 CHANCELLOR MAC CRACKEN AS MAN DEAN STODDARD T is difficult for me to speak moderately of Dr. MacCracken, because the man interested me so deeply and so constantly that what I shall say will inevitably take the form of eulogy, anxious as I am to be impartial. He was a man you did not forget after you had met him. A visitor might find himself out of sympathy with the ideas for which Dr. MacCracken stood, or with the man; but that visitor did not forget that he had had an interview. I well remember the first time I saw the Chancellor, more than thirty years ago. It was in the large but simple Council room in the southwest corner of the moderately authentic Gothic university building, one September afternoon. I had come from the spacious opportunity of the wondrous city of the Golden Gate; and I must admit that the absence of opulence in the visible framework of the University somewhat chilled my primal 30 AS MAN ardor. But, when I met Dr. MacCracken, all the external was forgotten. He was for a future in education in New York which opened to me a vision. He was constant in that vision; and it led me also as I followed with him, sometimes with misgivings, never with discouragement, for many long and busy years. I shall not here narrate the story of the work done by the Chancellor in those years. When I came, he had as his field of action a visible basal body of one hundred and twenty completely enrolled in the College, with a somewhat larger number of semi-detached law and medical students, imperfectly related to the central body. When he laid down his work, more than four thousand were regularly enrolled in a thoroughly unified university system. But the story of that growth will be told by others. I shall speak only of the man himself as we walked together through the years. Biographers often tell us how certain qualities in the men commemorated produced success. I have never been willing to be dogmatic as to the certain relation of apparent cause to apparent effect in many of such cases. Success is not an invariable pre31 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN cipitate from however carefully selected a union of elements. Sometimes the quality, even in fulness, brings not the expected return. The patient plodding of a faithful donkey, for example, does not lead to great reward; and the fire and dash of a spirited thoroughbred may lead but to an early grave. Yet one may note the dominant qualities in a man he honors; and, without too much claiming, make sure of value in him. The first of these qualities that I was wont to note in Dr. MacCracken was that of courage. To him a difficulty was a challenge that he never evaded. In his years of struggle, many a cause of discouragement came. To him, it was always a call to arms. He was a good fighter; and did not, it is only fair to say, lack opportunity, in the vicissitudes of university opinion, to display this quality. But he liked straight, intelligent opposition rather than unsympathetic acquiescence. Members of his faculty often opposed him. I do not recall that any one, except perhaps Dr. Alexander, ever convinced him that he was wrong; but we often showed that his plan was unworkable, and he always yielded with reasonable grace. It was not only that 32 AS MAN personal courage which is constant in facing strong men who are determinedly perverse that he possessed. It was also that higher form of moral courage which gives a man power to stand against good men in support of a principle or method clear to him but not yet manifest to them. To fight the wicked is not hard for strong and honest men. But to stand alone when devotion to principle compels a man to face men honored and respected, perhaps personally known and loved, standing in opposition sadly yet unflinchingly because devotion to principle demands it, is to manifest a courage far greater. Dr. MacCracken often thus stood almost alone, struggling even when carrying a heavy burden, with a fearlessness which never failed, and which won from all of us our lasting admiration. The second quality, which was one that could not be mistaken, was the vitality of the man. He was so intensely alive at every moment that he kindled life in the most sluggish. His eye was bright, his movement quick, his action alert and vigorous. Occasionally this vitality was so strong in him that he missed it when absent in others. I have even known him to be impatient at finding that the edu33 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN cational world was not quite so lively in its thought as was he. The field of teaching systems seemed to him to be full of problems which needed to be immediately studied; quickly acted upon; definitely solved. He would present them; rouse up discussion upon them; plan a quick solution. Panting, yet reluctant, his following would toil after him in these efforts, quickened by this vitality which was new every morning and fresh every evening, even in his later years only slightly lessened by time, only slightly moderated by attainment. So stirring and aggressive was this continuous endeavor that inevitably it met harsh and unfavorable judgment. No man of force and progression escapes adverse criticism. There have not been wanting those to derogate even Washington, or Lincoln, or other high officials of our Government, even to the present moment. Fearlessness may be translated into rashness; prudence into cowardice; far-sighted vision into visionary idealism. Some men thought Dr. MacCracken at times hasty when the need was for considered decisions; apt to be insistent when the need was for calm; sometimes over ready to lead. Perhaps there was some basis 34 AS MAN for this comment. The strong nature is not always patient. But no one ever questioned Dr. MacCracken's ability; no one ever questioned his courage; no one ever questioned his unceasing and sincere loyalty to the interests of the University and of education. Greater than any quality I have mentioned was Dr. MacCracken's endowment of vision. It was perhaps natural, certainly clarified by study, by thought, and by imagination. He saw far into the future in his plans for the University. It is undoubtedly true that the future greatness of New York University was not then written in the heavens for all to read. It was written for him. When speaking of the University he always talked at least two years ahead of the then present proceeding. The great movements in education as affecting the work of the University were interpreted by him often before they were centralized into direction. He was always ready for the trial in practical working of a seemingly sound new method. Under his care, the University opened many new fields of work, of which others will speak more fully, some of which were of his unaided planning, and all 35 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN of which were carried out with his cordial sympathy. Dr. Alexander has well said that he considered him in his years of strongest endeavor one of the principal moving forces in education in this city. Long before it became a part of the formula of student life, Dr. MacCracken saw in vision an educational system that primarily should not be for itself, and should not be merely a propaedeutic to cultural perfection, but should be a rendering of service to the student that he in turn might be of service to the world. It was this vision of education as the handmaiden of service which was the guiding impulsion in the establishment of courses for actual working teachers. These were methods, then new, now a commonplace of procedure. He saw the College on the Heights when as yet it was not; he saw the manifold opportunities for a city University when few of them were visible to others; he saw the blessedness of service triumphing over the selfishness of acquisition, long before its realization. With this vision was joined an optimism sometimes almost naive. It was contagious when we met him. We were sure to get soon the new pro36 AS MAN fessorship; the city was certain to open the street we needed, and to lay out the park expected; land, money, students, all were sure to come. In great measure this optimism was justified. It was sometimes hard for the rest of us to live up to it. At the end of a toilsome year I often went from the closing scenes almost depressed. It did not appear that the world was quite adapted to our plans. But I came back in the fall to find that somehow it had happened that the University was a little bigger; and that there was Dr. MacCracken smilingly predicting greater things to come. Possunt quia posse videntur, said the Latin proverb. It was true of him. He could because he knew he could. He knew that greater things would come; and they always came. With vision, vitality, optimism, and courage, was joined another quality not often found in such union. It was the tenderness of human sympathy. In our student body and in our faculties at the Heights were always boys and young men whose need was greater than the present aid. To them the Chancellor was a helpful counselor and friend. His sympathies were stirred quickly, sometimes for, 37 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN sometimes against, since he was as prompt to oppose as to advocate; and his helpfulness never failed to follow close upon the quickening of emotion. We are apt to think of Dr. MacCracken as wholly the University President. But he lived another life-the life of the intellect spiritually quickened. I often think this was the real life he most loved. To be with him in the beautiful library at his home on University Heights, with its singularly well selected and not too burdensomely numerous volumes, was to be stimulated always into mental vigour. Especially was he fond of Philosophy, in which, notably as to its older presentments, he was well read. His thoughts translated themselves into the formularies of Philosophy as to a native language. I have often gone to his office in the Library building in the morning for the settlement of some University matter. Settled it was always, whether serious or trifling, with quick decision. Then Dr. MacCracken, his mind temporarily lightened, would most likely begin a little talk of some philosophical problems lately in his thoughts-of a modern manifestation, perhaps in the actions or speech of some student, of Plato's doctrine of innate ideas; of one 38 AS MAN of the Antinomies of Kant; of the "primal propensions" of James Martineau. I never forgot those little talks. He was transfigured, "Sun, moon, and stars forgot," as upward in thought we climbed. I could well wish I might longer speak of this man, who was at once a great educational force, a far-seeing leader, and a sympathetic friend. His work is his best monument; the College stands and will long stand on its chosen site; and thousands of men and women will cherish to their dying day the memory of Henry Mitchell MacCracken. 39 CHANCELLOR MAC CRACKEN AS CITIZEN DR. COFFIN T- HOSE who derive their spiritual lineage from John Calvin and the Reformed Church have always been characterized by an aggressive interest in public affairs. While Catholicism has exalted the ascetic life or has proclaimed the subordination of civil to ecclesiastical control, and while Lutheranism and Anglicanism have taught submission to the powers that be and acceptance of social and political conditions as one finds them, Puritanism has been a militant force, entering whole-heartedly into business and public life, in order to transform the cities of men into cities of God and the kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of Christ. Of this lineage of the soul came Henry Mitchell MacCracken. The fabric of his character was the granite of religious conviction; but, like the stone of Sinai at the giving of the Law, it was granite aflame with civic enthu40 AS CITIZEN siasm and public devotion. It is fitting that we commemorate him as a patriot and a citizen. In an address delivered at his Alma Mater, Miami University, a year ago, he described his early interest in civil leaders. His parents, a pioneer Presbyterian minister in Ohio with a wife who ably seconded him as a teacher, opened an academy for the country youth in their community. "To adapt the school program," said Dr. MacCracken, "to pupils so well grown in body, though very elementary in mind, my parents instead of putting them in the Third Reader for practice in reading, put the two score or more into Hale's History of the United States in two volumes, hardly as long or as wide as my hand. For a half hour to three quarters a day, the strapping frontier young people, lasses and lads, stood in a great circle about the school room, and read that history." The youthful Henry used to stand eagerly drinking in the reading, and its effect was shown in his choice of an original plaything. He formed a collection of empty spools which he arranged into armies or into a congress of the United States making a constitution, naming the big spools Washington, Franklin, Adams, and 41 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN other prominent heroes of the national history. "I had," said Dr. MacCracken, "a Hall of Fame for Great Americans when I was not ten years old, only I did not call it by that name." In his earlier career as a pastor, he flung himself into the town affairs of the places where he ministered, not as a partisan of a political organization (which he never was), but as an enthusiast for righteousness; and, when his ministry became that of leadership in education, the burden of his addresses to students was the supreme duty laid on educated men and women of discharging their obligations as public servants. It was significant of his ideal of the goal of the intellectual life that he should plan to surround the central building of the University with a colonnade inscribed with the names of those whom competent judges considered most eminent for their services to the nation and to mankind. The pains he took in selecting the electors to the Hall of Fame, the stimulating attention which he gave to their work, the thought he spent in considering their decisions, the skill with which he chose the inscriptions for the tablets, the enthusiasm he showed throughout the years for this 42 AS CITIZEN cherished project, were evidences of the extent to which his heart was wrapped up in the attempt to make education minister to the weal of the country and of the world. National and international questions greatly interested Dr. MacCracken. When the free silver discussion was to the fore, he delivered a series of lectures at the invitation of leading citizens upon "Money." He was a lifelong advocate of the cause of peace, and an active member of various societies for the prevention of war. When he laid down the responsibilities of the chancellorship, he made a tour through the Far East, and displayed a keen appreciation of the political and social problems confronting those peoples in their adjustment of themselves to their new role in world affairs. Throughout the recent war, he did his utmost to keep free from prejudice or passion, and to be just even to our enemies, looking steadily forward to an outcome which should embrace the best interests of all the peoples involved in the struggle. His was a "world-mind," which saw events in their universal bearings, which dwelt on the lessons of history, and which conscientiously thought out its opinions on public questions. 43 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN The particular community in which Dr. MacCracken lived laid hold both of his heart and of his conscience. Speaking of his friend, Mr. Andrew H. Green, he said that New York City was his "ruling passion." "Andrew Haswell Green never found any bride excepting this city of the waters, but she had bound him to her by a mystic bond more than three and sixty years ago, and never had he loosed or put away her claim, even for an hour." Similar words might be used of Dr. MacCracken. He espoused this city with a lover's devotion. He gave her his imagination, fancying what she might become, and his unremitting labor, freely rendering any service that was asked of him. There were few civic movements during his years of residence here in which he did not have a part. He was long an active member and vice-president of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, then under the leadership of Dr. Howard Crosby; and he was one of the committee which prevailed upon Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst to become Dr. Crosby's successor. It was in Dr. MacCracken's house in Irving Place that Dr. Parkhurst was first urged to enter the civic field. 44 AS CITIZEN When, together with Mr. George Munro, Mr. David Banks, and Mr. William Havemeyer, Dr. MacCracken selected the new site of the University, and came to live in the Bronx, he showed the keenest concern for the welfare of this section of the city. He read assiduously the history of events which had occurred in this Borough, and was familiar with the biographies of its former worthies. He thought much of the material side of city building; the streets of the University Heights section were laid out by him in consultation with the Chief Engineer of the city; and the grading, sewering, and paving of many of them were carried out under his personal supervision. He delighted particularly in the parks of this Borough. He secured the passage of a bill at Albany creating the little park between Sedgwick and Cedar Avenues, now known as University Park. He spent much time in conference with Mr. Steinway of the first Rapid Transit Commission on new lines to open up this part of New York. He was the first, and up to the time of his death the only, president of the Bronx Society of Arts and Sciences, and was largely instrumental in securing the Poe Memorial Cottage, 45 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN in the establishment of a museum in the Lorillard Mansion, and in thelmarking of historical points in this borough with appropriate tablets. Some of us recall vividly his conspicuous figure among the group which made the round of the parks with this society some years ago, when these tablets were unveiled, and can remember listening to an address from him at the Zabriskie Mansion. In May, 1915, when memorial exercises were held for the Bronx poet, Dr. Joseph Rodman Drake, and a park was named in his honor, Dr. MacCracken delivered one of the most informing and appreciative addresses. His heart was in the city where he lived, with its fascinating past, its amazingly shifting and developing present, and its teeming future. This swiftly expanding metropolis with inhabitants drawn from every part of the globe was ever in his mind. He looked at his task in the University against the civic background. He was resolved that under him the University should keep pace with and serve the city's needs. Speaking to a huge assembly at the dedication of the Saratoga Battle Monument, he combatted the idea of restricting immigration, and said: "My own life has been 46 AS CITIZEN devoted to a different policy which I still recommend. First, an optimistic endeavor to educate the immigrants of the races which fought at Saratoga into better Christians. Second, an equal endeavor to enlist these for the conversion into good Americans of the recently arrived peoples from southern and eastern Europe, who, unfortunately, did not get here in time to have any part in any of the battles of Saratoga or of the Revolution." He regarded himself (to employ a phrase of his own) as "a public teacher." He considered the fact that the state excuses teachers from jury duty as imposing on them an obligation to serve the entire community with intellectual and moral inspirations. His own favorite heroes were thinkers who combined study with active participation in the life of their communities. For himself he held fast the Christian faith in the capacities of common people and his Christian determination to help them make out of themselves what he believed God intended them to be. He rejoiced in the opportunities which New York University offered sons of immigrant families, alongside of sons from a long American ancestry, to attain the best of college and profes47 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN sional trainings. His own words fitly describe his personal civic contribution as the administrative head of this University in the midst of the new world's greatest city: "I have to-day no better consolation for my work than that I tried to be a faithful doorkeeper of the house of America, which, to me, is the house of the Lord. I consider that my business as doorkeeper was not to keep people out. Rather, it was like the duty of that personage to be found at the portal of each very lofty skyscraper who acts as executive officer of perhaps a dozen elevators. My business has been like his business, to help those who enter to rise to the level for which they have a vocation." And in the thousands who have been lifted to lives of larger usefulness through the training received in this University, whose affairs he directed, Henry Mitchell MacCracken has his living memorial and his own best prized reward. 48 CHANCELLOR MAC CRACKEN AS EDUCATOR CHANCELLOR MCCORMICK IESTEEM it a very great privilege to have a part in this service in memory of Chancellor Henry Mitchell MacCracken. Born at Oxford, Ohio, a college town, from earliest youth he gave himself to the cause of education and scholarship. He was seventy years old when he retired from the active duties of his professional life. He was only seventeen when he entered upon them, for at that age he received his bachelor's degree at Miami. He was but twenty-three years old when he had completed his theological course at Princeton, and was ordained into the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. His eager mind led him again and again out of the pastorate, with its inevitable and sometimes profitless routine, into the university-Tuibingen and Berlin in 1867, and finally the University of Pittsburgh in 1881. Even the three years which followed his graduation from 49 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN college and preceded his entering the theological seminary, were given as teacher and superintendent to educational service in the public schools. The exercise of the intellect, the pursuit of knowledge, the passion for learning, the aptitude for scholarship, the discriminating literary taste, the bent for philosophy-all these traits, revealed very early and cultivated and developed through the years, are the exhibit of the man himself and constitute the dominating and controlling quality of his fine and rare personality. My own personal and intimate relationship with Dr. MacCracken dates not from the time of his residence in Pittsburgh, though, of course, I knew him then; but from the time, more than twenty years ago, when I entered upon educational work as the president of a Presbyterian college. From that time until he fell asleep, I knew him, esteemed, and loved him. He impressed me as a great man. His tall spare form, his commanding and imposing presence, his dignified manner, and his unquestioned mental capacity disclosed an individuality intellectual and forceful, ever alert, ever in action, and ever achieving. Whether in his home, or in the 50 AS EDUCATOR chapel of the University, or in the presence of scholars, or in a university or educational assembly, he seemed to me to stand up above the great majority of his fellows, not alone in stature, but in mentality and in the power of his personality. As a preacher, I did not know him. He was pastor in two important Ohio cities-Columbus and Toledo-during, and in the years immediately following, the great sectional war. It was a period of strong prejudices, deep resentments, and aroused feelings. The nation was passing through a baptism of fire, both while the war was on, and in the period of reconstruction immediately thereafter. The pastor had a responsibility requiring talents of the highest order. He had to preach the Gospel; but he had also to strike a note of faith, of courage, of patriotism, of hope, of optimism, of brotherhood, which would help the people to solve the difficult problems of the day. That Dr. MacCracken nobly served the Church as minister, and his country and the people also, we can well believe. His mind, however, was the mind of a theologian, of a thinker. He was not content to deal with smaller things if he could deal with larger things. 51 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN On the contrary, his was a constructive mind. A program of education and of the intellectual development of the people was much more to his liking than that of the quiet pastor in the study and in the home. It is not strange that the men at Tiibingen attracted him, for it was the time when the Tiibingen School commanded the intellect of the theological world. Of course, he could not be kept from Berlin, for Bismarck was there. Schleswig-Holstein had been wrested from Denmark and made part of Germany. Austria, in a three months war, had just been made to feel the iron hand of Prussianism; and already Bismarck was planning how he could involve France in a conflict that more territory, which a little later came in the form of Alsace and Lorraine, might be seized. It was the day when the man of iron and blood was working out the program of Germany for the years to come. The university at Berlin was naturally attracting multitudes of American youth by the very vitality and vigor of German life and thought and learning. Not yet had the world come to understand that the ethics of Germany were the ethics of an organized brigand. Young MacCracken, only twenty-seven, 52 AS EDUCATOR must come into touch with these great universities. Only so could the hunger of his inquiring eager mind be satisfied. If Dr. MacCracken could not be kept out of the university, neither could he abandon the church and its high service to the people. His actual pastorates covered not more than seven years, but his service as a minister of the Gospel continued from his ordination in 1863 to the moment when his spirit took its flight to God. Never a day in which the fact that he was an ambassador of the Gospel was absent from his consciousness. When he was a teacher of Philosophy, he taught a philosophy which was grounded in the Christian system, and he taught it as a man who was himself anchored in the Christian faith. At the very time when he set out to drink at the fountains of learning in Tiibingen, he was a delegate both to the Scotch and Irish General Assembly. He wrote, as we all know, about the leaders of the Church, as well as about the educational progress of the country. He was a disciple of John Calvin; and John Calvin was perhaps the most vigorous, the most profound, and the most luminous thinker in all times. Sometimes 53 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN it seems to me that something of John Calvin passed into Henry Mitchell MacCracken and helped to make him the great man he actually was. It is not possible to know Dr. MacCracken until we understand the stock out of which he sprang. He was Ulster-Scotch, or in common phrase, ScotchIrish, descendant of those who from Ulster came to America to help to make America great. These virile people settled in large numbers in Pennsylvania, went down the valleys into Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, out into Ohio and the states west, carrying, wherever they went, the principles of civil and religious liberty, and fixing upon the communities where they settled the indelible impress of intellectual, moral, and religious worth. But John Knox in Scotland was not mightier than multitudes of his descendants who scattered over America and carried with them the same conscience, the same conviction of duty, the same loyalty to principle, the same absolute consecration to God, which Knox himself manifested in heroic measure in the reign of Mary in Scotland. Among these great leaders in the Church, Dr. MacCracken stood pre-eminent. Knox would have the school side by 54 AS EDUCATOR side with the Church. The Scotch-Irishman who came to America made it a matter of conscience the moment his log hut was builded, to turn immediately to the construction of the church and of the school. No man could know, therefore, Chancellor MacCracken with his high-mindedness, his loyalty to duty, his consecration to the cause of truth in scholarship and in research, and his unceasing and vigilant activity in the cause of education and religion, until he knew the blood which coursed through his veins and the stock from which he sprang. He stood humbly before his God, acknowledging God's sovereignty over him as creature. He stood too among all his fellows claiming equality with the noblest and the best, and in moral and intellectual endowment standing high above most of his fellows. It was my privilege to be associated with him in the general field of education. It was here, of course, that I knew him best. I took the chancellorship at Pittsburgh exactly thirty years after he left it to come to New York; but I was in Pittsburgh at that time and personally knew the vicissitudes through which the University was passing, 55 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN because of the sale of the property, and the carrying on of the work in inadequate rented quarters while new buildings were in process of construction. The fine service Dr. MacCracken rendered the University in that transition period can never be forgotten. One commentary upon it has always seemed to me significant, namely, that though I was a native of Pittsburgh, when I came back after ten years' absence and took up the work which Chancellor MacCracken laid down thirty years before, I was called by the name of MacCracken almost as frequently as by my own name. The personality and the service of the man must have been remarkable to remain so vivid in the minds of the people for so long a time. Of his twenty-six years at this University, it is not mine to speak. The University here on the heights is his, and it speaks for him. "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice." It is pleasant to remember that in one part of this creation of his genius, the Hall of Fame, I was associated with him as a member of the Committee of One Hundred. The only man I really envy is the man who has done a good work and has come to the time when, 56 AS EDUCATOR in health of body and vigor of mind, he may lay it down and henceforth choose the things he would do. Such a man was Dr. MacCracken in the closing years of his life. He had builded well and enduringly, putting his own personality into the structure he had reared, and his work was good and beautiful. In the Church, in the field of authorship, in the delightful realm of scholarship, in the world of thought and character and education, he had delved and wrought, creating what will endure for all time; and nearly ten years ago he laid down the work thenceforth to experience the supreme joy of selecting the tasks he would perform. How exquisitely fitting it was that in this period, too, there should have come to him the crown of all his joys in seeing his two sons follow in his steps and become on successive days presidents of two historic and well known colleges, thus to take up his own life work and carry it on, as we may confidently expect, into more perfect form and more radiant beauty. Dr. MacCracken's career was that which is common to all men who achieve-made up of difficulty, hardship, defeat, victory, disappointment of hopes 57 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN and their fruition. He ran the whole gamut of life's experiences. A man of marked individuality, of high purpose, of noble achievement, he had the faults and the virtues, the reverses and the successes which all great men have. No man can estimate what such a life means to his generation, and to the thousands of youth whom he has influenced and molded. Down through the years the disciples of Henry Mitchell MacCracken, the men he taught, the men he helped to make, down through the years will they go, doing their work, multiplying him in their own lives and in the lives of those they touch, ever rolling and massing an increasing volume of character to be presented at last at the Throne of God as the real record of the life of Henry Mitchell MacCracken. To her, widowed in her declining years and looking toward the dawn when they will meet again, and to the sons of this noble man, I, who knew and loved him well, bring a message of sympathy, of appreciation, of gratitude, and of affection. In their sorrow that he has gone from them is mingled an exalted and grateful joy, because of what he was to them and what he did for the men and women who came into his life. 58 PART III THE PLACE OF CHANCELLOR MAC CRACKEN IN THE HISTORY OF NEW YORK UNIVERSITY By E. G. SIHLER Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins, 1878), Hon. Litt.D. (Lafayette, 1gr5) Historian and Chronicler of New York University THE PLACE OF CHANCELLOR MAC CRACKEN IN THE HISTORY OF NEW YORK UNIVERSITY "Non omnis moriar." (Horace) THE life-history of the foundation which the sixth Chancellor led into a new and, as we believe, a much stronger life, in the first half-century of its annals furnishes very largely negative lessons-how not to do it-and deterrent examples. In that record, also, we meet a number of crises, which, while differing somewhat from one another as to their immediate causes, had to do in the main with financial inanition, and repeatedly brought the college to the brink of dissolution, without, however, persuading those at the helm to see that fundamentals needed changing. Obviously, then, it is impossible to form a true and just estimate of Chancellor MacCracken's supreme merit in his enacting the migration of 1894 and making possible the consequent rebirth of the college61 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN impossible, I say, to undertake this without tracing, in outline at least, the preceding history of New York University and concisely surveying the administrations which preceded the crisis of 1881; these were those of James M. Mathews, Theodore Frelinghuysen, Isaac Ferris, Howard Crosby. After the great crisis came John Hall. He really was in a measure tihe introducer of that man who began the work of saving and restoring the Institution in the maturity of his powers, and was devoted to this work alone. If we count the first year (1884-85) while Dr. MacCracken merely held the chair of Philosophy, as a preliminary survey of the ground on his part, then his service as Vice-chancellor (1885-91) and as Chancellor (1891-1910) has measured exactly a quarter-century. And then, at seventy, he retired. It was the outcome of a civic movement germinating as I now see as early as 1827, a movement apparently both broad and deep, which, in October, 1830, resulted in the election by the shareholders of a body called the Council of the University of the City of New York, a city whose official representation in that Council was duly provided for in 62 Missing Pag5e Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page IN NEW YORK UNIVERSITY engrossed almost all of his time. That was the understanding. Crosby began by inaugurating the mistaken policy of free tuition, which injured the college in a number of ways and utterly failed' to fill the class-rooms. The new endowment of $200,ooo, which Dr. Crosby had stipulated for upon assuming his expressedly interimistic service, was not secured. John C. Green had offered $80,000 or even $120,000 provided the rest of the new fund were subscribed; nothing came of it. In 1873 Crosby's friends had to work hard to prevent his resigning. There was much friction. In January, 1877, a mortgage of $30,000 was assumed. The Medical School, a proprietary enterprise as always, and but nominally connected with the University, had many troubles of its own, and was ill at ease. On February 7, 1878, the subject of "suspension" was once more brought up in the Council. A large sum of invested funds was for some time nonproductive on account of adversities of the Jersey Central Railway. Professor J. W. Draper advised abandoning the academic department (he was a chemist), but maintaining the scientific. Other interests were active and striving to become residu71 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN ary legatees of the sorely tried college, which indeed seemed more and more to dwindle or at least to be considered an anaemic organization without any prospects whatever of growth or expansion, and was so viewed by many of its own alumni-how much more so by the public at large. In the spring of 1881, matters had reached the crisis of to be or not to be. The Chancellor himself and a very slight majority of the Council favored closing the college. Of course there was vigorous opposition both of faculty and many alumni; in the end, Dr. Crosby resigned; and Dr. John Hall of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church became Chancellor. It was brought out that the measure proposed would be a breach of trust-the Council could not legally do with the institution whatever they liked; they could not change the character and work of the college or incidentally divert funds or income to some different design, unless all the donors of funds or their legal representatives consented. One man of that time saw the sore point or the crux of the whole matter-the late Elie Charlier. He said most truly that the college, where it was, "instead of making the locality (as Harvard, Yale, or Wil72 IN NEW YORK UNIVERSITY liams did), was swallowed in it." A second interim followed. For some years the professors again carried on both work and administration by themselves and were the stewards of the resources of the University College, such as they were. At the same time the "shareholders," now a grotesque incubus of the past, were extinguished as the basis of corporate right. The "Mayor and the four aldermen" were likewise assigned to the limbo of innocuous desuetude. And at the commencement June 21, 1883, Dr. Hall, presiding, said among other things: "I will add, however, that I am not without hope that at no distant time there will be found one who can fill the place of the Chancellor permanently and give to its duties that time and attention which its present occupant has not been able to do"-a prediction in the abstract, one may call it, of Henry Mitchell MacCracken. It was the death of Benjamin N. Martin, teacher of Philosophy, in December of that year 1883-he had served the college from 1853 to 1883-which opened the way to call Dr. MacCracken from Pittsburgh, in 1884. He served first as professor of Philosophy only; but to this, in 1885, were added the novel duties of Vice73 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN chancellor (a measure formulated by William Allen Butler), while Dr. Hall not merely appeared at official functions but gained for the struggling college new and munificent friends such as Mrs. R. L. Stuart. Dr. MacCracken then, first as Vice-chancellor, step by step devised measures to lift the college out of its status of quasi-oblivion by bringing in visitors from the synod of New York, or by establishing the Monday lectures, and by diversifying and articulating more the work and fields of instruction. He was in his prime, being forty-four when he first came. Also he took pains to gain a closer vision of the past history of the college, its checkered annals and peculiar limitation of environment. He recommended also a few urgent improvements such as a chair of English, some beginning of a reading-room, a few graduate scholarships. As for the pitiable poverty of what was then by courtesy dubbed the library, the present chronicler will preserve silence. In many ways, the institution then was like a child that would never need more than child's dress because all concerned (or almost all) were convinced that it could not grow where it was, but must in fact be conceived as 74 h. F IN NEW YORK UNIVERSITY condemned to a puny or dwarfish existence. Dr. MacCracken further discerned that instruction to graduate students would be a feasible expansion and an elevation of teaching, and a wholesome incentive, particularly for the teachers themselves. Charles Butler and George Munro now came to be numbered with the benefactors of the institution, the former equalling the Loring Andrews gift (of $1oo,ooo in 1866) when a school of Education was begun with the donor's gift. For six years Dr. MacCracken had observed, urged, steered, suggested, and directed, when he became definitely convinced that the limitations of the undergraduate college at Washington Square were such as to prohibit, and not merely to impede and retard, any genuine growth there. In his report of November, 1890, the Vice-chancellor presented this matter under certain heads, some of which were: the absolute lack of athletics; lucrative scholarships elsewhere; no dormitories ever possible in the heart of New York, hence no students from a distance; no organized bodies of alumni sending new students to Alma Mater; also the current preference for large colleges. The great and cru75 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN cial point was this: a college is a combination of teachers and students, each the correlative of the other; but the sense of being effectively taught no longer satisfied students at American colleges where the ages now averaged from eighteen to twenty-two or often even more. That multiform body of pursuits which in dulci iuventa is apt to engross youth, has been felicitously alluded to in the lines of Willis Fletcher Johnson: In youth's auspicious year, While hopes are bright and friends are true, And life is royal cheerAnd life is royal cheer, my lad, And the world is fair and new. All those pursuits, virtually all of them (a stern handicap), were, in the topographical nature of things, quite impossible at Washington Square; and, as far as human vision then permitted to conjecture, always would be impossible. So convinced, the Vice-chancellor determined upon the "Uptown Movement" as it was then called; the very phrase soon becoming a winged word and a term of happy augury. Dr. Hall arranged a conference at the house of Mrs. R. L. Stuart, at 871 Fifth Avenue, 76 IN NEW YORK UNIVERSITY on February 26, 1891. There, one may say, the general design and aspiration for a University Heights, as yet indefinite but certainly far from the madding throng, germinated and began to grow. Dr. Hall retired from the chancellorship in June, 1891, and Dr. MacCracken now assumed all the outward responsibility also for the project of a migration. Tuition fees were to be re-established, beginning in 1893. The Mali country seat was chosen. It was far away in the North, and one's sense of remoteness twenty-nine years ago was as though one now were to speak of Hastings or Tarrytown. The delighted eye there swept beyond Harlem and Hudson to the Palisades, to Kingsbridge, and to the blue hills of Long Island. Some generous members of the Ohio Society of New York helped Dr. MacCracken to still more contiguous land, whence came Ohio Field, and its quarter-century annals of athletic sport and many a competitive contest. There were then, early in 1892, voices-and purses-of civically minded observers of these movements, in the City of New York, voices, I say, which suggested consolidation, or federation, with Columbia; these monitions, how77 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN ever, never got beyond the epistolary stage. In the autumn of 1894, the migration into the promised land was at last effected, and, within a few years, more growth came to the sorely tried institution than in all its past; more patronesses and patrons arose; a splendid dormitory was built, a library of monumental beauty was reared, which now shelters fine collections of oriental, Germanic, classic, English books, as well as the historical apparatus of that distinguished author who made the annals of the Huguenots his life's task, Henry Martyn Baird (d. 1906). There also are kept the chemical library permanently provided for by the father of the late Professor Loeb, and the French and Spanish books of the quondam head of the Romance languages department, the gentle and lovable William Kendall Gillett (d. 1914), while Butler Hall commemorates a benefactor of New York University who actually entered its Council before Andrew Jackson retired and who lived to see the promised land, a nonagenarian, and finally passed away in 1897 in McKinley's first administration. The task of adjusting the Medical School as an organic unit of the University, subject to the gen78 IN NEW YORK UNIVERSITY eral administration and not merely a nominal appendage, was a conflict in the academic and personal life of Dr. MacCracken, the details of which call for no rehearsing in this place. The addition of the Schwab estate, contiguous to the first purchase on the south, a splendid benefaction and Christmas gift of the late Mrs. Russell Sage in 1906, endowed the campus with limits and prospects positively unique, that is, not met elsewhere in Greater New York and but rarely equalled elsewhere. The Hall of Fame, the familiar ambulatory and colonnade architecturally connected with the library, recording in enduring bronze the names and dates of the greatest Americans and, through some utterance, commemorating also some salient feature of character-this Hall of Fame, I say, remains one of the wisest and, I dare say, one of the most enduring achievements of the sixth Chancellor. He is now gone from us; but his friends and co-workers can quote for him with ready confidence the Horatian lines: Exegi monumentum aere perennius, Regalique situ pyramidum altius, Quod non imber edax, non aquilo impotens 79 HENRY MITCHELL MAC CRACKEN Possit diruere aut innumerabilis Annorum series et fuga temporum. As to University Heights proper, that site and even more the potential future of that noble plateau -if the wealth of Ormuzd and of Ind or the unlimited wealth of some fabulously rich men of our own time were at the free disposal of the college, could a more perfect abode for the same have been acquired? So, when the munificence of John S. Kennedy in the autumn of 1909 freed the corporation from the mortgage so long borne by the faithful supporters of the Founder of University Heights-then indeed the older teachers and alumni might have been-some were-stirred, deep in their hearts, especially when their reminiscent glance swept over that sore and trying time, the first halfcentury of New York UniversityWe were like them that dream. Of those who toiled by his side and helped to make of the reborn college a very positive reality, nothing must here be said. They know that their best work was made possible, was quickened and matured, by the ineffable advancement born of the 80 IN NEW YORK UNIVERSITY migration and by the new opportunities and agencies that grew there and came into being. When the Kennedy bequest had taken the heaviest of the many burdens from those sturdy and patient shoulders, and when the record of three score years and ten was almost made up for him, he laid down his staff and rested, if ever he could rest. It is something to assist at the birth of a child and to foster its growing and adolescent years with loving care; but men are widely agreed that it is a far greater task and a more felicitous achievement to save an adult abandoned by his very kindred and given over even by those of his own household, and not merely to save his life but to place him and it in an environment where new friends, new strength, new hope come to him, and where he not only can, with grateful eyes, look back upon so much desolation actually traversed and concluded, but can look forward with quickening trust to an ever brighter future. 8i UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN I 9015.0667011130 W'IýUEVY Etta Vqi & V"sel' V wzw gtý AIR f A...........