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GIFT OF 
 
 ror. Emanuel Fritz 
 

 THE LIFE AND SERVICES 
 
 OF 
 
 EZRA CORNELL 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS M. FINCH 
 
THE LIFE AND SERVICES" 
 
 EZRA CORNELL 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT CORNEUv UNIVERSITY ON FOUNDER'S 
 DAY (JANUARY IITH, 1887) 
 
 FRANCIS M. FINCH 
 
 Judge of the Court of Appeals of the State of New York 
 
 PUHLI3HED BY THE UNIVERSITY 
 
4" 
 
 
Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 I have come among you to-day from a sense of 
 duty which I found it impossible to resist. Since it was 
 my fortune to be one of those who watched at the cradle 
 of the University, sometimes when the nights were 
 dark, and enemies gathered and danger approached in 
 the shadows, and to stand by the side of the Founder, 
 giving such help as occasion permitted or anxiety 
 prompted, it seems appropriate that those memories 
 of his life which I may have unconsciously stored away, 
 whether familiar to the many or known only to the few, 
 should have the repetition of this memorial occasion, 
 or the preservation of such record as it is yet possible 
 to make. 
 
 At that commemoration which, in the beginning 
 of the last November, gathered about Cambridge lov- 
 ing sons and admiring friends to look back upon two 
 hundred and fifty years of educational life, the thought- 
 ful and polished orator of the festival could do no more 
 for the memory of John Harvard than to speak of him 
 in a passing sentence as " the gentle and godly youth 
 from whom we took our name, himself scarce more 
 than a name". For us, there is not yet the excuse of 
 long and blinding years, and a memory faded till its col- 
 ors are lost in the gray of a mist; and something more 
 than a name was our dead Founder's gift. Surely, be- 
 fore the added years build other barriers between us 
 and him, the solid strength and merit of his life should 
 be remembered and recalled: and to that purpose and 
 that alone I devote the moments allotted me to-day. 
 
However vain the wish,one cannot repress a long- 
 ing that events might have been so ordained as to have 
 given to his open and observant eyes a view of what 
 has already been accomplished in the upbuilding of this 
 University whose completion and success became the 
 dominant purpose of his life. Doubtless, some such wish 
 was often his. Once at least I traced its presence in an 
 expression of momentary regret. I remember riding 
 with him over these hills when but a single building 
 was slowly rising, and our way led through tangled 
 grass, over uneven ground, amid the stone and timbers 
 of construction, and when, after some moments of si- 
 lence, with a patient and far-off look in his eyes, he said 
 that I was more fortunate than he, since I might reason- 
 ably expect to see how the scene would look after the 
 changes of twenty-five years, while for him there was 
 no such hope. Less than that quarter-century has gone 
 and I can see the change ; but I am sure that he saw it 
 then. In that moment of thoughtful silence every 
 building took its appointed place, and he counted them 
 already by the score, and voices and footsteps broke 
 the stillness of the fields. One may even imagine that 
 in that vision of the future he saw the white helmets 
 aligned for the drill of the afternoon, and heard the 
 sound of bells as yet uncast from a tower not even 
 planned. For more than any man I knew he took the 
 future into his confidence and thought, and studied its 
 far perspective while tracing the foreground of his 
 immediate work. One can almost see the hope and the 
 purpose shining out of his young eyes as he stood upon 
 this very hill, after a long day's walk from the parental 
 roof, and looked down upon the village that was to be 
 his future home. One can see it again in his weary 
 journeys through the South, and patient efforts among 
 the farms of Maine. But it developed most rapidly 
 when he became one of the pioneers in telegraph con- 
 struction and staked his fortunes upon the result. 
 
I have heard him tell the story ; modestly, but 
 with some pride in the triumph of his judgment, and 
 when he thought the listeners needed the stimulus of 
 the lesson : how capital shrank from the enterprise and 
 cautiously refused its aid ; how mistakes and imperfec- 
 tions discouraged those who believed ; how the heavy 
 pressure of debt brought with it the destructive energy 
 of the law : how learned scientists warned off his wires 
 from the house-tops as bringing danger of fire ; how he 
 slept on the floor by his batteries and lived upon a 
 crust ; how sickness came to the help of disaster, when 
 health and strength were supremely needed ; but how 
 all the time he felt sure that the energy of the lightning 
 would be tamed to steady and useful work, and the 
 world have need of its marvellous power; and so per- 
 sisted, through doubt and despair darkening all about 
 him, until the results unfolded in success and brought 
 him a fortune beyond his hopes and needs. 
 
 What he had done with the telegraph in hi-s vig- 
 orous youth he thought could be repeated with rail- 
 ways in his ripening age. Two such enterprises, neces- 
 sary as he believed for easy and convenient access to 
 the University he had founded, were struggling for 
 lack of means, and in danger of failure and complete 
 dissolution. With his old-time courage and faith in the 
 future, he took their burdens upon his shoulders, and 
 put in peril the fortune he had so hardly won. When 
 some of us were frightened and ventured to remonstrate, 
 with unmoved serenity and amused wonder at our ti- 
 midity and want of foresight, he answered with confi- 
 dent predictions, reasoning difficult to be resisted, and 
 a faith that would have moved mountains. The roads 
 were built. The bulk of his fortune was buried in the 
 earth with their ties and spiked to the roadway with 
 their rails. If I greeted one of them with a solid and 
 resolute hatred whose embers are yet, perhaps, a little 
 
warm in the ashes, because it invaded the college 
 grounds, shredding their peace with its screaming whis- 
 tles, breaking every promise of neatness and adorn- 
 ment, and threatening the native forest that none but 
 a Vandal would disturb; because I saw how its multitu- 
 dinous wants, like the arms of a devil-fish, were fasten- 
 ing upon every square inch of the Founder's confidence 
 and trust; because I feared the coming of the wreckers 
 with their syndicates and foreclosures and battered life- 
 boats presaging disaster; at least I was not blind to the 
 patient courage with which he faced the danger, or the 
 marvellous faith that calmly awaited the ultimate re- 
 sults. As he saw the flood tide of his fortune climb the 
 sands to his feet and lift above all dangerous bars and 
 rocks without excitement, or wonder, or pulses jubilant 
 and throbbing, so he beheld the ebb stripping bare the 
 sands and gliding out to the sea of cut and embankment 
 and culvert and bridge, without terror, without com- 
 plaint, and looked forward with cheerful courage and 
 unyielding faith to a successful and fortunate end. 
 
 Even the approaching steps of Death faltered 
 and hesitated before the firmness of that courage and 
 the serenity of that faith. I shall not soon forget an 
 occasion when, on the banks of the Hudson, he made 
 his appearance at the closing of a litigation in which 
 the interests of the University were largely involved. 
 He came pale, haggard, and weak, with an incessant 
 and painful cough, in a storm of wind and rain that lent 
 damp and chill to the air, and, declining to rest upon a 
 lounge, sat severely upright through the work of the 
 day, marking every word, but repressing every emo- 
 tion, and giving no sign of the thought within. Some 
 one, not meaning to be overheard, spoke of him in a 
 low and sympathetic tone as a dying man. I thought 
 the words did not reach him. The firm head did not 
 stir ; no muscle moved ; the eyes looked out fearless ; 
 
5 
 
 no added pallor spread over his face. But some hours 
 after, when we were alone together, he suddenly looked 
 up and said ; "they need not think me a dying man. I 
 shall live long enough yet to ward off all danger and 
 earn another million of dollars to give to the University 
 at home." It matters little to the wonder of his cour- 
 age that the firm purpose failed and death interposed a 
 final barrier, for out of the aching head of his sure and 
 sagacious plans was yet to spring, as the Greek goddess 
 came, more than the million that Death would not let 
 him earn. 
 
 Such was the brave nature, the prophetic intelli- 
 gence, the unfaltering faith that built itself into the 
 foundations of your University. One would expect to 
 see something of the characteristics of the Founder in 
 the work of his hands, but in two directions his far- 
 reaching courage and foresight were developed to even 
 greater degree than in his personal and business enter- 
 prises. Hold up to the light and study that calm state- 
 ment of his ; "I would found an Institution in which 
 any person may find instruction in any study." The 
 words are simple as was the Quaker way of his inheri- 
 tance, but have a directness peculiarly his own, and a 
 deliberate force in their wide and confident sweep. 
 
 "Any person:" the rich perhaps, but the youth 
 of humbler homes and narrower means assuredly and 
 without fail : those training for the learned professions 
 if they should choose, but at all events the workers of 
 the world, the men of the compass and the sledge, of 
 the engine and the plough : not merely the earnest and 
 ambitious boy, but the girl as well in whose face the 
 doors of equal education had long been scornfully shut. 
 I am little likely to forget how those doors were opened; 
 and there entered in with startling promptness what is 
 now commonly called Co-Education. When everything 
 was new and order had scarcely tamed confusion ; when 
 
for young men we had scarcely room, and for young- 
 women none, there came one day a quiet girl, modest, 
 but dreadfully firm, bringing with her the formal 
 certificate of her School Commissioner entitling her to 
 a State scholarship, and asking admission to the student 
 ranks. We were face to face with the grave problem, 
 suddenly, and unwarned. I was asked to study the law 
 and see if the application could be rejected. Study the 
 law ! There, on our very seal was graved the mandate 
 of the Founder; there, in the statute itself was the 
 broad authority admitting of no exception ; and there 
 stood the representative of her sex calmly putting our 
 principles on trial. I was obliged to say that the right 
 was hers, that the law gave it, and we could not refuse 
 without some scorn of the Founder's purpose, and the 
 peril of a statute violated and annulled. Yet it was 
 sadly true that we had no place, no room for the girl 
 who stood the champion of her sex, and dreaded thus 
 and at once to settle the policy of the Institution : and 
 so we met the emergency with the bland persuasions of 
 one to whom nobody ever said "no ' when "yes" was a 
 possible answer ; whom I am glad to see safe returned 
 from his German gutturals and the growlings of the 
 sea ; the first President of the University ; who met the 
 lady with a frank admission of her right and a suave 
 request clothed in the richest morocco binding of his 
 tones, that she would wait till better preparation and 
 fitter welcome could be given. Of course he conquered 
 and she for the time withdrew ; but the question came 
 again and again, and "would not down" and we still 
 pleaded want of adequate means, until one day 
 there came another man, tall like the Founder and as 
 firm and crisp as he, who quietly laid upon our table 
 almost a quarter of a million of dollars saying; "I am 
 tired of hearing that excuse: have you any other?" 
 Reflection failed to substitute another, and so the doors 
 
7 
 
 stood open wide, the doors of the University, swing- 
 ing at its main entrance and guarding its front, not 
 merely those of some timid and tentative "Annex,"- 
 and "any person" had liberty to pass their portals. 
 
 "In any study." There lay the foundation of 
 what the Founder meant this Institution to be ; a Uni- 
 versity in the broadest and fullest sense of the term. Be 
 sure that he did not underrate the meaning of the word, 
 or imagine that he could build in his lifetime what 
 could only grow with the sturdy slowness of an oak ; 
 but the seed that he planted was mother of an oak, not 
 germ of a sunflower. The magnitude of the building 
 may not exceed the scope and strength of the founda- 
 tions, but he laid them such that the outlying towers of 
 distant centuries will find a solid masonry to uphold 
 their walls. His own native tastes were toward Agri- 
 culture and the Mechanic Arts. He loved his farm and 
 the spread of its wide fields, the fragrance of the clover 
 and the gold of the ripening grain, the heavy fleeces of 
 his sheep and the sedate walk of his cattle, the silence 
 that was busy with growth and stealing on to blossom 
 and fruit. Equally he loved all useful and ingenious 
 mechanism, himself a natural mechanic and full of 
 waiting resources. He could frame a house when a boy 
 or build a mill when a man ; tunnel the rocks for a 
 flume or open the highway for a wire ; invent a relay 
 or plan an insulator. A college of Agriculture and the 
 Mechanic Arts would have come naturally from his 
 hand, and he gave them liberal place with the aid of one 
 who never yet has found the bottom of purse or plan ; 
 but the Founder meant more than that ; meant a Uni- 
 versity that should gather in all Art and Science, all 
 Letters and Learning, the whole wide range of human 
 knowledge and attainment. And he meant it, not as a 
 dream or a hope, but in that downright earnest which 
 contemplated years of steady growth and a full develop- 
 
ment to be reached long after his brain and hand could 
 plan and toil no more. 
 
 To move along the lines of that growth with 
 prudent but aggressive steps is the duty you have in- 
 herited from the purpose of the Founder. Slowly, per- 
 haps, but steadily and symmetrically, you are to grow 
 into what we all long to see, and what some older in- 
 stitutions of the land are vigorously striving to become, 
 a true American University. Not some servile copy 
 of a foreign original or bald effort to match an English 
 or a German pattern; but a native and natural growth, 
 with every fiber of which is entwined the national 
 spirit and the national nerve. Prowling about our 
 educational thinking there is sometimes a timid rever- 
 ence for foreign and famous models, and a sentimental 
 dread of other guidance than theirs, which hampers 
 free and resolute action, and substitutes a hesitant and 
 distrustful step for the strong, if perhaps unstately or 
 even ragged, march of our Western civilization. Not 
 undervaluing the lessons of successful example, not 
 unwilling to learn what Time has surely taught, yet one 
 thing we should always remember, that a University 
 grows and is not made, and all vigorous growth, out- 
 side of the hot-house invalids, is growth in the open air, 
 such as befits the climate and the soil, and is product of 
 the native air and earth. The stunted pine of Green- 
 land lifts to the mast of a man-of-war in our western 
 groves, and the sweetest grape of southern France may 
 prove tart and bitter on our colder slopes. The end of 
 education is the same for all; the goal to be reached is 
 one and unchangeable; but the American scholar must 
 travel his own path, however dim the trail or few the 
 blazed trees on his road, and not cry or wait for the 
 lighted highways smoothed by the wheels of a thous- 
 and years. The true measure of a University is not 
 the wealth of its endowment, the noise of its doctrines, 
 
or the moss on its venerable shingles, but the sort of 
 men it makes, and the complete and crowning Ameri- 
 can University will be that which turns out the noblest 
 type of American man: not merely venered with a 
 thin surface of Science, not simply polished with a film 
 of Classical oil, but hard-wood and solid, all the way 
 through, into whatever shape by choice or emergency 
 it may in the end be carved. 
 
 It is surely your duty and is likely to be your 
 fate to lead the advance in securing to education a 
 greater breadth of opportunity, a wider freedom of at- 
 tainment, and an impartial expansion of its range and 
 usefulness; to be imitated at a respectful distance; and 
 then perhaps ignored by some whose patrician blood 
 has been warmed into courage by your success. You 
 need not grieve. The experience is not uncommon. 
 In many ways, and on many lines of action your Foun- 
 der felt the cold scorn of those who fancied them- 
 selves his superiors, and the chilling doubt of others who 
 thought him unpractical and visionary; but he never 
 suffered either scorn or doubt to turn him from duty 
 or impede his progress; and lived long enough at least 
 to demonstrate the power of an intelligent faith back- 
 ed by the courage of conviction. 
 
 Observe, too, how these qualities were developed 
 in the agencies he employed. The remark has been 
 often made that it was itself a marvellous display of 
 courage and faith which in the heat of the civil war, 
 when the life of the nation was at stake, could inspire 
 its chosen representatives to devote to the use of the 
 States for the purposes of education a liberal share of 
 the public domain. To our own State was allotted the 
 right to nearly one million of acres representing at the 
 moment a market value of less than one million of dol- 
 lars, and that steadily decreasing with relentless cer- 
 tainty and speed. In the judgement of the Founder an 
 
10 
 
 immediate sale was a terrible waste, and the location 
 of the scrip and its sturdy holding full of tempting pos- 
 sibilities. He looked forward as was his way. He 
 saw the fever of war making room for the industry of 
 peace; the tide of immigration penetrating anew the sol- 
 itudes of the prairie and the forest; the axe gleaming at 
 the base of the pines and the rivers running logs instead 
 of billows, and wealth awaiting him who himself could 
 dare to wait. Full of trust in the future he foresaw, he 
 made with the State that courageous and almost dra- 
 matic contract by which he bound himself to purchase 
 the entire right of the commonwealth, to select and lo- 
 cate the lands it represented, to pay the taxes, guard 
 against trespasses, defend from fires, and in the end sell 
 when values had strengthened, and then pay into the 
 coffers of the State for the use of the University the 
 entire net proceeds of the enterprise. For himself he 
 reserved the return of his own money with the interest 
 upon it. Nothing for his toil, nothing for his risk, noth- 
 ing for his burden, nothing for his marvellous energy 
 and thrift ! This man, who at the outset could give 
 twenty- five thousand dollars for the precious privilege 
 of giving away half a million more, puts himself under 
 bonds to the State to work for the State and ask no 
 compensation ! It was not wonderful that the load 
 grew heavy as the slow years dragged on with no sign 
 of reward; no wonder that when a moderate, but as the 
 times were, just and fair price was offered for a portion 
 of the land, those of us who were nearest to him begged 
 his acceptance of the offer as a measure of prudence and 
 safety; but it was wonderful how the iron grain of his 
 courage and faith resisted far into the night the plead- 
 ing and anxious fears of those whom he loved and trus- 
 ted, grimly smiling at our weak hearts and frightened 
 nerves, and insisting that he could carry the burden 
 to the end. 
 
1 1 
 
 I have sketched one side of our Founder's char- 
 acter. If I left it here you would see himkpperfectly, 
 as many saw him in his life; a tall, strong man with a grave 
 stern face, reticent, and almost cold in his manner, look- 
 ing at you with eyes of deliberate blue, steady beneath 
 a brow unfurrowed and framed in by the gathering 
 gray of hair as determined as his will. To a stranger, 
 sometimes he seemed hard and repellant, likely to be 
 proud, or to deal out rebuke with savage force. That 
 was not in the least the man. No kinder heart than his 
 ever beat, and it made him tender to distress and gen- 
 erous beyond measure: not merely on a large scale and 
 in the public eye, but silently and in the shadow of his 
 daily and private life. To relieve suffering, to lighten 
 the burdens of poverty, to open the way to despairing 
 effort, to instinctively find the need that pride con- 
 cealed, to fill his days full of kindness and charity, was 
 as natural to him as for the flowers to bloom or the 
 corn to ripen. There are those now living, moving in 
 the prime of life to assured success, to whose hopeless 
 youth he opened the doors of hope, and paved and 
 smoothed the road from the fortune he had gained. 
 There are those now living, in the afternoon of life and 
 awaiting the sunset, who owe to his tireless bounty the 
 peace and comfort of their days. There are those who 
 have gone before us whose last hours were cheered by 
 his care, and who sleep, some within cannon range of 
 the Potomac forts, and some on the hillside within the 
 shadow ol his new dwelling which shelters now surviv- 
 ing wife and children, but never covered as a home his 
 own tired head. While writing these words an incident, 
 unknown to me before, has been communicated by one 
 whom many in this assemblage will remember with an 
 esteem and regard as lasting as my own the Reverend 
 Doctor Torrey, who in the early days of the University 
 was resident here as Pastor of the First Presbyterian 
 
V 
 
 12 
 
 Church. He had been preaching- to his congregation, 
 among whom the Founder was an attentive listener, 
 upon the duty of aiding young men of slender means 
 who desired to enter the Ministry to secure the neces- 
 sary and adequate education, and quoted the remark 
 which happened to linger in his memory that "these 
 were Poverty's jewels, taken in the rough and polished 
 for the crown ot Christ." At the close of the sermon 
 a collection was had for the benefit of the Board of 
 Education of the Church and among the gifts of money 
 large and small was found a little card upon which and 
 over his initials was pencilled in the Founder's hand ; 
 "Select for me one of Poverty's jewels that it may be 
 wrought out the diamond for the crown of Christ." 
 When, after the selection was made, he was told the 
 name of his jewel and the expense to be borne for seven 
 years while its purity and light were being slowly 
 developed, he simply said in his brief, terse way, 
 "Right; I agree to that;" and silently fulfilled the 
 promise till the need of it was ended. For any young- 
 man struggling to obtain an education his heart beat 
 warmly and his help was never withheld. 
 
 No man was firmer in his friendships. His 
 confidence once given was never withdrawn until 
 hopelessly betrayed. Long after selfishness and greed 
 had grown visible to other eyes they were unseen by 
 him or softened by charitable interpretation, and he 
 resented a suspicion of his friends as a personal injury 
 to himself. If sometimes this firm and faithful trust 
 took on the proportions of a fault, it was but a virtue 
 carried to excess, reminding one of that other brave and 
 self-reliant nature which led our armies to victory, and 
 never could be made to see a vice or error in a friend. 
 
 But among the Founder's traits, what to me was 
 the strangest of all in so strong and earnest a nature, 
 was his serene patience and forgiving temper under 
 
13 
 
 persistent and bitter falsehood, destructive and sting- 
 ing slander, and a jealousy reckless of the truth. It 
 seems almost impossible at this day and in the light of 
 events that labors so unselfish and a life so stainless 
 could have received for reward a storm of obloquy and 
 abuse. I recall very clearly the occasion. It came 
 with the solemnity of a formal accusation, upon the floor 
 of the Legislature, from the lips of one of its members, 
 and charged upon Ezra Cornell that his land enterprise 
 was a gigantic fraud upon the State, planned and in- 
 tended to win for him an enormous fortune and to plun- 
 der the Institution he had founded. Let us be just. 
 He who made the charge doubtless believed its truth, 
 and deemed that he was but doing his sworn duty. Yet 
 at the time all of us flamed into anger and indignation. 
 We gathered about the Founder with hot cheeks and 
 eyes in a blaze and words stinging with rage and 
 exasperation. His was the only quiet voice of all. 1 
 heard him say that what we so bitterly resented and 
 roundly execrated was not at all an evil fortune but 
 rather the reverse; and then he calmly explained, that 
 the secret suspicion of a wrong and wicked purpose 
 had long been mining beneath the surface and was 
 difficult to discover and refute, but when it came open- 
 ly to the light and found a man bold enough to declare 
 it and be its champion the danger was ended, for it 
 funished an opportunity, by a formal investigation 
 which he should at once demand, to turn the light on 
 every step of his progress and convince the most doubt- 
 ful of the simple truth. And this he said without an- 
 ger or excitement, patiently confronting the wrong till 
 the slander was laid in its grave. We who know that 
 his fortune was lessened and perilled by the demands 
 of the burden he assumed have little need at this day 
 of speaking in his defence; and yet before my own lips 
 are sealed and I follow him into the dark which 1 hope 
 
14 
 
 but borders the light, I desire to say one thing with 
 all the force and weight which it is possible for me to 
 command. Day by day and almost hour by hour I be- 
 came familiar with all that he planned and all that he 
 did in the management of his self-imposed trust. .None 
 of his accounts or of his correspondence with his chos- 
 en agents were withheld from my scrutiny, and if ever 
 man had a full and complete opportunity to find and 
 know the uttermost truth, that opportunity was mine: 
 and I am glad to declare that never, in word or deed, 
 in act or intention, did I discover the least faint trace 
 of a selfish purpose, or the shadow of a personal benefit 
 sought or gained. Thoroughly and absolutely pure 
 and without alloy was the true gold of his nature and 
 
 his life. . 
 
 But a time came when the Founder's work was 
 
 ended. How he bore up against the waste of disease I 
 have already said. I saw him climb the narrow stair- 
 ways in the business quarter of the Metropolis, pausing 
 many times from exhaustion, but with never a murmur 
 or complaint. He who in his prime could walk forty 
 miles a day and enjoy the effort found himself scarcely 
 able to endure an hour's fatigue. There came at last 
 the hardest trial of all, to unloose his hold upon the 
 helm and commit the wheel to other hands. That he 
 did it sadly, reluctantly, and with pain is most true, 
 but he did it patiently and with unhesitating trust in 
 his children and his friends. I recollect the shiver and 
 the chill with which I became conscious of that first sur- 
 render. With one of his sons we were seeking safety 
 from a menacing danger, and searching anxiously for 
 a rift in the cloud or a light in the dense darkness, and 
 he, folding his hands upon the table and laying his head 
 upon them said only- -"You must do the best that you 
 can : I am not well !" The words were simple, but 
 how much they cost him we shall never know. From 
 
15 
 
 that time on, he grew steadily weaker, yet his patience 
 and placid resignation continued to the end. It was 
 my privilege with the aid of the Trustees, who gener- 
 ously lent their own means to the emergency until the 
 land securities could come into effective use, and with 
 the first Treasurer of the University who yet remains 
 among us, with declining years as fruitful as they have 
 been cheerful, to place in the Founder's hands as he sat 
 in his sick room, every bond he had given the State, 
 every obligation it held against him, and assure him 
 that all his promises were fully and exactly fulfilled. 
 He went to his death with his benevolent and marvell- 
 ous Trust accomplished and complete. 
 
 And now, at last, you have placed his mortal re- 
 mains where I know that he desired to sleep; on these 
 hills where his youthful resolves were framed; on the 
 fields of the farm that he loved as men love the air and 
 leaves of home; in the midst of the University to which 
 he literally gave his life. Generations of busy feet and 
 throbbing hearts will flow like recurrent tides about 
 his resting place, and changes most broad and unfor- 
 seen make all things but one grow unfamiliar. That 
 one all change will reverence. Throughout the years 
 his slumber shall have respect. Above his grave shall 
 remain the marble, not more pure and not more firm 
 than the purpose of his life, and from the stained win- 
 dows through which the glory of the sunlight filters shall 
 gravely look down the elder builders who pointed him 
 the way; the form of one who worked and gave at his 
 side; and the pure face of the maiden, who wove a 
 thread of romance in the sterner work of father and of 
 friend, and left us at least her love in the chimes she 
 gave. 
 
 And there I must leave him ; and here I must 
 leave you to return to duties which are impatient of in- 
 terruption. As I go permit me to add one final word. 
 
i6 
 
 I have thought that the duty which I owed to this 
 occasion was not at all an effort of logic or of learning, 
 if such were within my power; not even a defense of 
 the New Education or a study of your relations to it, 
 however I might love to break a lance in the fray ; but 
 an effort to paint a picture of the Founder as I knew 
 him in his life, in outlines accurate and true, and in 
 colors as vivid as I could find surviving among the dull 
 browns of daily toil; in order that you who knew him 
 not, who have come later upon the scene, may inter- 
 weave among your younger labors and fresher ambi- 
 tions the face and step of the grave but kindly man 
 who made your places and your purposes possible ; and 
 in the hope that the story of his life may be handed 
 down from one to another and never for a dav be for- 
 gotten. I trust that through all vicissitudes and 
 changes, however the New may supersede the Old, and 
 Time and Death blur or efface the Past, there may yet 
 remain, as the center of every aim and ambition, as the 
 stimulus to every useful effort, as the atmosphere of the 
 University, the memory of Ezra Cornell. 
 
 OF W. G. SMITH & CO. , 1887. 
 
6AYLORD 
 
 BROS., INC. 
 
 Manufacturers 
 Syracuse, N. Y. 
 Stockton, Calif. 
 
 M253174 
 
 - 5 
 
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