Cornell University - Cornellian Yearbook (Ithaca, NY)

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, resihent Eijite At his home on our Campus on the morning of Nfonday, November 4th, three days before his eighty-sixth birthday, he, whom we have loved still to call Pres- ident White, breathed his last. On his birthday weilaid him to rest in the lVIem- orial Chapel with the other founders of Cornell. No more will his venerable figure remind us of what Cornell was to the world, and he to Cornell, in the days when both were young. It is well, while yet his -memory is fresh, to pause and ask what he has meant to student life through all these years. H Unlike enough to the face and figure we have known, was the alert, young president, who in the autumn of 1868, welcomed the first students to Cornell. To him, as to few others, a university was for its students. On that he always insisted. There must be no tutors doing perfunctory teaching to pay their way to a profession. The faculty must keep in view the search for truth, but not at cost to its diffusion. He had observed, he said, that in the largest minds devoted to science, the power of discovering truth and the power of imparting it were almost invariably found together. And he would have truth imparted, not from the teacheris desk alone, but in the free companionship of teacher with student. He could never forget how at Yale he and his classmates had hardly known their teachers outside the class room, and how, even in the class room, time that might have gone to inspire talk or illumining discussion had been wasted in recitations. True, he wanted only able and earnest students. Not only did he not believe in trying to put a ive-thousand dollar education into a fifty cent boy,'7 he did not believe in trying to put any education whatever into an unwilling boy. ln Heaven's name, he said to the students, be men. You are not here to be made, you are here to make yourselves. And to their parents he said: c'We wish it distinctly understood that this is no 'Reform School' WVe have no right to give our strength or effort to reform, or drag, or push any man into an education. To him both study and teaching were things of such delight that he had no patience with the Philistines who substitute dates for history, and criticisms for literature, and formulas for sciencefi He had great faith in the lecture, and in early Cornell, as nowhere else, teaching was almost wholly lectures. But to himia lecture was no mere random talk. Yet he believed too, in talk. Carefully though his own lectures were prepared, and with a warmth and grace that gave him the whole university public for an audience, he never hesitated to turn from them to his class to relate an experience or to make an appeal. And he loved too, to chat with his students. He was gladly their guest in club and fraternity, and yet more gladly, he welcomed them to his home. At first Cascadilla had to furnish an assembly room, but as soon as he could build a president's house, it was a means to acquaintance with students-in general receptions, in his study, at his table. It was for them-more than for himself that he covered his walls with historical paintings and bric-a-brac, filled his library with pictorial volumes and with the books and manuscripts that had themselves made history, and rare 15.

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was his joy in showing these to his pupils. He wished his colleagues to entertain their students, and even urged a subsidy expressly for the purpose. He was interested in all student activities, intellectual and social. For the literary and debating societies he fitted up, from his own purse, a handsome room with statuary and inspiring pictures. He had been himself a student editor, and was always a glad contributor to student publications. Sports he applauded as an overiiow for animal spirits or as they fostered health and character. But, if he himself rushed to the chimes to celebrate our first aquatic victory, he had a hand, too, in bringing it about that there were speedily intercollegiate contests in essay and debate, languages and mathematics, as well as rowing. To football he could never be reconciled. It seemed to him brutal, he could never admire a strength that lacked in grace or self-respect. Especially did he covet for the student world the training that gives breadth of mind. Literature and history he would have had so taught that every student should listen. And yet more did he crave for them the civilizing and enobling influence of art, of architecture, sculpture, painting, and above all music. No chance did he lose to add to Cornell life the touch of beauty andiof melody. Fundamental was his conviction that the university student is a man,.and not a child. It was in deference to his wish, that for years we had no other rule for student conduct than that no student might, on pain of removal, be guilty of aught unbecoming a student and a gentleman. Student disorder he wished dealt with by the civil authorities, like any other, and he welcomed lthaca's growing vigilance and severity. Yet his kindness of heart was unbounded, and he did well to transfer to the faculty from the first, the care of discipline, for, once a student was in his presence, his own companionableness soon made it impossible notto treat him as a man and a brother. The students, and they were many, who had the happy fortune to be his secretaries, librarians, assistants of whatever sort found him making them companions, even confidants, and interrupting often the most serious business for little asides of anecdote or of discussion. It was perhaps this love of companionship, this instinctive democracy, quite as much as his wish to have Cornell known or to bring the world's leaders to bear upon her thought, that made his home throughout the years a meeting place for inter- esting men of every sort from out his vast acquaintance, and students hardly less than faculty, were stirred and broadened by their presence. Since he laid down the presidency, in 1885, the student body has, of course, seen less of him. The public missions which took him abroad or busied him at home, left often small leisure for aught else. But Cornell was never absent from his thoughts., and whenever he has been in Ithaca-as more and more these last years-his interest in student life and welfare has been as fresh as ever. Not even the growing deafness which reduced almost to monologue his conversation, could shut him out from welcoming their visits, and to all who passed him on the Campus, or watched his face at concerts or in chapel, his mere presence has been full of inspiration. Welshall miss him as long as memory remains. 5 16