In

education had run along upon ecclesiastical lines. several States a single denomination became pre-potent. In Massachusetts it was Congregational, Baptist in Rhode Island, Episcopal in New York, Quaker in Pennsylvania and Catholic in Maryland, each as to academic dealings,with others, a water-tight compartment. Among the outcomes were lowered standards both of admission and graduation, with more superficial intervening requirements. Schools of highest name grew multitudinous, each despairing of a tenth either in endowment or in students attendant of what was indispensable for the doing of their appropriate work. Meantime, miracles new every morning, in chemistry, engineering and sister sciences, steam and electricity, pervading daily life demanded the highest culture in colleges where the lowest was still declared enough. In such conditions the hungry sheep looked up and were not fed; no wonder the percentage of collegians sunk down year by year. Sheep are simple, yet if they find no food convenient for them, will wander from their folds and flock-masters.

In this exigency the first man to dedicate his fortune of a million and his talent which was worth far more to starting the first institution where, in his own words, "any person could find instruction in any study" was Cornell. The unique guide which he needed in laying his corner-stone his common sense, which was most uncommon, discovered in Andrew D. White, whom he "grappled to his soul with hoops of steel." Each of this pair was the half part of a supreme educator, and it is still doubtful which of them owed most to the other. White, whose richest spoil from study and travel abroad, was such an ideal as Cornell had the will but not the skill to actualize at home. White had tried his prentice hand at Ann Arbor in a position much above an apprentice. But true architects, like the grand apostle, prefer not to build upon another man's foundation, and at Cornell millions lay at White's feet for the fulfillment of his educational dreams. He did not come there out of an Egyptian prison, like Joseph, yet must have entered Cornell exulting that his soul had elbow room as never before. His foundations for after-coming masterbuilders are well described in words possibly borrowed from himself in a subsequent federal law, "while excluding no old classical or disciplinary studies, nor schools of law and medicine, or science, it included co-education, optional

courses, normal schools and military tactics, with such branches of learning as relate to agriculture and the mechanic arts." On this system his energies, of whatever name, were concentrated for fifteen years in a focus which burned up all obstacles and illuminated Cornell's march to assured success. His vital strength being at last exhausted, or at least demanding a contrasting world of activity, he resolutely resigned while never more desiderated. He was urged to nominate a Cornell head, and to the surprise of many, his voice was at once for Adams. A few of his many words for him were: "He is among the foremost of the men who have brought the University of Michigan up to its present condition. His character is of the highest, his scholarship deeply rooted and fruitful, his experience extensive and of the very kind we need, his power of thought and utterance such as especially fit him for the work we offer, his executive ability fully demonstrated, his reputation among scholars, abroad and at home, of the very sort we should ask for; for years my mind has been turning to him as the man of all men we could hope for, to carry on and enlarge the work we have begun, and I am opposed to any delay in choosing my successor." On the self-same day, when the Cornell Trustees heard these words, July 13, 1885, Mr. Adams was elected President, all but two of their fifteen votes being cast in his favor.

For the next seven years the career of Mr. Adams at Ithaca was progress onward and upward on paths opened by his only predecessor, while he himself opened others of wider expansion. Explaining his processes is here impossible, but a single result crowds a history into a sentence. Within his seven years the teaching staff grew from 54 to 135, and the roll of students swelled from 573 to 1506, onethird of them in departments newly established. He had fulfilled the prophecy of his predecessor. The mantle of Elijah had fallen on Elisha, upon shoulders not unworthy.

Nevertheless, in 1892 the health of Mr. Adams had become impaired, and the presidential duties through an amplified routine left him at most only scattered fragments of leisure-disjecta membra of time for either study or teaching, and he therefore laid down his sceptre, and then at once was doubly diligent as editor-in-chief of a Universal Cyclopedia and other literary enterprises,—as a golden harvest of the wisdom and learning hived through many a

studious year. Such a sabbath of his age, however, was no more than a brief dream. New greatness was thrust upon him, when the University of Wisconsin cried aloud, come thou and rule over us! Cornell was not of the Wisconsin State class in which he had been nurtured, and where he had chiefly taught,—the class coming nearest to all as endowed by all. It may be too that the new dignity was thrust upon him by the good genius-who knew him altogether and all along had been the strategic Von Moltke of his pilgrimage and whose advice had always verified the proverb that lookers on at a game see more than the players,

His acceptance of the Wisconsin call was Sept. 20, 1892, and he began service at once though not inaugurated until January 17, 1893. In Madison as elsewhere, it was his to know something of "the rough brake that virtue must go through, and ravenous fishes that a vessel follow which is new-trimmed." But his patient continuance in well-doing, and that still taught by former mistakes in the end put censurers to shame and crowned his presidency with laurels that will not fade. Proofs are abundant in authoritative prints of the institution for whose good he wore himself out, and fell with all his armor on. Under his administration, post-graduates, of whom he found a score, added five scores to their elect few; the single thousand of students became 2600, while their teachers enlarged a census of 68 to 180. All old buildings were improved, eight new ones added, above all the magnificent edifice, shared equally with the State Historical Society, through a well-matched marriage, was erected, costing three-fourths of a million and treasuring within its fire-proof walls one-third as many books,-open to all comers daily and far into the night. On the 450 acres which the academic grounds now embrace you can stand at no point where your eye will not behold some handiwork of Charles Kendall Adams:

Si monumentum requiris circumspice.

In the early autumn of 1900 his health became so enfeebled that he proposed resigning, but was offered a year's furlough by the regents, who trusted that he would come back to his office with rejuvenated vigor. In previous tours much of Europe had been traversed and he now with his wife sailed to the Riviera of northern Italy. Here his disease was arrested, nor did such a relapse occur as

obliged him to confess it incurable till his return to Madison in September, 1901. His resignation was written on October 11, followed quickly in California at Redlands by struggles for recuperation, which ended in his death there, July 26, 1902.

Education according to the creed of Mr. Adams is the best boon which one generation can bestow on that which follows it, and the fulness of his faith he showed throughout life and still more touchingly at his death.

Having neither children nor needy dependants he bequeathed his all to education. His library of 2000 volumes fell to that of Wisconsin University, and with the books was willed to that last scene of his mortal labor whatever he had stored for possible necessities of unregarded age in corners thrown. The total utmost of $30,000 he believed would prove the nucleus of fifteen scholarships, each a prize, drawing up some struggling scholar to itself and giving him a stand-point, or modus vivendi, from which he would mount yet higher. This bounty, the "all of his all," was clogged by no conditions except those which the authorities succeeding him should deem most sure to do most for that sort of scholarships which would rouse the lowest to a higher level and would uplift the very highest yet more high.

At the Madison memorial obsequies of Adams, the closing words of President Wheeler from California University were: "He could suffer and repine not, for his heart was set to high and noble things, his vision reached behind the veil and many a time had he walked with God. Farewell! Faithful man, great heart, wise friend of education, farewell."

In the lottery of life it was the good fortune of Mr. Adams to draw a prize in and with both of his wives. The dowry of the first, Mrs. Mudge, married in 1863, made possible that early year abroad, which was to him nothing less than a new and nobler birth. After his return, her tactful and earnest efforts doubled his youthful reputation and usefulness. No sooner had their acquaintance begun, as they first met as fellow teachers, than her sweetness and light filled him with new ambitions.

The second Mrs. Adams, born Mary Mathews, for thirteen years taught in the public schools of Brooklyn, N. Y., having commenced that labor elsewhere at the age of seven

teen. As wife of Mr. Barnes, a man of large wealth, she had become interested in his benefactions to Cornell. After her marriage to Mr. Adams she became greatly beloved in Ithaca and thereafter in Madison. She stretched out both hands, never empty and always helpful, to scores whose pathway to culture was as her own had been, through a hedge of thorns. Her words, in season, made many weary ones of good cheer. When bidding Madison a farewell which she foreboded must be final, hers was the wholesouled spirit of that widow in the gospel whose gift was "all the living that she had" and whose two mites shall ring out music from the treasury of the Lord forever. Her 694 choice volumes she added to that Historical Library where readers daily must congregate. For founding an art-fund, she contributed her personal jewels, which had cost more than $4000, which had been so wisely bought that their avails yielded no fewer thousands. Two of the largest halls in the University Museum, she filled with objects of high or curious art which had crowded her New York mansion. There were pictures, marbles, bronzes, malachite, ivories, embroideries, laces, tapestries, shawls, rugs, curios-whatever far beyond the sea had roused her craving,-whatsoever in the golden honeymoon she had freely received when the Barnes purse had been her cornucopia she freely gave. The endowments established as their ultimate service by this married pair, lovely in life and in death not long divided, recall words with which a similar consecration far away and long ago inspired eloquent lips to exclaim: "Insatiable benevolence! which not contented with reigning in the dispensation of happiness during the contracted term of human life, strained with all the reachings and graspings of vivacious mind, to extend the dominion of their bounty beyond the limits of nature, and to perpetuate themselves through generations of generations, the guardians, the protectors and the nourishers of mankind."

Madison, Wis., Oct. 1, 1904.

JAMES DAVIE BUTLER.

For the Council,

SAMUEL UTLEY.