I 
 
 Pass ^"n J oS 
 
 Book. ( 
 
 Copiglitl\^i 
 
 CSFXRIGHT DEPOSm 
 
 s 
 
Etching by Jaques Reich 
 
 pfU.c\ArUjLjU' Uj>Cule_^ 
 
ABOVE 
 CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 A Collection of Articles and 
 Poems Which Have Appeared in 
 
 THE CORNELL ERA 
 
 From Its First Publication, 
 November 1 868, to the Present Day 
 
 Compiled by 
 the Editors of 
 THE CLASS OF 
 
 19 17 
 
 THE CORNELL ERA. Inc. 
 ITHACA, N. Y. 
 
A 
 
 <^'' 
 
 Copyright, 1916, by 
 
 The Cornell Era, Inc, 
 
 Ithaca. N. Y. 
 
 / 
 
 SEP 28 T9 1 6 
 
 VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY 
 
 BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 <G)aA437853 
 •1^ / . 
 
TO 
 
 ANDREW DICKSON WHITE 
 
 first President of Cornell University 
 
 himself in his day a student editor 
 
 and at Cornell from its opening 
 
 the firm friend 
 
 of student effort in Journalism and in literature 
 
 we dedicate 
 
 in gratitude and reverence 
 
 this volume 
 
EDITORS' PREFACE 
 
 In offering this book to the public, we feel that 
 some apology is due for the diversity of subjects 
 and varied styles of writing which we have in- 
 cluded. Our principal object, rather than un- 
 ity, has been the salvage of selections which have 
 seemed to us too valuable to remain forever lost 
 in the bound copies of The Cornell Era. Since 
 the foundation of Cornell University this maga- 
 zine has pursued the steady policy of obtaining 
 for publication articles by prominent men upon 
 all imaginable phases of college life. As a re- 
 sult, the bound copies of The Era, covering 
 nearly fifty years, are a storehouse of articles 
 valuable for all who may be interested in that 
 wonderful phenomenon, the American univer- 
 sity. In our search for articles, we have also 
 found many pieces of poetry which seem to us 
 too good to omit from such a book. With a few 
 exceptions the authors of the selections are either 
 Cornell graduates or members of the Cornell 
 faculty. 
 
 All articles and poems which we have selected 
 
EDITORS' PREFACE 
 
 for publication, with the exception of a few selec- 
 tions which appeared in the Cornell Magazine, 
 were written expressly for The Era or were 
 published in it for the first time. The Cornell 
 Magazine, which is no longer published, was 
 formerly the literary magazine of our University, 
 while The Era was chiefly devoted to college 
 news. In view of the fact that The Era has 
 succeeded to the function of the Cornell Maga- 
 zine, we have felt justified in including selections 
 from it. " Taghkanic " by Francis Miles Finch, 
 which we have selected for publication, was 
 printed in The Era with a note " hitherto un- 
 published." However, after diligent search, we 
 find that it had already appeared in a book en- 
 titled, " The Scenery of Ithaca.'' We are in- 
 formed that this was a publication of very limited 
 edition in which pictures of Ithaca were pasted. 
 Since there are but few copies of this book still 
 in existence, we feel warranted in including this 
 poem in our volume. 
 
 With the exception of the article by Dr. An- 
 drew D. White, to whom this book is dedicated, 
 the essays and poems appear in chronological 
 order. 
 
 We wish to tender our thanks to Professor 
 George L. Burr, Professor Martin W. Sampson, 
 Professor Frederick C. Prescott, and Professor 
 
EDITORS' PREFACE 
 
 Charles H. Hull, without whose helpful criticism 
 and suggestions the task of compiling this book 
 would have been almost an impossible one. 
 
 Bertram F. Willcox. 
 George J. Hecht. 
 
INTRODUCTIOlSr 
 
 The editors have asked me to write a few words 
 by way of introduction to their selections from 
 The Cornell Era. They have made this re- 
 quest, I presume, because I am now one of the 
 few professors of Cornell University who have 
 witnessed its birth and growth for almost fifty 
 years. I have seen the inception of all the pub- 
 lications of the student body, and the premature 
 death of many of them. A still sadder memory 
 is that of " the inheritors of unfulfilled renown,^' 
 whose literary promise was so bright and so 
 brief. 
 
 Although the present volume contains the 
 names of six alumni of the university, it cannot 
 be regarded as representative of undergraduate 
 achievement, but rather as a selection of inter- 
 esting articles by men who have profoundly in- 
 fluenced the students of Cornell. The list is 
 far from complete and many names will have to 
 be supplied by the pious memory of their former 
 pupils. 
 
 We are too apt to overlook certain influences 
 in the early history of the university which are 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 now yielding their fruition. Until 1896 the uni- 
 versity was an undivided whole. With the ex- 
 ception of the Law School there were only de- 
 partments of study, and one faculty adminis- 
 tered the entire university. Nor was there dur- 
 ing that period any great predominance of any 
 one department, or if there was, it was the de- 
 partment of arts and sciences. The professors, 
 whether men of science or otherwise, had re- 
 ceived the old fashioned classical education, and 
 some of them had enjoyed foreign study. The 
 tastes of the first president were chiefly historical 
 and literary and it is due to him that the uni- 
 versity became the seat of liberal arts as well as 
 of scientific and technical studies. 
 
 At the very beginning of the university its 
 students had the opportunity of listening to 
 James Kussell Lowell, George William Curtis 
 and Bayard Taylor, as well as to Louis Agassiz. 
 And what an inspiration it was to have as a 
 resident of Ithaca Mr. Goldwin Smith. There 
 were in the permanent faculty many whose lit- 
 erary influence was profound. I may mention 
 here only the venerated dead — Willard Fiske, 
 Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen and James Morgan 
 Hart — whose names live in noble collections of 
 books, in poetry and fiction, and literary crit- 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 icism, as well as in the hearts of generations of 
 Cornell students. 
 
 It is the fashion nowadays to represent the 
 American collegian as an athletic savage, whose 
 interests are bounded by the " gridiron/' the 
 " diamond '' and the water, and for whom his 
 alma mater is only a " side-show/' This is sheer 
 nonsense, in my opinion, and I have been inti- 
 mately associated with American students for 
 nearly fifty years. An investigation was made 
 here recently of the standing of the freshman 
 class and it was found that the scholarship of 
 the athletes was almost exactly that of the aver- 
 age of the whole class, while the average of those 
 engaged in the literary activities was consider- 
 ably above that of the class. I believe there is 
 far more intelligent interest in literary studies 
 than there was when I was in college fifty-six 
 years ago. I believe the literary output of the 
 recent graduates is larger relatively than it was 
 half a century ago, and the quality of this pro- 
 duction, especially in verse, seems to me very 
 high. Certainly Mr. Dana Burnett and my for- 
 mer pupil, Mr. Thomas S. Jones, have shown that 
 the atmosphere of Cornell is not unfavorable to 
 the cultivation of poetry. 
 
 Finally, in my day there was absolutely no 
 intercourse between professor and student out- 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 side of the class-room. How different now, even 
 in the universities whose students are numbered 
 by the thousands ! 
 
 It is this spirit of the modern university, with 
 its wider range of interests, that is reflected in 
 these selections, and through them all I think 
 I can discern the breath of the freer life inspired 
 in this university by him who, in the midst of the 
 campus, serenely sits in majestic bronze, and will 
 be ever enthroned in the hearts of Cornell stu- 
 dents. 
 
 T. F. Crane. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 My Favorite Books . . . Bp Andrew D. White . 1 
 
 The Chimes Bp Francis Miles Finch . 16 
 
 " Phaselus Ille," from Ca- 
 tullus By GoldiDin Smith . . 18 
 
 Winter Song By Hiram Corson ... 20 
 
 Successes and Failures of 
 
 College-Bred Men . . By Charles Kendall 
 
 Adams 22 
 
 ViVEROLS By David Starr Jordan . 43 
 
 To Barbara By David Starr Jordan . 46 
 
 Evolution and Religion . By David Starr Jordan . 51 
 
 The Bell Buoy . . , . By Lil)erty Hyde Bailey 57 
 Faculty and Students — 
 
 Past and Present . . By Ralph C. H. Catterall 59 
 
 Anent Bonfires . ... By George Lincoln Burr . 73 
 
 Taghkanic By Francis Miles Finch . 81 
 
 A View of Athletics . . By Frank Irvine ... 83 
 The University as a Fra- 
 ternity By John Lovejoy Elliott . 90 
 
 Then and Now . . . . By Qoldwin Smith . . 101 
 The Spirit of the Univer- 
 sity By Hugh Black . . . 106 
 
 College Men in Newspaper 
 
 Work By Arthur Brisbane . . 109 
 
 Students Need Exposure 
 TO THE Social Facts of our 
 
 TIME By John R. Matt . . 116 
 
 The Road of Life . . . By Martin W. Sampson . 119 
 
 A Necessity to Culture . By Norman Hapgood . . 120 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Hills By F. Dana Burnet . . 122 
 
 Student Activities and 
 
 Studious Activities . . Bi/ Jacob Gould Schurman 124 
 
 Geaduation By Liberty Hyde Bailey . 136 
 
 College Man in Business . By Jacob Gould Schurman 139 
 
ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
MY FAVORITE BOOKS 
 
 A Letter from Dr. Andrew D. White 
 
 Ithaca, N. Y., Feb. 16, '15. 
 Editors^ The Cornell Era, 
 Gentlemen : 
 
 REFERRING to your request that I prepare 
 a list of the books which have given me 
 most real profit and abiding pleasure, allow me 
 to say that the task you suggest is not an easy 
 one; indeed, I am not sure that it is possible. 
 
 Throughout my whole life I have been fond 
 of books and, while my reading has taken various 
 directions, it has been mainly in History and Bi- 
 ography; but it would be impossible to recom- 
 mend any single list of books on these subjects, 
 for the reason that so much depends on the aims 
 and tastes of the person advised, and I will, 
 therefore, simply give a list of those works which, 
 in a general way, have had most influence upon 
 me. 
 
 First of all, like most American boys and girls 
 
2 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 of my time, I was brought up to read the Bible 
 and was nurtured in one of the religious bodies 
 which incorporates into its worship very many 
 of the noblest parts of our Sacred Books. Of 
 these, the portions which have always seemed to 
 me to give the keynote to the whole have been, 
 for the Old Testament, the grander Psalms, the 
 nobler portions of Isaiah, and above all, the 
 Sixth Chapter of Micah; and in the New Testa- 
 ment, the utterances ascribed to Jesus himself, 
 of which the Sermon on the Mount is supreme, 
 with St. James' definition of " Pure Religion and 
 Undefiled," and St. Paul's description of " Char- 
 ity." In perfection of English diction, there is, 
 in the whole range of literature, nothing to sur- 
 pass the story of " Joseph and his Brethren." 
 Next, as to classic writers, — I should name in 
 Greek, the more striking parts of the Iliad, and 
 of Thucydides, and, in Latin, Cassar, Virgil, and 
 above all, the Odes of Horace, the Agricola and 
 Germania of Tacitus and the Letters of Cicero. 
 The latter work exhibits the Roman Republic 
 and the causes of Csesarism more really than any 
 other books ever written, and it can best be read 
 
MY FAVORITE BOOKS 3 
 
 in the new translation, which is just now appear- 
 ing in the Loeb series. 
 
 In English, I would name, of Shakespeare's 
 writings, especially " Hamlet," " Julius Caesar,'' 
 "Macbeth," "Henry IV," "Henry V," "The 
 Merchant of Venice," " Midsummer Night's 
 Dream," and, on a different plane, " As You Like 
 It," "Much Ado About Nothing," "Twelfth 
 Mght " and " The Merry Wives of Windsor." 
 
 As to the great poet who, by common consent, 
 stands next in our language, to Shakespeare, 
 and in my opinion, in some respects, before him, 
 I would name Milton, especially his " Comus," 
 " 'Allegro," " II Penseroso," " Christmas Hymn," 
 and above all, the " Sonnets." Of these latter, 
 that upon " The Persecutions in Piedmont " has 
 wrought a hatred for religious intolerance into 
 my whole being. As to the " Paradise Lost," 
 certain passages in it have strongly impressed 
 me, but I have never read it as a whole and I 
 doubt whether I know any other person who has 
 ever done so. The passage in " Samson Ago- 
 nistes " beginning " O ! how comely it is and how 
 reviving to the spirits of just men long op- 
 
4 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 pressed/' etc., sank deeply into my mind when I 
 first read it, and when I quoted it in a speech 
 above the body of Abraham Lincoln as he lay 
 dead in the Capitol at Albany, it seemed to enter 
 the hearts and minds of my hearers better by 
 far than any other words which I could have 
 cited. 
 
 As to Milton's prose, the supreme thing is his 
 " Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing." 
 
 Closely after these writings of Milton, I should 
 mention Wordsworth's " Intimations of Immor- 
 tality," " Ode to Duty," and above all, his " Son- 
 nets." As to longer writings, " The Excursion " 
 and the like, I have never read them. Next, I 
 should name Tennyson's " In Memoriam." 
 
 To these I should add sundry short pieces as 
 typical of those which have had a deep influence 
 upon me, as follows — Sir Henry Wotton's 
 "Happy Life," Grey's "Elegy," Goldsmith's 
 " Deserted Village," Burns' " Cotter's Saturday 
 Night " and " Tam o' Shanter," Keats' " Ode to 
 a Grecian Urn," various passages in Byron's 
 " Childe Harold " — especially the Apostrophe to 
 " The Ocean " and the " Night and Tempest," 
 
MY FAVORITE BOOKS 5 
 
 Bryant's " Thanatopsis/' Lowell's " Massaccio," 
 which I think is the most profound of his short 
 poems, and his " Bigelow Papers.'' I also love 
 and admire Whittier's " The Eternal Goodness/' 
 from which various selections have been made in 
 the collection of hymns used in our university 
 chapel. 
 
 As to oratorical writings, the three greatest 
 speeches, to my mind, in the English language, 
 and perhaps in any language, are Daniel Web- 
 ster's " Reply to Hayne," Burke's plea for " The 
 Conciliation of America," and Abraham Lin- 
 coln's "Address at Gettysburg." These should 
 all be read again and again. 
 
 In fiction I have read much, but would give the 
 foremost place in English to Walter Scott's 
 " Quentin Durward," " Ivanhoe," " Kenilworth," 
 " Heart of Midlothian," " Guy Mannering," 
 " Peveril of the Peak," " Rob Roy," " The Mon- 
 astery," " The Abbot," " Count Robert of Paris," 
 and " The Talisman." I give these not as in all 
 cases the best, for I am aware that the four last 
 named are generally considered inferior to some 
 others, but I simply name those which have most 
 
6 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 impressed me, probably on account of their his- 
 torical connections. Scott is somewhat out of 
 fashion to-day, but the fascination which he may 
 still exercise was shown a few years since by 
 James Russell Lowell upon his death-bed. 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes came in to see him and 
 said, " Well, James, how do you feel this morn- 
 ing? " to which Lowell answered, " Oliver, I 
 don't know and I don't care — I am reading ' Rob 
 Roy!'" 
 
 In the long list of modern English fiction, I 
 would select Thackeray's " Vanity Fair," " The 
 Newcomes," and " Henry Esmond " ; Haw- 
 thorne's " Scarlet Letter " ; Charles Reade's 
 "The Cloister and the Hearth"; Edward Eg- 
 gleston's " Hoosier Schoolmaster " ; Kingsley's 
 " Westward Ho " ; and in contemporary fiction, 
 Kipling's Stories, Zangwill's Jewish Novels, 
 Countess Arnim's " Elizabeth in her German 
 Garden," and her other stories, and the best re- 
 cent publications of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, W. 
 D. Howells and Winston Churchill. 
 
 The best short stories in English I have ever 
 read are Mark Twain's "Jumping Frog" and 
 
MY FAVORITE BOOKS 7 
 
 Bret Harte's "Luck of Roaring Camp/' and 
 " Outcasts of Poker Flat/' 
 
 In the boundless realms of French fiction I 
 would name one book which seems to me the 
 greatest romance in that language — Victor 
 Hugo's " Hunchback of Notre Dame," and as the 
 most fascinating dramas, his Spanish plays, es- 
 pecially " Don Caesar de Bazan." 
 
 As to simple historical novels, many years ago, 
 when rummaging with the late John Bigelow for 
 old books in the Latin Quarter of Paris, he sud- 
 denly asked me: "What books of all you ever 
 read have you enjoyed most? " My answer was : 
 " If I am to be put on my Bible oath, I must tell 
 you that of all the fiction I ever read I have had 
 the most quiet enjoyment in reading Alexander 
 Dumas' historical novels." His answer was: 
 " You are right. It is the same with me." To 
 these I might add Erckmann-Chatrian's novels 
 of the period just before the French Revolution. 
 As the best single short story I should name Ana- 
 tole France's " Crime de Sylvester Bonnard." 
 
 The most profound and penetrating of all his- 
 torical novels known to me, in any language, is 
 
8 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 Anatole France's " Les Dieux ont Soif " (" The 
 Gods are Athirst "). It reveals better, I think, 
 than any purely historical work has ever done 
 the causes of the French Revolutionary catas- 
 trophe. 
 
 In German I would name among the dramas, 
 Lessing's " Nathan the Wise," Goethe's " Faust," 
 and Schiller's great plays, by no means excluding 
 " Fiesco," and I would certainly add Gutzkow's 
 " Uriel Acosta." 
 
 Of fascinating short stories illustrating the 
 general history of Germany I would name those 
 of the late W. H. Riehl, of the University of 
 Munich — published under various titles, such 
 as " Culturgeschichtliche Novellen," " Aus der 
 Ecke," and the like. They are exquisitely per- 
 fect in style, and reveal psychological and his- 
 torical characteristics of the men and times con- 
 cerned with most remarkable depth and charm. 
 
 Finally, in the whole realm of historical fic- 
 tion, I would name one romance which has 
 seemed to me the greatest ever written (in any 
 language), i.e., Manzoni's "I Promessi Sposi." 
 It was inspired, indeed, by Walter Scott, but 
 
MY FAVORITE BOOKS 9 
 
 reached a higher range than anything ever writ- 
 ten by him. 
 
 As to other books, I was, during my college 
 days, interested in Macaulay's " Essays/' I do 
 not rate them as highly now as I did then, but it 
 is well worth while for any thinking student, 
 whether American or English, to read them. I 
 read Macaulay's " History of England '' three 
 times, if I remember rightly, and would advise 
 every American student to do the same, and also, 
 in spite of their style, " The Rise of the Dutch 
 Republic '' and " The Life of Barnaveld '' by Mot- 
 ley. I was also especially influenced by Carlyle's 
 writings, above all, by his " Past and Present," 
 and by his great prose poem, " The History of the 
 French Revolution.'' Of writings in which wit 
 and humor do wonderful service for right-rea- 
 son I would name Sydney Smith's " Essays." 
 
 Of works showing marvelous insight into the 
 aims of various great men of modern times, I 
 would place first H. D. Traill's ^^ New Lucian," 
 and as masterly short biographies of recent Eng- 
 lish statesmen, those given by James Bryce in his 
 single volume upon that subject. 
 
10 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 In journalism I would name, as the best let- 
 ters by a newspaper correspondent known to me, 
 those of George Washburn Smalley, from Amer- 
 ica to the London Times, and from England to 
 the New York Tribune. They have been gath- 
 ered into several volumes under various titles, 
 and are still going on in the Sunday edition of 
 the latter newspaper. I would also couple with 
 these letters those of Frank B. Sanborn to the 
 Springfield Republican. 
 
 Of the very great number of biographies read 
 by me, I was perhaps most happily influenced by 
 Stanley's " Life of Thomas Arnold," and, in gen- 
 eral, by Goldwin Smith's various writings, as for 
 example, those in which he defended the United 
 States during the Civil War, his short " History 
 of the United States," and his book on Canada. 
 Senator Charles Sumner, though at the time a 
 bitter opponent of Goldwin Smith in various re- 
 spects, said to me, just after the latter arrived at 
 Cornell, " You have brought over the foremost 
 writer in the English language at the present 
 time, as regards style." 
 
 I would also name as essay writers, James 
 
MY FAVORITE BOOKS 11 
 
 Anthony Froude, whose account of the " De- 
 struction of the Spanish Armada " is one of the 
 most thrilling things in any language, and Mat- 
 thew Arnold, whose " Literature and Dogma '^ 
 has produced a lasting effect on religious 
 thought. 
 
 As a book to be taken up at any moment when 
 a man is fatigued with heavier reading, a book 
 which may be read through or read in parts again 
 and again for years, a book which, I sometimes 
 think, is the most delightful in the English lan- 
 guage, the three volumes of " Autocrat Papers " 
 by Oliver Wendell Holmes, and I recommend 
 them for profit as well as pleasure. There is an 
 immense amount of profound philosophy in those 
 papers. 
 
 As stated above, my main reading has been in 
 history and biography, and if I were to select 
 three books best worth reading — as arousing 
 thought — in the first of these fields, I should 
 name Lecky's " History of Rationalism in Eu- 
 rope,'' Draper's " History of the Intellectual De- 
 velopment of Europe," and Guizot's " History of 
 Civilization in Europe." 
 
12 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 The field of American history is, for Ameri- 
 can students, so large that I hardly dare enter it. 
 For the purposes of the student and for the whole 
 history, I think that the most practically useful 
 and attractive general history of the United 
 States is by Schouler. As to the history of the 
 Civil War, with the events that led up to it and 
 the " Reconstruction Period '' which followed it, 
 I should name as incontestably the best book, 
 indeed the only book, that by James Ford 
 Rhodes, entitled " A History of the United States 
 from the Compromise of 1850 to the Final Res- 
 toration of Home Rule in the South in 1877.'' 
 It may be kept on one's shelves as a book of 
 reference, but if its possessor is really interested 
 in its great subject he is quite sure to read the 
 whole before he has done with it. I would 
 strongly advise reading American History 
 largely in biographies as for example, " The Life 
 of Washington," by Lodge, Franklin's "Auto- 
 biography," edited by Bigelow, the " Lives of Jef- 
 ferson and Andrew Jackson " by Parton, and the 
 " Life of John Quincy Adams " by Seward. Of 
 Lincoln, the great life is by Hay and Nicolay, 
 
MY FAVORITE BOOKS 13 
 
 and there are various smaller biographies which 
 are good. There has also recently appeared an 
 admirable life of a recent President who has been 
 most grossly misrepresented and slandered, in 
 spite of the fact that he was one of the best 
 equipped and noblest Presidents in the whole 
 line, namely, Rutherford B. Hayes. If any stu- 
 dent wishes to see what, in my opinion, is an ideal 
 college life, it will be found in his biography. 
 
 As the best short book on American history — 
 recently published — I would name " The Hun- 
 dred Years of Peace," by Senator Henry Cabot 
 Lodge, of Massachusetts: with some reticence, 
 but plainly, it tells certain truths which England 
 has long needed to hear. 
 
 This letter can be best finished, perhaps, by my 
 saying that in my recent miscellaneous reading, 
 I have been more than ever impressed by the 
 " Letters '^ of Abigail Adams to her husband, 
 John Adams, second President of the United 
 States, to her son, John Quincy Adams, after- 
 ward sixth President, to Thomas Jefferson, and 
 to various other correspondents, during the wEble 
 War of Independence, also at the time when her 
 
14 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATEES 
 
 husband was minister to Great Britain, and an 
 American representative in France and in the 
 Netherlands, and finally, when as Vice Presi- 
 dent and afterward as President, he was living, 
 first at Philadelphia and, finally, at Washing- 
 ton. I have come to regard Mrs. Adams as one 
 of the greatest and noblest women who have ever 
 lived, and for that reason, am having her full 
 length portrait placed in the broad south window 
 at Risley Hall, between the figures of Elizabeth 
 Fry and Mary Somerville. 
 
 In my very latest reading, three small books 
 have impressed me especially. The first of these 
 is President Jordan's book upon war, entitled 
 " The Human Harvest." The second is the most 
 valuable book known to me regarding the main 
 simple reforms now most needed in the United 
 States, namely, '^ The Reform of Legal Pro- 
 cedure " by Morefield Storey. The third is by 
 Dr. David Jayne Hill, entitled " The People's 
 Government." All three of these books are short 
 and no man who hopes to exercise a useful in- 
 fluence upon public affairs can in my opinion af- 
 ford to neglect reading them carefully. 
 
MY FAVORITE BOOKS 15 
 
 To these I would add a short religious book 
 by the Reverend Harry Fosdick, written in the 
 light of recent science, entitled " The Assurance 
 of Immortality." 
 
 In conclusion, let me remind you again, that 
 I do not at all name the above books as the very 
 best that any man can read, but simply as those, 
 which, out of my own reading, during a period 
 of nearly eighty years, seem, as I look back, to 
 have exercised the greatest and happiest influ- 
 ence upon me. 
 
 As this letter has been hastily dictated in a 
 single morning — some things have, doubtless, 
 slipped my memory, and some may need correc- 
 tion. 
 
 I remain, gentlemen. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Andrew D. White. 
 
THE CHIMES 
 By Francis Miles Finch 
 
 Note : " The Chimes " is the first college song to which 
 Cornell University can lay claim. 
 
 TO the busy morning light, 
 To the slumber of the night, 
 To the labor and the lessons of the hour, 
 With a ringing, rhythmic tone, 
 O'er the lake and valley blown, 
 Call the voices, watching, waking, in the tower. 
 
 Chorus 
 
 Cling-clang-cling, the bells are ringing; 
 Hope and Help their chiming tells ; 
 Thro' the Cascadilla dell, 
 'Neath the arches of " Cornell," 
 Float the melody and music of the bells. 
 
 By the water's foam and fall, 
 By the chasm castle-wall, 
 
 16 
 
THE CHIMES 17 
 
 By the laurel bank and glen of dreaming flower, 
 Where the groves are dark and grand, 
 Where the pines in column stand, 
 
 Come the voices, mellow voices of the tower. 
 
 Chorus: Cling-clang-cling, etc. 
 
 When the gentle hand that gave, 
 
 Lies beneath the marble grave, 
 And the daisies weep with drippings of the 
 shower. 
 
 O, believe me, brothers dear. 
 
 In the shadows we shall hear. 
 Guiding voices of our angel in the tower. 
 
 Chorus : Cling-clang-cling, etc. 
 
 Not afraid to dare and do, 
 
 Let us rouse ourselves anew. 
 With the " knowledge '' that is victory and power. 
 
 And arrayed in every fight, 
 
 On the battle side of right, 
 Gather glory for our angel in the tower. 
 
 Chorus: Cling-clang-cling, etc. 
 
"PHASELUS ILLE," FROM CATULLUS 
 By Goldwin Smith 
 
 THIS Pinnace, stranger, boasts that it of yore 
 Was fleetest of its kind. 
 Whether it flew with canvas or with oar, 
 It left all barks behind. 
 
 It calls to witness stormy Adrians strand, 
 
 Famed Rhodes, the Cyclades 
 Wave-girdled, the wild Thracian surge, the land 
 
 Hollowed by Pontic seas; 
 
 Where, afterwards a pinnace, once it stood 
 
 A leafy grove, and long 
 Amid Cytorus' towering crest of wood 
 
 In the sea breezes sung. 
 
 Thou, green Cytorus, thou, Amastris, too. 
 
 Old Pontic town, canst tell 
 The good ship's story, for its timbers grew 
 
 First on your craggy fell. 
 
 18 
 
" PHASELUS ILLE/' FROM CATULLUS 19 
 
 And in your waters first it dipped the oar; 
 
 Then over many a sea 
 Through storm and wrack its master bravely 
 bore, 
 
 Both when the breeze blew free 
 
 Abaft, and when on either quarter came, 
 
 Veering, the fickle blast. 
 Nor did the shore Gods once its offering claim 
 
 For salvage, till at last. 
 
 Its voyages over, in this quiet mere 
 
 For ever moored it lay. 
 And to the Sea-Twins dedicated here 
 
 Its gradual, calm decay. 
 
WINTER SONG 
 
 (From the German of Burger) 
 
 By Hiram Corson 
 
 RUDE winter hath with ruthless hand 
 The linden trees disrobed. 
 And of the livery green of May 
 
 The poor fields he hath robbed: 
 Hath flow'rets, loveliest hued that grow, 
 Deep sepulchred in ice and snow. 
 
 But, meek-eyed flow'rets, yet do I 
 
 A funeral dirge refuse: 
 I know a sweet and lovely face 
 
 Outrivals all your hues: 
 With eyes like the skies of the sunny South, 
 With golden locks, and pearly mouth. 
 
 What is the skylark's clearest note 
 
 Or the nightingale's, to me? 
 My Mary's voice is a thousand times 
 
 More clear and silvery. 
 
 20 
 
WINTER SONG 21 
 
 Sweet is her breath as the vernal breeze 
 That comes o'er blossoming apple-trees. 
 
 When her ruby lips to mine she gives, 
 
 Oh, what a perfect bliss! 
 The strawberry and the cherry are 
 
 Not sweeter than her kiss. 
 Then, May, for thee I'll sigh no more: 
 The Spring-time lives and moves in her. 
 
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES OF COL- 
 LEGE-BRED MEN 
 
 By Charles Kendall Adams 
 
 THAT enterprising United States senator who 
 took the trouble to present some very elabo- 
 rate reasons for thinking that a collegiate edu- 
 cation is a hindrance rather than a help to po- 
 litical usefulness, was not, perhaps, quite so far 
 wrong as some of us who are in college may be 
 inclined to suppose. His presentation seems to 
 be free from any glaring absurdity, and it is 
 therefore entitled to a respectful and thoughtful 
 consideration. The claim is twofold in its na- 
 ture. In the first place, the statement is made 
 that the most powerful and influential statesmen 
 have been, and still are, men who have never en- 
 joyed the benefits of a collegiate course of study. 
 This alleged fact is then accounted for by the 
 declaration that a course of instruction in col- 
 lege makes a man too fond of subtle theories; 
 
 22 
 
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 23 
 
 indeed, makes him so much attached to what is 
 dreamy and impractical as greatly to weaken his 
 efficiency in what he will be called upon to un- 
 dertake. 
 
 Surprising and even startling as this view may 
 seem to us who are engaged in educational mat- 
 ters, it is probably shared by a considerable num- 
 ber of the people of the country at large. More 
 than that, it is probable that a similar statement 
 would find acceptance if made in regard to a 
 large number of other vocations. The notion 
 certainly is somewhat prevalent that in the so- 
 called practical affairs of life a collegiate edu- 
 cation is a real clog to one's advancement. We 
 have all heard of editors who seemed to have a 
 special aversion to college-bred men. It used to 
 be said that Mr. Greeley and the elder Mr. Ben- 
 nett gave unmistakable evidences of such an an- 
 tipathy whenever a young collegian presented 
 himself as an applicant for employment ; and the 
 letters recently published in " University '' would 
 seem to show that a similar feeling is still enter- 
 tained by some of the more prominent editors of 
 the day. That such a sentiment prevails among 
 
24 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 the managers of great business houses and rail- 
 road offices, is perhaps less surprising. It may 
 as well be admitted without reserve that in the 
 opinion of a very considerable number of that 
 respectable class known as hard-headed business 
 men, the time spent in acquiring an ordinary col- 
 lege education is time that might be devoted 
 to some other purpose with far greater results. 
 But if there is any one vocation, aside from that 
 of the teacher, for which a collegiate education 
 would promise to give a man a preeminent ad- 
 vantage, it would seem to be the vocation which 
 has to do with the affairs of men in their political 
 and social relations. If the college-bred man is 
 a politician or statesman of really poorer quality 
 by reason of his collegiate training, it would per- 
 haps not be very easy for the colleges to justify 
 their longer existence. 
 
 We all know that in our Government many per- 
 sons have risen to positions of great eminence 
 without the help, or hindrance, as the case may 
 be, of a collegiate training. Washington, Jack- 
 son, Lincoln, come at once into our minds; and 
 even if we descend to a lower level we shall find 
 
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 25 
 
 a large number of judges, senators, representa- 
 tives, cabinet ministers, and foreign officials, 
 who, without a training in college, appear to 
 have performed their duties quite as efficiently 
 as has been done by their more thoroughly 
 trained colleagues. What is the explanation? 
 Is there a mistake in the allegation, or must we 
 admit that the allegation is true, and then set 
 about discovering an explanation to account for 
 it? 
 
 In the statement of the case, there is un- 
 doubtedly a mixture of truth and error. For 
 certain kinds of work, a collegiate training will 
 probably add nothing to a man's efficiency; it 
 may even detract from it. For example, in the 
 carrying out of what has already been determined 
 npon ; that is to say, in all those classes of activ- 
 ity demanding primarily action, rather than 
 thought, a man whose first impulse is to pause 
 and think the matter over will be at some disad- 
 vantage. After the work to be done has been 
 fully determined upon, the man whose impulse 
 is to act, rather than think, is the most apt to 
 succeed. The most illiterate of Napoleon's 
 
26 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 marshals was the one who had the reputation of 
 being the bravest, and for that very reason he 
 was the one whom his master was very apt to 
 throw forward whenever a dire emergency pre- 
 sented itself. This was only, however, when the 
 work to be done left very little room for the ex- 
 ercise of thoughtful discrimination. It was only 
 in certain junctures that Ney was the most ef- 
 ficient of that remarkable group of soldiers which 
 the discernment of Napoleon had gathered 
 around him. Although the Emperor called him 
 " the bravest of the brave,'' he nowhere speaks of 
 him as the greatest of the marshals. He was 
 simply the greatest for a certain kind of work, 
 though that work was not of the highest order. 
 We may go further and apply the same prin- 
 ciple to the work of some of the most eminent 
 men in the history of our country. Take the 
 names that have already been mentioned, those 
 of Washington, Jackson, and Lincoln. There is 
 a very important sense in which it may be said 
 that their work was primarily executive, rather 
 than determinative, in its nature. By this I 
 mean that it was not so much their sphere to 
 
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 27 
 
 determine what to do as how to do. What they 
 were required to do had already, in a general 
 way, been determined for them. For example, 
 it is well known that Washington had very little 
 influence in bringing on the Revolutionary War. 
 He acquiesced in what had been determined upon 
 by others, and then he was called upon to carry 
 the work through to a successful conclusion. 
 The same may be said in regard to the Consti- 
 tution. Washington was by no means one of 
 the more influential of those statesmen who de- 
 termined what the Constitution should be. He 
 became President after the Constitution had been 
 adopted ; and, accordingly, the work of his Pres- 
 idency was that of determining not so much what 
 the political machine should be as how it should 
 be put in motion. 
 
 When we turn to the work of Jackson, we find 
 that in its fundamental character, however dif- 
 ferent in many of its characteristics, in one re- 
 spect at least it bears a striking resemblance to 
 the work of Washington. Jackson came into 
 power when a great question was under consider- 
 ation. He had to decide between the claims of 
 
28 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 the general Government, on the one hand, and 
 those of South Carolina on the other. Aside 
 from all questions of nice interpretation, he was 
 a man, who, as a soldier, might always be relied 
 upon to decide in favor of the cause which he 
 represented. He probably cared very little for 
 the subtle reasonings of Calhoun and Webster. 
 He was the representative of the general Govern- 
 ment, and he insisted with the vigor of a rough 
 soldier upon all its rights. This was essentially 
 an act of will; it was just what was needed, to 
 be sure, but it was not an act that called for any 
 careful discrimination. When the duties of the 
 Presidency called Jackson beyond work of this 
 kind, he showed as little wisdom, perhaps, as has 
 been shown by any President we have had. 
 
 Then, take the case of Lincoln. The great 
 work he had to do had in a very important sense 
 been brought to his hands. The war was inevi- 
 table. When he was called to the Presidency, he 
 found himself confronted, not with any such 
 question as whether a war should be brought on, 
 but how the war should be fought to a successful 
 end. What he had to take up was a great execu- 
 
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 29 
 
 tive work; one of the greatest, doubtless, ever 
 undertaken by man, but still a task essentially 
 executive, rather than discretionary, in its na- 
 ture. His duty was simply to ascertain and 
 adopt the most efficient means of accomplishing 
 a predetermined result. 
 
 Now, it will have to be conceded that the work 
 of these statesmen was a very different kind of 
 work from that which originates and determines. 
 Washington is often spoken of as the Father of 
 his Country, but it is easy to make the figure of 
 speech mean too much. The ideas which brought 
 on the Revolution were not ideas which originated 
 with Washington. It may, indeed, be doubtful 
 whether the war of the Revolution could have 
 been fought to a successful issue without Wash- 
 ington, but the Revolution would just as cer- 
 tainly have occurred if Washington had not ex- 
 isted. The political doctrines which made the 
 Revolution inevitable were distinctively the doc- 
 trines of men like the elder Adams and Jeffer- 
 son. They were the men of thought, in distinc- 
 tion from the men of action. They were the men 
 who kindled in the Colonies certain notions 
 
30 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 which made it impossible to prevent a separation 
 from the mother country. Nor was the situation 
 essentially different when it became evident that 
 the Confederation must break down. The pro- 
 visions that went into the new Constitution were 
 provisions that originated with the same type of 
 men. The real framers of the Constitution were 
 the men of the most discriminating and far-reach- 
 ing thought — such men as Hamilton, Madison, 
 Jay, and Wilson. 
 
 Then, too, after the Constitution was put into 
 operation, we discover that the real controlling 
 forces of the Government were of the same gen- 
 eral nature. There were certain grave questions 
 of a fundamental character that had to be set- 
 tled by the exercise of the most careful and subtle 
 reasoning. These were questions on which even 
 the continued existence of the Government was 
 to depend. The two men who may be said really 
 to have settled these questions were not men of 
 action, but were distinctively men of thought. 
 They were the men who shaped the ideas of the 
 people, and by so doing even determined the 
 momentous issue of the Civil War. These two 
 
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 31 
 
 men, as every thoughtful reader of American his- 
 tory knows, were John Marshall and Daniel 
 Webster. And thus, to sum up the matter in a 
 single sentence, we are brought to the conclusion 
 that the men who brought on the Revolution, the 
 men who framed the Constitution, the men who, 
 through the Federalist, gave the people an under- 
 standing of the Constitution, and the men who 
 finally put upon the Constitution an interpreta- 
 tion that brought to the support of it the people 
 of the Union, and enabled them to resist the at- 
 tempt to overthrow the Government, were dis- 
 tinctively men of thought, rather than men of 
 action. These men of thought, the Adamses, 
 Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Marshall, and 
 Webster, were all college-bred men. Only a very 
 thoughtless, or a very ignorant man, would as- 
 sert that the services of these men were less than 
 of the very first importance in the life of the Re- 
 public. Who will say that the men who made it 
 possible to preserve the Republic performed a less 
 important work than the men who brought the 
 Republic into being? 
 
 But, in comparing college-bred men with men 
 
32 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 not college bred, we are liable to fall into the 
 very serious error of supposing that the differ- 
 ence between them is far greater than it really 
 is. This liability of exaggeration amounts to a 
 real danger on the part of collegians and non- 
 collegians alike. It is perhaps not surprising 
 that those who have not had the advantage of a 
 college education are constantly inclined to de- 
 plore the fact of what they consider their early 
 privations, and that they are often heard to ex- 
 press the belief that they have labored under a 
 constant disadvantage. College-bred men, more- 
 over, who completed their college careers a gener- 
 ation or two ago, are scarcely less inclined to re- 
 gret that they were educated too soon to avail 
 themselves of the modern methods and appli- 
 ances. A matter of far greater importance is 
 the fact that the student of to-day is tempted to 
 suppose that he is himself one of the favored 
 sons of heaven, to whom, in consequence of his 
 superior opportunities and advantages, all good 
 things are to come without any extraordinary 
 effort. This supposition, conscious or uncon- 
 scious, on the part of the student, is unques- 
 
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 33 
 
 tionably by far the greatest obstacle in the way 
 of the student's ultimate success; for, if this 
 supposition really takes and holds possession 
 of the student, his chance of any very marked 
 success is gone forever. It cannot be said 
 too often, or with too much emphasis, that a 
 college or university, however great in itself, 
 is simply an opportunity and an inspiration. 
 The moment it fails in these respects, the mo- 
 ment it takes the place of personal will and 
 personal endeavor, it ceases to be an advantage 
 and becomes a positive hindrance. 
 
 There is an important sense in which all 
 men are self-made men. The college-bred 
 man makes himself with the help of the col- 
 lege; whereas the man ordinarily called a 
 self-made man makes himself as best he can, 
 without the advantage of any such assistance. 
 And, indeed, there is a very important sense 
 in which even the conditions of success 
 on the part of these two classes are identically 
 alike. In the way of illustration, look at the 
 typical case of Lincoln. Those who have made 
 themselves familiar with the early life of that re- 
 
34 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 markable man know that he studied language 
 with the severest and most punctilious exactness. 
 The language he studied was English, it is true, 
 but he applied to English grammar as severe a 
 devotion as the most ambitious classical scholars 
 apply to Greek and Latin. So in the matter of 
 history. Lincoln gave his powers to an investi- 
 gation of the development of American institu- 
 tions in precisely the same spirit that the best 
 student carries into the work of our best his- 
 torical seminaries. This work was prosecuted 
 so quietly that it attracted no attention; but in 
 the industry of his solitude Lincoln disciplined 
 and stored his mind in such a way that his su- 
 periority revealed itself as soon as the time for 
 action came. There is no greater mistake than 
 to suppose that Lincoln did not bring to the 
 public service a most carefully trained mind. 
 He had simply had the extraordinary devotion 
 and ability to do without the help of a college 
 what so many others would be glad to accomplish 
 even with that help. 
 
 Then, as another illustration, take the case of 
 Edison. Does any one suppose that he has 
 
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 35 
 
 achieved his triumphs in consequence of not hav- 
 ing had a college education? Let us not be too 
 hasty in our answer. Is it safe to assume that 
 he would have accomplished as much if he had 
 taken a college course? On the contrary, is it 
 not quite as probable that the professor of 
 physics of twenty-five years ago, instead of in- 
 spiring and lifting his pupil into a higher atmo- 
 sphere of zealous endeavor, would have so de- 
 prived all studies in electricity of their real vital- 
 ity, as to have deadened the sensibilities of his 
 pupil and driven him from the work in apathy 
 or disgust? 
 
 It would probably be entirely correct to say 
 that the best instruction is nine-tenths inspira- 
 tion. Perhaps it would be equally true to say 
 that the poorest is that which forces into an in- 
 hospitable mind an array of unwelcome facts, 
 by that process of main strength which Milton 
 very properly likened to the wringing of blood 
 from the nose. The one is the method by which 
 men like Louis Agassiz and Mark Hopkins have 
 always succeeded in lifting the best of their 
 pupils into a new and glowing enthusiasm for 
 
36 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 some great and worthy subject ; the other is that 
 grinding process which, though it may sharpen 
 the mind, seems sometimes even more certainly 
 to wear it away. 
 
 It is along this line of thought that we are, 
 doubtless, to look for the explanation of the sur- 
 prising instances of success and failure that 
 throng the recollection of every man twenty-five 
 years or more out of college. 
 
 There were the facile men, who did everything 
 well, and seemed capable of doing anything they 
 might undertake. They never worked earnestly ; 
 they even seemed to distrust enthusiasms of every 
 kind. They were, however, in especial demand 
 for class offices and editorial positions. In 
 short, they were always a convenience whenever 
 any bit of writing was wanted that seemed to 
 call for especial neatness and dispatch. And 
 yet, when these same admirable fellows gradu- 
 ated and went out into active life, they soon 
 found themselves neglected, and, a little later, 
 quite overwhelmed by the great world of ener- 
 getic beliefs and methods. 
 
 Then there were those special paragons of ex- 
 
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 37 
 
 cellence, whose enviable distinction was that they 
 were always in their place, that they always did 
 their regular work well; that they always, in 
 short, had their lessons and performed their 
 parts with the most punctilious promptitude and 
 exactness. Whoever else failed to do the most 
 difficult work, or to give the most approved ex- 
 planation of a difficult sequence of tenses, or an 
 obscure theory of numbers, their answers were 
 always as good as those of the book. Hour after 
 hour, they pored successfully over their lessons, 
 and, as a consequence, they never failed of re- 
 ceiving the highest evidences of approval on the 
 part of the faculty. But they had this limita- 
 tion, that as long as they were in college they 
 seemed never to think it necessary to do anything 
 besides the learning of lessons. All knowledge 
 to them was equally important, and they would 
 have been horrified at the thought of slighting 
 in the least degree any one study in order that 
 they might rescue a little extra time for any 
 other. In the end, therefore, they came to know 
 a little of everything, and knew that little with 
 the utmost precision. But, at the same time, 
 
38 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 they knew not very much of any one thing ; and, 
 worst of all, they had no more absorbing interest 
 in any one thing than in any one of a dozen 
 others. Accordingly, they found, after gradua- 
 tion, on going into the world's market, that there 
 was very little demand for the especial quality 
 of moderately excellent wares they had to dis- 
 pose of, and so it came about that their lives have 
 been a succession of more or less complete fail- 
 ures. 
 
 On the other hand, it is to be said that the 
 successes have been perhaps quite as noteworthy 
 and surprising as the failures. There were the 
 men of dreams, who without often conspicu- 
 ously neglecting their work were much given to 
 reading, and still more to the habit of solitary 
 thought. Their minds, under the influence of 
 some one author, or of some one professor, drifted 
 at length into certain ways of thinking; and so, 
 in spite of their indifferent standing on the rec- 
 ords of the faculty, they became possessed of some 
 great and dominating purpose which, a little 
 later, was to flame out into gratifying and per- 
 
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 39 
 
 haps even astonishing results. Men of this type 
 were Webster and Beecher. 
 
 Then, too, there were those apparently unfor- 
 tunate students who were so poorly prepared 
 that, at the time of admission, they barely es- 
 caped being thrown out altogether. Some of 
 them had good ability, but had had no opportuni- 
 ties. Now their opportunities came. They 
 seemed to know from the start that in their case, 
 more than in the case of any others, success de- 
 pended upon themselves. They soon acquired a 
 good standing, and a little later, under the kin- 
 dling influence of a supreme devotion to some spe- 
 cial branch of study, advanced far on beyond 
 what they seemed to regard as the mere vulgar 
 requirements of ordinary class routine. To this 
 new inspiration they lovingly devoted their ener- 
 gies and their leisure moments, not only in term 
 time but also in vacations. To every man of this 
 group his work soon became not simply his pleas- 
 ure but his chiefest delight. And so it came to 
 be gradually revealed that the modest and ill- 
 prepared freshman, who persistently kept away 
 
40 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 from class meetings and never thought of accept- 
 ing a class office or a position on a college paper, 
 was really marching on to that lofty and excep- 
 tional kind of success which the world is always 
 waiting to recognize and to honor. 
 
 The secret of success is only partially in the 
 knowledge actually acquired ; it is quite as much 
 in that habit of mind which makes the possessor 
 able to muster his powers and his knowledge and 
 apply them all to the solution of the specific 
 problem at hand. It is no figure of speech to say 
 that most men forget the major part of what they 
 learn in college. They do, indeed, remember 
 those particular things which they have occasion 
 to make frequent use of; but there are probably 
 very few men who, after being out of college 
 twenty-five years, would not admit that more 
 than three-fourths of all that they had toiled and 
 worried over in their college days has absolutely 
 lapsed out of mind. And it is as true, perhaps, 
 of one subject as of another. Certainly it is as 
 true of the so-called useless studies as of the so- 
 called useful ones. We are not, of course, 
 
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 41 
 
 speaking of specialists ; but, barring this impor- 
 tant class, how many are there at fifty who will 
 say that it is more difficult to remember how to 
 construe a sentence than to analyze a flower? 
 Who but a specialist remembers any more of 
 algebra or geometry than he does of the irregu- 
 lar verbs in Greek? 
 
 It is partly, then, what the student remembers ; 
 but it is still more the ability and determination 
 he has to make the best possible use of what he 
 remembers, that makes up, as a whole, his chance 
 of ultimate success. If he has learned nothing 
 so thoroughly as to hold it permanently in mind ; 
 in other words, if he has no dominant interest 
 or enthusiasm, his prospects of success are small 
 indeed. But if, on the other hand, he is so for- 
 tunate as to find that out of the debris of his 
 years in college he has rescued a real, permanent, 
 and overpowering interest in some one study, it 
 matters not much what, he will be able to carry 
 into the work of life all the advantage that comes 
 from an untrammeled self-reliance, and, in ad- 
 dition, whatever the wisest of his teachers, his 
 
42 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 friends, and his books may have brought to his 
 assistance. Here it is that the successes and the 
 failures of college-bred men are to find their ade- 
 quate explanation. 
 
VIVEROLS 
 
 By David Starr Jordan 
 
 BEYOND the sea, I know not where, 
 There is a town called Viverols ; 
 I know not if 'tis near or far, 
 I know not what its features are; 
 I only know 'tis Viverols. 
 
 I know not if its ancient walls 
 By vine and moss be overgrown; 
 I know not if the night-owl calls 
 From feudal battlements of stone 
 Inhabited by him alone. 
 
 I know not if mid meadow lands 
 Knee deep in corn stands Viverols; 
 I know not if prosperity 
 Has robbed its life of poesy. 
 It could not be in Viverols, 
 They would not call it Viverols. 
 
 43 
 
44 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 Perchance upon its terraced heights 
 The grapes grow purple in the sun ; 
 Or down its wild untrodden crags, 
 Its broken cliffs and frost-bit jags, 
 The mountain brooks unfettered run. 
 
 I cannot fancy Viverols 
 A place of gaudy pomp and show, 
 A " Grand Etablissement des Eaux," 
 Where to win back their withered lives, 
 The roues of the city go; 
 
 Nor yet a place where Poverty 
 No ray of happiness lets in ; 
 Where wanders hopeless beggary 
 Mid scenes of sorrow, want and sin. 
 It cannot be in Viverols, 
 There's life and cheer in Viverols ! 
 
 Perhaps among the clouds it lies 
 
 Mid vapors out from Dreamland blown; 
 
 Built up from vague remembrances 
 
 That never yet had form in stone. 
 
 Its castles built of cloud alone. 
 
VIVEROLS 45 
 
 I only know, should you and I 
 
 Through its old walls of crumbling stone 
 
 With moss and ivy overgrown 
 
 Together wander all alone, 
 
 No spot on earth could be more fair, 
 Than ivy-covered Viverols; 
 No grass be greener anywhere, 
 No bluer sky nor softer air 
 Than we should find in Viverols, 
 Together find in Viverols. 
 
 Love, we may wander far or near. 
 The sun shines bright o'er Viverols, 
 Grreen is the grass, the skies are clear; 
 No clouds obscure our pathway, dear. 
 Where Love is, there is Viverols, 
 There is no other Viverols. 
 
TO BAEBARA 
 
 (A Study in Heredity) 
 
 By David Starr Jordan 
 
 LITTLE lady, cease your play 
 For a moment, if you may; 
 Come to me, and tell me true 
 Whence those black eyes came to you. 
 
 Father's eyes are granite gray, 
 And your mother's, Barbara, 
 Black as the obsidian stone. 
 With a luster all their own. 
 How should one so small as you 
 Learn to choose between the two? 
 
 If through father's eyes you look, 
 Nature seems an open book — 
 All her secrets written clear 
 On her pages round you, dear. 
 Better yet than this may be 
 
 46 
 
TO BAKBARA 47 
 
 If through mother's eyes you see; 
 Theirs to read — a finer art — 
 Deep down in the human heart. 
 How should one so small as you 
 Choose so well between the two? 
 
 Hide your face behind your fan, 
 Little black-eyed Puritan; 
 Peer across its edge at me 
 In demurest coquetry, 
 Like some Dona Placida, 
 Not the Puritan you are. 
 Subtle sorcery there lies 
 In the glances of your eyes, 
 Calling forth, from out the vast 
 Vaults of the forgotten past, 
 Pictures dim and far away 
 From the full life of to-day. 
 Like the figures that we see 
 Wrought in ancient tapestry. 
 
 This the vision comes to me: 
 Sheer rock rising from the sea, 
 Wind-riven, harsh and vertical. 
 
48 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 To a gray old castle wall ; 
 Waving palms upon its height, 
 At its feet the breakers white, 
 Chasing o'er an emerald bay, 
 Like a flock of swans that play ; 
 Tile-roofed houses of the town, 
 From the hills, slow creeping down ; 
 Rocks and palms and castle wall. 
 Emerald seas that rise and fall. 
 Golden haze and glittering blue — 
 What is all of this to you? 
 Only this, perchance it be. 
 Each has left its trace in thee; 
 Only this, that love is strong. 
 And the arm of fate is long. 
 
 Deeply hidden in your eyes, 
 Undeciphered histories, 
 Graven in the ages vast. 
 Lie there to be read at last : 
 Graven deep, they must be true; 
 Shall I read them unto you? 
 
 Once a man, now faint and dim 
 With the centuries over him, 
 
TO BARBAKA 49 
 
 Wandered from an ancient town, 
 On its hills slow creeping down, 
 O'er the ocean, bold and free. 
 Roved in careless errantry. 
 With Vizcaino had he fared. 
 And his strange adventures dared ; 
 Restless ever, drifting on. 
 Far as foot of man had gone; 
 On his cheek the salt that clings 
 To the Headland of the Kings, 
 Flung from the enchanted sea 
 Off Saint Francis Assisi! 
 Roved o'er the ocean blue — 
 What has he to do with you? 
 
 Only this : he sailed one day 
 
 To your Massachusetts Bay, 
 
 And this voyage was his last. 
 
 For Love seized and held him fast. 
 
 Of that old romance of his 
 
 None can tell you more than this : 
 
 Saving that, as legacies 
 
 To his child, he left his eyes, 
 
 Black as the obsidian stone, 
 
50 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 With a luster all their own, 
 Seeing as by magic ken 
 Deep into the hearts of men, 
 And mid tides of changing years. 
 Dreams and hopes and cares and fears. 
 Life that flows and ebbs alway. 
 Love has kept them loyally. 
 
 Once, it chanced, they came to shine, 
 Straight into this heart of mine. 
 
 Little lady, cease your play 
 For a moment, if you may ; 
 All I ask is, silently. 
 Turn your mother's eyes on me. 
 
EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 
 By David Starr Jordan 
 
 THE dread of the theories of evolution, for- 
 merly wide-spread among religious people, 
 but now subsiding everywhere except in the 
 " backwoods " of sectarianism, constitutes a 
 phase of the doubt with which each passing gen- 
 eration looks on the discoveries and aspirations 
 of the generation coming on. It is not in any 
 proper sense a conflict between science and re- 
 ligion, but a conflict between progress and con- 
 servatism, and thirty years ago the same con- 
 flict existed within the ranks of scientific men 
 themselves. 
 
 Each new generation has a larger conception 
 of the universe and of the terrible, unseen powers 
 by which all things visible are controlled. The 
 spread of science has given deeper and deeper 
 meaning to our conception of the great center 
 of intelligence in which originate these powers 
 
 51 
 
52 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 and forces — forever acting, the only unchang- 
 ing elements in a changing universe. 
 
 The discoveries of science must necessarily be 
 the work of those who as experts have devoted 
 their lives to such investigations. These men 
 must do their work in advance both of church 
 and of state. As Dr. Le Conte has well said, 
 " They cannot be expected to wait until the truth 
 of their discoveries has been passed upon and 
 approved by the orthodox." All truth will 
 sooner or later justify itself, and doubtless the 
 approval of the churches will come in time in 
 the science of evolution as it has already come 
 in the sciences of astronomy and geology. It is 
 a matter of little importance whether it comes 
 or not, for popular acceptance of truth adds 
 nothing to its value. Those who do not recog- 
 nize truth are the only losers by its rejection. 
 In history they are usually remembered only as 
 the darkeners of counsel in the progress of truth. 
 Thus it is that in the words of Huxley, "Ex- 
 tinguished theologians lie about the cradle of 
 every infant science — as the strangled snakes 
 beside the cradle of the infant Hercules." 
 
EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 53 
 
 The doctrine of evolution is simply a broad 
 way of looking at the universe, not as a finished 
 product, but as being forever in a condition of 
 orderly change. It is not a belief or a body of 
 doctrines; it is rather an attitude toward the 
 problems of nature. It is the recognition that 
 in all the changing scenes of the changing uni- 
 verse there is the unity of unchanging law, the 
 continuity of Him in whom men have found no 
 " variableness nor shadow of turning.'' 
 
 But men who have no acquaintance with na- 
 ture at first hand, those whose knowledge of mod- 
 ern investigations is but fragmentary and casual, 
 are distressed by the results of these investiga- 
 tions. As cherished superstitions are dissipated, 
 they find no stability anywhere, and from this 
 feeling of fear of the progress of knowledge few 
 can escape. The most advanced thinker of one 
 generation as he passes to the shady side of life 
 turns naturally to conservatism ; he has the fear 
 that this time '' the boys are carrying matters a 
 little too far.'' The truth is not what he ex- 
 pected when he was himself a radical, and he is 
 not quite confident of the good judgment of those 
 
54 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATEES 
 
 who are radicals of to-day. So, as Dr. Ross has 
 said, " He will have the appalling feeling of being 
 nowhere at home, that awful sinking as if the 
 bottom were dropping out of all things." 
 
 And yet each new generation finds its own rea- 
 son for its own optimism. Right doing and right 
 thinking in each age justify themselves. In all 
 ages, " Those who bring sunshine into the lives 
 of others cannot keep it from themselves." In 
 all ages, " There is room for the man of force 
 and he makes room for many." 
 
 In the death of any cherished superstition, 
 optimism gains more than it loses. Every age 
 is henceforth to be an age of transition, for in 
 transition the human mind is growing. The de- 
 velopment of the human mind is apparently the 
 highest present business of the powers of nature, 
 and if ever the human intellect ceases to grow 
 and settles down in contentment with its past 
 achievements, we may expect that some race of 
 our simian relatives will take up our fallen ban- 
 ner and continue the task that was too great for 
 us. The task will never be abandoned, and the 
 progress of human knowledge will go on till the 
 
EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 55 
 
 fires that light the earth are extinguished and 
 sunshine and protoplasm vanish together. In 
 the growth of the human mind the theology of 
 one age becomes the superstition of the next. 
 The gods of one mythology become demons in 
 that which succeeds it. 
 
 Creeds will change; they are human expres- 
 sions. But though every word in every creed 
 should be false, that for which they stand will not 
 pass away. The " Human Reaction " from the 
 forces of nature, the kindness and reverence 
 which may find in creeds and ceremonies their 
 crude expression, are a part of humanity which 
 will last as long as humanity endures. 
 
 So the conflict between science and religion is 
 a battle of the immortals. In every struggle the 
 victory will be on the side of science. From the 
 dust of every defeat religion will arise brighter 
 and stronger, because with each defeat she will 
 be more and more freed from the bonds of hu- 
 man superstition. 
 
 But in another sense there never was a con- 
 flict between religion and science. They do not 
 occupy the same field. The dreams and aspira- 
 
56 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 tions of the human spirit cannot be reduced to 
 the forms of exact science. Religion must look 
 beyond knowledge. At the same time no part 
 of the field of science has ever been claimed by 
 religion except as a trespasser. Whatever limit 
 to human thought has been set in the name of 
 religion or in any other name, must be cast off. 
 Fetters once cast off can never be forged again. 
 Roma locuta est: causa flnita esty is a dictum 
 never recognized by science. Her causes are 
 never finished. Her followers can never recog- 
 nize any power on earth as capable of giving 
 answers to the problems they are trying to solve. 
 Only nature herself can answer questions about 
 nature, and only those who patiently give their 
 lives to awaiting her answers can expect to re- 
 ceive her secrets. 
 
THE BELL BUOY 
 By Liberty Hyde Bailey 
 
 1SIT on the waves, 
 I toss in the storm, 
 And the salt spray laves 
 My skeleton form; 
 And all the day long, 
 With a reckless ease, 
 I roll my ding-dong 
 On the ear o' the breeze. 
 
 And the mermaids hear 
 In the ebb and flow. 
 And they shake with fear 
 In their beds below; 
 And the sea-sprite goes 
 In haste and away. 
 As I ring out my woes 
 At the break of day. 
 
 57 
 
58 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 And still thro' the night, 
 When the sea-winds moan, 
 And the phosphorous light 
 Mocks the shivering moon, 
 I toll out the time 
 In monotone knell, 
 In dull hollow rime, 
 Like a voice from hell. 
 
 So I sit and swing 
 Where the billows be, 
 A phantom-like thing — 
 A ghost of the sea; 
 And out from my bars 
 Floats the doleful tone — 
 Out under the stars — 
 Of a soul alone. 
 
FACULTY AND STUDENTS — PAST AND 
 PEESENT 
 
 By Ralph C. H. Catterall 
 
 IN the good old days which we all regret when 
 we speak of them without thinking, but 
 which at bottom we are glad to see no more, the 
 relations between the faculties of our colleges 
 and universities and the untamed youth who were 
 supposed to thirst after knowledge and culture 
 were not always of the pleasantest. They were 
 indeed of a character which compelled the un- 
 worldly professors to assume the functions of 
 village policemen, and hence forced the students 
 to seek means of retaliation against the " guard- 
 ians of his youth." The young lack imagina- 
 tion, and methods of revenge, as might be ex- 
 pected, were crass, crude, and barbarous; a 
 shower of stones thrown through the window of 
 some professor, practical jokes which might 
 maim a man for life, the occasional mobbing of 
 
 59 
 
60 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 some instructor more unpopular or less tactful 
 than the rest, and at long intervals the killing 
 of a too rash tutor who, during some college 
 brawl, ran in between " the fell opposed points 
 of mighty opposites." Does any one doubt the 
 truth of this description? If he does, he has 
 never had the privilege of sitting with the revered 
 remnants of these old faculties and hearing 
 their stories of those much-regretted days. Nay, 
 he has never read the memoirs which the instruc- 
 tors of our fathers have left behind them, nor 
 even the college novels of those days, which one 
 and all contain soul-stirring stories of the most 
 delicious and laughable larks played upon the 
 unsuspecting tutor or professor. I recall sit- 
 ting at table last year with one of the oldest and 
 one of the most famous teachers in the United 
 States, who regaled us with a diverting story of 
 his police experiences as a young man with one 
 of the worst toughs of the college. The affair 
 culminated on the morning of Commencement 
 Day in the throwing of a huge stone through the 
 tutor's window just as he was getting out of bed. 
 A little more and this formidable engine of war 
 
FACULTY AND STUDENTS 61 
 
 would have brained him and so forever have 
 deprived generations of American students of the 
 learning, wit, humor, ferocity, and crustiness of 
 one of the most remarkable men who ever did 
 the United States the honor to live in it, and the 
 supreme service of criticizing it at every step 
 of its career. 
 
 But we do not need to wander far afield for 
 illustrations of the old-time felicity of college 
 faculties in their relations with the students. 
 We have all read, or should have read, the 
 " Autobiography of Ex-President White," and 
 there we will find that in one college of his ac- 
 quaintance it was his privilege to behold " a pro- 
 fessor, an excellent clergyman, seeking to quell 
 hideous riot in a student's room, buried under a 
 heap of carpets, mattresses, counterpanes, and 
 blankets ; to see another clerical professor forced 
 to retire through the panel of a door under a 
 shower of lexicons, boots, and brushes, and to see 
 even the president himself, on one occasion, 
 obliged to leave his lecture-room by a ladder 
 from a window, and, on another, kept at bay by 
 a shower of beer bottles. 
 
62 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 " One favorite occupation/' he continues, " was 
 rolling cannon balls along the corridors at mid- 
 night, with frightful din and much damage; a 
 tutor, having one night been successful in catch- 
 ing and confiscating two of these, pounced from 
 his door the next night upon a third; but this 
 having been heated nearly to redness and 
 launched from a shovel, the result was that he 
 wore bandages upon his hands for many days.'' 
 
 Now Mr. White is careful to add that this col- 
 lege was in this respect the worst specimen he 
 ever saw, but when he comes to speak of Yale, 
 he recalls " the fatal wounding of Tutor 
 Dwight," and the " maiming of Tutor Goodrich," 
 and we all know that Yale was not the only col- 
 lege in the country where members of the faculty 
 and students were involved in bloody brawls. 
 
 With that commendable and naive conserva- 
 tism which is so characteristic of the young and 
 particularly of the college student, these rela- 
 tions were religiously continued, and they show 
 a remarkable state of mind in regard to the posi- 
 tion of the faculty. For the most curious aspect 
 of these relations is found in the fact that facul- 
 
FACULTY AND STUDENTS 63 
 
 ties were regarded with awe and reverence, or at 
 least there was a tradition in our colleges that 
 such was the proper mental attitude to assume. 
 So students continued to roll hot cannon balls 
 along the corridors, to greet unpopular instruc- 
 tors with alternate showers of curses and of 
 stones, occasionally to dirk a poor wretch who 
 was unnecessarily and intolerably offensive, and 
 at the same time to take off their hats and bow 
 deeply before these representatives of profound 
 knowledge and lofty culture. 
 
 The truth is that the student did not under- 
 stand these strange and remarkable though 
 simple creatures any more than a mediaeval stu- 
 dent understood the physiological system of the 
 dodo. Nor, on the other hand, did the profes- 
 sor have any very clear or accurate ideas of the 
 student. There was little intimacy between the 
 two, each feeling that " evil communications cor- 
 rupt good manners," and of course there was mu- 
 tual misunderstanding. The faculty regarded 
 many of the students as hopeless brigands, de- 
 spite the fact that in after life very few of them 
 were hanged and only a small percentage elected 
 
64 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 to the legislature. The students regarded the 
 members of the faculty as freaks fearfully and 
 wonderfully made, unlike anything in heaven 
 above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters 
 under the earth, themselves therefore not de- 
 barred by the commandment from falling down 
 and worshiping them, if they so desired. The 
 professor's real object in life was a mystery to 
 the average student, for of course he didn't actu- 
 ally exist for the purpose of purveying the kind 
 of instruction which was then common, the sort 
 so happily described by Carlyle : " Innumer- 
 able dead Vocables (no dead Language, for they 
 themselves knew no Language) they crammed 
 into us, and called it fostering the growth of the 
 mind." 
 
 Only too frequently the instructor was fit only 
 for such work. Lacking knowledge of humanity, 
 without much interest in the life of the world, 
 with only a few drops of red blood sluggishly 
 trickling through his veins, he sat in his study, 
 slowly drying up, and attempting like the fa- 
 mous Wagner to create the new man out of noth- 
 ing and in a perfect vacuum. 
 
FACULTY AND STUDENTS 65 
 
 Of course, it would be false to declare flatly 
 that this account is literally true, of all colleges, 
 of all faculties, and of all students of that day. 
 There were exceptions and many of them; but, 
 broadly speaking, the above description is fairly 
 accurate. 
 
 To-day conditions are no longer the same. 
 Despite the conservatism of faculties and the still 
 denser and almost ineluctable conservatism of 
 students, the relations between the two have be- 
 come much closer and much better. There is, 
 to be sure, less formal reverence, but also less 
 informal irreverence ; there is something like real 
 respect and a much larger measure of liking; 
 there is a better knowledge of the instructor's 
 intellectual acquirements and certainly less will- 
 ingness to take them on trust ; there is more fa- 
 miliarity and less contempt on both sides, and a 
 completer understanding of the position of each. 
 The student has more real interest in the work 
 of the university, and in the ideas and the ideals 
 for which the instructor stands, or fails to stand. 
 At the same time the instructor measures more 
 accurately the needs of his students and strives 
 
66 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 to meet them. In this interest of the student, in 
 this attitude of the instructor, we find the price- 
 less benefits of the change in spirit which has 
 occurred in the last half century. 
 
 Whence has come this change? One authority 
 tells us that the introduction of the elective sys- 
 tem is responsible; another insists that it is the 
 growth of athletics which has permitted the stu- 
 dent body to work itself out of " the gall of bit- 
 terness and the bonds of iniquity " without the 
 slaughter of the faculty. Others again labori- 
 ously but simply explain this state of affairs as 
 being only one small result of our general ad- 
 vance in goodness. The truth is that the expla- 
 nations, excepting only the last, are not inclusive 
 enough. 
 
 The reasons for a better status between teacher 
 and student are multifarious and complex, some 
 palpable, others so concealed that it would be 
 extremely rash to pretend to know them all, 
 without a profounder study than perhaps the 
 subject deserves. We shall have to be content 
 not " to pluck the heart of Hamlet's mystery out.'' 
 
FACULTY AND STUDENTS 67 
 
 Nevertheless many of the causes of the change 
 can be noted. 
 
 Among these may be mentioned first and fore- 
 most the broader interests of the modern univer- 
 sity. We are no longer content to infuse into the 
 youthful mind only Latin, Greek, mathematics, 
 and a few allied subjects. A multitude of other 
 subjects has been added, and with the addition of 
 each has come a widening of the horizon, a deep- 
 ening of interest in life, and a consequent mu- 
 tual attraction of the hitherto opposing masses 
 — faculty and the student body. The addition 
 of literature, political economy, history, and like 
 subjects to the college curriculum has been of 
 enormous service in this process. Similarly, the 
 introduction of the purely scientific studies has 
 had the same results to an even greater degree. 
 All these subjects demand constant research, con- 
 stant criticism, and research and criticism must 
 be undertaken by the student and instructor to- 
 gether. A broadening of interest, a better under- 
 standing of each other, a closer intimacy, such 
 are the results. The old-time enemies have thus 
 
68 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 learned to know and esteem each other. " The 
 man I don't know is the man I don't like." 
 
 The elective system, that remedy for all the 
 ills and explanation of all the evils of present-day 
 college life, has undoubtedly had an enormous in- 
 fluence in bringing together the professor and his 
 enemy. It has profoundly modified the methods 
 of instruction. It is much more difficult for 
 Dryasdust to drone through his exercises now 
 that the victim can elect to cut Dryasdust. 
 Moreover, the motive of the student for taking 
 work has changed. Choice infers judgment of 
 some sort, usually poor judgment, to be sure, but 
 still judgment ; judgment ought to infer interest, 
 and it usually does, though the nature of the in- 
 terest will not always bear probing into. In any 
 case the student's attitude toward study is 
 changed, and as a consequence his attitude 
 toward the man in charge of the study. As for 
 the instructor, he has been compelled to adopt 
 new views as well as new methods. He has set 
 himself to getting acquainted with the student, 
 or at least to finding out what he is like, what he 
 wants, and why he wants it. He has conformed 
 
FACULTY AND STUDENTS 69 
 
 to the student's demands even when he neglects 
 his needs. 
 
 Athletics, too, has had its share in the trans- 
 formation. This assertion needs only to be made 
 to be accepted. Most faculties are intensely in- 
 terested in athletics, some of them with a benevo- 
 lent, some with a malevolent interest, but in any 
 case interested. Most of the professors, indeed, 
 highly favor them, and with these it is only a 
 question of the more or less. Many of our teach- 
 ing staff have been athletes in their day, many 
 more have had the warmer and noisier participa- 
 tion in athletics which is characteristic of the 
 side lines. All these causes draw the instructor 
 and the student closer together, and it cannot be 
 doubted, as it is contended, that the modern stu- 
 dent gets rid of a good deal of his diabolical 
 energy through the media of football, baseball, 
 and kindred sports. Intercollegiate competitions, 
 largely a result of the athletic spirit, have also 
 tended to create a sentiment of solidarity among 
 all the members of a university. 
 
 More important still has been the introduction 
 of graduate studies. The pursuit of these can be 
 
70 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 carried on only by the combined effort of teacher 
 and pupil, and the result of this community of 
 research has been already pointed out. Add to 
 this that, when the student has once fairly got 
 into his subject, the fact, usually surprising and 
 startling to the student, that on that subject he 
 knows more than his instructor, that there he is 
 the superior and not the inferior soon dawns upon 
 him and has a revolutionary tendency. It makes 
 him feel that he is on a level with his professor, 
 a result of immense importance in determining 
 the relation of the two. 
 
 The greater degree of self-government in pres- 
 ent-day universities has had an incalculable in- 
 fluence in destroying the old antagonistic spirit. 
 The faculty is no longer devoted to the duties of 
 the police and the justices of the peace, and the 
 gain is notable, both for the teacher's self-respect 
 and his peace of mind, as well as for the student's 
 respect for the erstwhile policeman. The hot 
 cannon ball no longer rolls, stones no longer 
 crash through the windows of the instructor, and 
 innocent tutors are no longer slain by " the young 
 barbarian at his play.'' All this is clear gain. 
 
FACULTY AND STUDENTS 71 
 
 Perhaps no other influence has been so potent in 
 bringing this gain to us as this of student self- 
 government, and it is only to be wished that such 
 self-government might receive a still wider ex- 
 tension than hitherto. That it does not is, on 
 the whole, the fault of the student body. 
 
 In our own university there are particular 
 causes for the excellent spirit which exists be- 
 tween the faculty and students. These deserve 
 a brief mention. First come the circumstances 
 of our founding, which any good Cornellian 
 knows and is thankful for. The genius and the 
 ideas of Ezra Cornell were all favorable to this 
 spirit ; the personality of our first president was 
 no less so. One cannot read his autobiography 
 without perceiving that from his early youth he 
 had noted and deprecated the hostile and unnat- 
 ural attitude of teacher toward student, and of 
 student toward teacher. It is just as apparent, 
 too, that he was from the first resolved that no 
 such relations should exist here, and that to him 
 was due in large measure our unusual freedom 
 from this spirit even in those days when it was 
 far from being exorcised elsewhere. 
 
72 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 Fraternities, too, have "done the state some 
 service '' in this direction, and so also have some 
 of the other societies and organizations at Cor- 
 nell. 
 
 Yet, after all is said, it would be vain to pre- 
 tend that the ideal conditions have been yet 
 achieved. Any student will tell you as much, 
 and so will any college president. The most diffi- 
 cult problem, the authorities declare, is to keep 
 the faculty in close touch with the students. 
 Most difficult, yet most desirable. How it is to 
 be done is not the purpose of this paper to tell. 
 Here is a field for discussion open to the pro- 
 foundest wit and the broadest knowledge, and 
 fortunate will be the man who discovers a solu- 
 tion for this problem. 
 
ANENT BONFIRES 
 
 By George Lincoln Burr 
 
 SPEAKING of traditions, there is one so old, 
 even at Cornell, as almost to be respectable 
 — if a tradition, the cast-off clothes of an idea, 
 can ever be respectable. I mean the bonfire when 
 the freshmen burn their caps. 
 
 True, it was not caps we used to burn. In my 
 day it was books. Well do I remember that 
 weird procession, at the end of our freshman year, 
 when at dead of night, the engineers in the van, 
 we cremated on the campus that nightmare of 
 their waking hours, Weisbach's Mechanics. But 
 when, a decade later, I came back to Cornell from 
 my studies abroad, it was no longer the engineers 
 who led or Weisbach which was their victim. It 
 was the freshmen as a whole who now wreaked 
 their revenge on that all-too-learned algebra 
 concocted for their special needs by Professors 
 
 73 
 
74 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 Oliver, Wait, and Jones — " Gulliver, Fate, and 
 Groans,'' as one vindictive undergraduate dared 
 to parody their names in that play of " Instructor 
 Pratt " which butchered so many of us to make a 
 student holiday. 
 
 But it was no new ignominy peculiar to 
 Cornell, this of academic cremation. Back to 
 the very birth of universities it goes, this glee- 
 ful execution of judgment upon the heretic tomes 
 whose evil suggestion of progress has tormented 
 our peace of mind. True, between those old bon- 
 fires and ours there was the difference that the 
 faculty then often took a hand, and that then they 
 preferred to burn their tormentors before the mis- 
 chief was wrought. Surely nobody supposes that 
 the mission of a university has always been the 
 search of truth. That is only a wild notion of 
 these last degenerate days. From time imme- 
 morial the usual function of a university has been 
 the custody of truth. To receive it unquestioning 
 from the fathers, as Heaven through Church and 
 State has revealed it, to guard it against all the 
 seductions of novelty, though Satan disguise him- 
 self as an angel of light, to hand it down intact 
 
ANENT BONFIRES 75 
 
 to the next generation : this is the time-honored 
 ideal of what has loved to call itself education. 
 The universities were scarcely in existence be- 
 fore, in the thirteenth century, the Pope put into 
 their hands the censorship of books. And the 
 penalty, as for all heretics, was to be burned — 
 burned alive, poor children of the brain. 
 " Mangled and burned by the common hangman '' 
 ran the sentence of the old French courts. 
 
 Nor were the universities one whit loth to aid 
 the executioner. When the printing press was 
 born, the University of Cologne, overlooking its 
 Rhineland cradle, could not wait, good alma 
 noverca^ for those mandates by which mother 
 church soon provided everywhere watchful 
 guardians for that enfant terrible^ but set up a 
 censorship of her own ; and her academic sisters 
 were not slow to follow. It was the university 
 towns — Paris, Louvain, Liege, Ingolstadt, Leip- 
 zig — that presently saw those glorious bonfires 
 of the new theology which was to take to itself 
 the name of Protestantism. And the Protes- 
 tants? Yes, they made some outcry. One Mar- 
 tin Luther, in particular, professor in the new 
 
76 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 University of Wittenberg — new universities 
 have every now and then been slow to learn that 
 all truth is old — said sharp things : " It is no 
 great trick to burn a book which you cannot an- 
 swer/' — " If burning books be answering them, 
 then the hangman is the best theologian." Brave 
 words these, but note the sequel. Already by 
 1520 Luther too is fighting the Devil with fire 
 — that Devil who likes nothing better, for he 
 who fights with fire is the DeviFs volunteer. 
 They have burned Luther's books; he will burn 
 theirs. Who does not know the summons which 
 the Wittenberg students found at daylight on 
 that December Monday morning posted on the 
 church door which served as bulletin board — 
 the boys, of course, had all been up at four for 
 Martin Luther's lecture: "Let every man who 
 loves the gospel truth be on hand just before 
 nine o'clock outside the wall, by the Church of 
 Holy Cross, where, in accordance with ancient 
 and apostolic custom, the impious books of the 
 papal laws and the scholastic philosophy shall 
 be burned, since the audacity of the Gospel's foes 
 has gone so far as to burn the pious and evan- 
 
ANENT BONFIRES 77 
 
 gelical books of Luther. Come along, pious and 
 studious youth, to this pious and religious spec- 
 tacle." 
 
 " Pious and religious spectacle," forsooth : the 
 rest is easy to guess. Not five years were up be- 
 fore the new university was condemning to the 
 fire whatever passed its own Lutheran orthodoxy, 
 and by ten it could proudly boast a thorough- 
 ness which it had taken its papist rivals cen-/ 
 turies to reach. For, in the new state churches 
 of Protestantism, the theological faculties must 
 be pope and council and university in one. 
 Theirs still to burn these paper heretics; and 
 cheerily did they fulfill their function, with now 
 and then a flesh and blood one thrown in. Oh, 
 yes, I know there were rogues among them ; and 
 the good, respectable old world has jogged on 
 with fewer wild oats because of these intellectual 
 policemen. Yet, as one glances down the long 
 lists of the censors or through that bibliography 
 which a patient German has given us of the books 
 condemned to be burned, one wonders if it might 
 not better have dared sometimes to be young, even 
 at the risk of wild oats. 
 
78 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 No; wait ! " Young," did I say? Is it youth, 
 then, which is tolerant? Are students less con- 
 servative than faculties? Ask the records. Al- 
 most three years before that bonfire at Witten- 
 berg there was another. It was in March of 1518. 
 This time it was the affair of the students. The 
 book-peddlers had brought to Wittenberg the an- 
 swering theses of the indulgence-monger, Tetzel. 
 " The students," wrote Luther to a friend, " since 
 they are wondrous weary of that old hair-split- 
 ting philosophy" — yes, of course — "but most 
 eager for the holy Bible," — hm-m, let us hope so 
 — " and possibly out of regard for my good-will " 
 — he knew his students, after all, this Luther, 
 but he might have guessed further — " when they 
 found out that the man had come from Halle and 
 was sent by Tetzel, forthwith they gathered about 
 him and, striking terror into him because he 
 dared to bring such things here, some bought cop- 
 ies, others snatched them, and the rest of his 
 stock, about eight hundred (when they had cir- 
 culated a notice to everybody for the cremation 
 and the funeral of Tetzel's theses and had come 
 together in the square at two o'clock) they 
 
ANENT BONFIRES 79 
 
 burned.'' Luther deplored it, of course — with 
 a twinkle in his eye ; but it is clear enough where 
 the notion of that later bonfire came from. And 
 that later bonfire : was it not the boys who kept 
 it up all day, after Luther and the dons had 
 gone home to breakfast? Scarce enough at Wit- 
 tenberg must Eck's books and Emser's have been 
 by nightfall. Forty years later, as the old re- 
 formers were just leaving the stage, there was a 
 conference of the leaders of Luther anism. The 
 young men, relates that fire-eater Sarcerius, all 
 were ready to begin by condemning all the dis- 
 senters ; but the old men held back. 
 
 No, no ; if there was a heretic to burn, you may 
 be sure the students were there to pile the fag- 
 gots and to hoot the victim. Faculties are re- 
 actionary enough ; but for sheer, stupid, dyed-in- 
 the-wool conservatism, cheerily certain that we 
 are the people and that knowledge shall die with 
 us and hating everything new because it is new, 
 commend me to the undergraduate. The only 
 thing in the world more conservative than an Up- 
 perclassman is a Sophomore, and the only thing 
 more conservative than a Sophomore is a crowd of 
 
80 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 Sophomores. Freshmen — well, they come to us, 
 as everybody knows, with something of the 
 verdancy of growth still on them. By the year's 
 end they are ripe for complacency and the bon- 
 fire. 
 
 And yet I cling to my phrase. If the world 
 could but dare to be young ! Young were always 
 the fiercest persecutors ; but young, too, were the 
 boldest heretics. It is youth which can be gen- 
 erous, brave, open-minded, progressive. But 
 these are the virtues of men, not of crowds. A 
 man may lead a crowd; but men are few. 
 Crowds are reactionary, even when they follow 
 — there is an inertia of motion as well as of stag- 
 nation. A man may be in a crowd, but he is 
 not of it. A man can stand alone. 
 
TAGHKANIC 
 By Francis Miles Finch 
 
 ON the brow of the delicate streamlet, 
 In the folds of its forest hair, 
 I see the gems of a bridal. 
 The pearls of a peerless pair. 
 
 The rill of the shadowy woodland 
 Kuns to the lake with a spring: 
 
 The Indian maid, Taghkanie, 
 Weds the Cayuga King. 
 
 In the shade of the murmuring maple 
 
 Wait, fair girl, at my side. 
 Till I lift your wondering lashes 
 
 On the dainty lace of the bride. 
 
 Nearer, your tremulous footstep. 
 
 Yonder the flash of your eye. 
 Through the break of the marginal leaflets. 
 
 Where the mist sails up to the sky. 
 
 81 
 
82 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 You see it : — I know by the color 
 That tells me its rose-red tale : 
 
 You see in the frame of the forest 
 The lace of the bridal veil. 
 
 Over the rock it is floating, 
 
 Is it woven of diamonds or spray? 
 
 Of molten pearl, or of star-dust? — 
 Tell me the fabric, I pray. 
 
 You answer me only with dimples 
 
 Hid in a tinting of rose : 
 And the light of your own near bridal 
 
 Under your eye-lid glows. 
 
 The Indian maid, Taghkanic, 
 Weds with the Sapphire King: 
 
 But a dearer and daintier bridal 
 The bloomings of June shall bring. 
 
A VIEW OF ATHLETICS * 
 By Frank Irvine 
 
 AKE intercollegiate athletic sports beneficial 
 to a university and to those who partici- 
 pate in them, or are they detrimental? That 
 they are essentially beneficial, may be safely as- 
 sumed. That they are subject to accidental evils, 
 no one will deny. Those who believe that the 
 good outweighs the evil, and that on the whole 
 such efforts should be encouraged, meet opposi- 
 tion of two very different kinds. They are op- 
 posed consciously and directly by men who per- 
 ceive only the abuses, and who would, if possi- 
 ble, destroy the entire system. They are opposed 
 unconsciously and indirectly by those devotees 
 of athletic sports who hold false ideals, who mag- 
 nify their importance, and who distort their pur- 
 
 * This article was written for the October, 1908, issue of the 
 OoBNEix Eba, in view of conditions which made the problem 
 of athletics an acute one. The problem is hardly less im- 
 portant, however, in college life to-day. 
 
 83 
 
84 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 poses. The latter are those who really imperil 
 athletic sports. But for them the former would 
 not exist. If at Cornell the avowed enemies of 
 intercollegiate athletics are few in number and 
 not extreme, it is because on the whole the stu- 
 dents have a just sense of the proportion, purpose, 
 and value of such sports, and because their 
 abuses are thereby minimized. 
 
 The objection to intercollegiate contests most 
 frequently voiced is that they enlist the active 
 efforts of only a very small proportion of the 
 students. This is true not only of athletic con- 
 tests, but to a much greater extent of intercol- 
 legiate debates. If the whole purpose of such 
 contests were the physical exercise afforded the 
 players, the objection would have greater weight. 
 The physical development of those who play on 
 the teams is a minor, and, perhaps, a negligible 
 consideration. The interest aroused in outdoor 
 sports, and stimulus afforded by their exemplifi- 
 cation by experts, tend to the general participa- 
 tion of students in some form of healthful sport. 
 Had we no 'Varsity baseball team we should 
 have fewer or no " scrub " games such as occupy 
 
A VIEW OF ATHLETICS 85 
 
 the playground and other fields so continuously 
 in the spring. And, after all, the case is not so 
 bad from the standpoint of direct participation. 
 While only the few best " make " the 'Varsity, 
 good results to the many who try, and especially 
 to those who go through the season on the 
 " scrubs.'' It is not only the eight men in the 
 'Varsity shell at Poughkeepsie who row. 
 Twenty-seven men actually take part in the races 
 there. Many times that number row during 
 much of the season. About five hundred and 
 fifty men worked for the track team at some time 
 during a recent year, while the squads for base- 
 ball and football are likewise large. If to these 
 be added those who participate in like manner in 
 the minor sports, it will be found that a goodly 
 portion of the undergraduates have received their 
 physical exercise under these peculiarly stimulat- 
 ing influences. 
 
 Then it must above all be borne in mind that 
 with the unusually diversified work and interests 
 prevailing at Cornell, almost the only common 
 ground upon which we meet, certainly the most 
 immediate and powerful unifying force, is our 
 
86 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 interest in university contests. For lack of 
 room, if for no other reason, it is impossible to 
 bring all the students together for any other pur- 
 pose. A true university convocation can be held 
 only on the athletic field, and there only in fact 
 is there anything approaching such a gathering. 
 Without such common interests Cornell would 
 in sentiment be only a number of separate col- 
 leges. 
 
 It is of the utmost importance that we should 
 have a just sense of the relations between sport 
 and the serious work of the university. The 
 athlete should be first of all a student. Inter- 
 collegiate contests become mischievous to the 
 extent that they detract from the serious prepara- 
 tion for business and citizenship for which the 
 university exists and for which students resort 
 to it. They become intolerable if they attract 
 to the university in considerable number men 
 who do not come as true students, or if they 
 transform students in any number into profes- 
 sional athletes. 
 
 On the whole the writer believes that athletic 
 sports make for better scholarship, and he is 
 
A VIEW OF ATHLETICS 87 
 
 sure that they make for better conduct among 
 the undergraduates. It is less fair to answer this 
 assertion by pointing to the occasional athlete 
 who cannot or will not perform his university 
 work than it is to enforce it by pointing to the 
 case, happily not infrequent, of the athlete who 
 is conspicuously successful. For a man to suc- 
 ceed in athletics he must keep himself busy. The 
 loafer is as objectionable on the field as in the 
 classroom. The man whose attention is absorbed 
 in athletics and who is consequently dropped 
 would in the absence of such interest be diverted 
 by something much worse and would meet as 
 bad a fate. Still it must be remembered that 
 athletic contests have unusual allurements. It 
 behooves each man to guard himself closely and 
 to see to it that he does not lose his perspective. 
 It behooves the undergraduates as a class to in- 
 sist that their chosen representatives on the field 
 maintain a good standing on the hill. The man 
 who is lost to the team because he neglects his 
 work should receive the same treatment as the 
 man who sacrifices his university by breaking 
 training, evading practice, or shirking in a game. 
 
88 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 After all, the answer to the question at the 
 beginning of this paper depends chiefly upon the 
 spirit with which the sports are conducted. To 
 win is the immediate object of every contest. To 
 win at any price or by any methods is the object 
 to be shunned. Intercollegiate games should be 
 friendly contests conducted fairly and with good 
 temper. Evil and the appearance of evil must 
 both be avoided. A team having among its mem- 
 bers men who are ineligible under either the let- 
 ter or the spirit of the rules, men who are stu- 
 dents in name alone, and who attend a university 
 only because of the opportunity afforded to take 
 part in contests, a team prepared to take any 
 undue advantage of an opponent — such a team 
 disgraces an institution and degrades the sport. 
 It is the aim at Cornell to present teams com- 
 posed of genuine students and genuine gentle- 
 men. It is our aim to treat our opponents who 
 meet us here as our guests, to beat them if we can 
 do so fairly and honorably, but in any event so to 
 bear ourselves that we part with reciprocal re- 
 spect. Defeats must not make us "knockers,'' 
 nor victories make us bullies. 
 
A VIEW OF ATHLETICS 89 
 
 Finally, the spirit of true sport and the main- 
 tenance of a just attitude toward our competi- 
 tors, our teams, and our university demand that 
 our games shall be free from gambling. The man 
 who " supports the team " by wagering on the 
 result of games degrades the men on the team 
 to the level of game cocks. He deprives himself 
 of the right to rejoice honestly in victory and of 
 the power to accept defeat with self-respect and 
 good temper. 
 
THE UNIVERSITY AS A FRATERNITY 
 By John L. Elliott 
 
 IS a college education worth while? 
 Despite the enormous enlargement of the 
 material resources, and the ever-increasing num- 
 ber of students in the universities, this question 
 is still being put by a great number of thinking 
 people. 
 
 The discussion usually centers around the 
 question of culture and of technical training, 
 but there is another plea for the college which 
 applies to all branches of the university alike, 
 and that is the benefit which comes to the student 
 from fine associations. 
 
 The value of association is so commonly re- 
 cognized that many, perhaps, may think it is not 
 necessary to emphasize it further, but college 
 friendship, even if trite, is surely no mean theme, 
 nor is it commonly recognized how much the 
 world owes to the young men who have united to 
 achieve some fine purpose; and not infrequently 
 
 90 
 
UNIVERSITY AS A FRATERNITY 91 
 
 groups of university students have profoundly 
 affected the history of their time. Less than half 
 a century ago Arnold Toynbee was the center of 
 an Oxford group who were discussing social ques- 
 tions, and out of their life together, in large part, 
 grew the settlement movement, which to-day does 
 at least something to ameliorate the tenement- 
 house life of our large cities. 
 
 In the early part of the last century the or- 
 ganization of German students known as the 
 Burschenschaften was among the most important 
 political organizations in that country and in 
 Austria. These young men accomplished so 
 much that we read their history with amazement 
 and wonder. It was they who from 1815 to 1848 
 kept up the fight for constitutional government, 
 and it is to her student organizations that Ger- 
 many largely owes the protection of her liberty 
 through constitutional government. True it is 
 that these student groups often engaged in en- 
 terprises which were quixotic, but it is also true 
 that they, more than any others, in Germany, 
 kept the torch of liberty burning, and that they 
 played a great part in a noble movement. 
 
92 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 About the same time another great national 
 struggle was begun by young men which has not 
 yet been completed. It was from among the 
 young officers returning from the Napoleonic 
 wars that there came a noble struggle for liberty 
 in Russia. This fight, beginning almost one hun- 
 dred years ago, is still continuing, and the jail 
 and mine tell with what heroism and fortitude 
 the battle is being waged. 
 
 It was the young men who began the some- 
 what ill-advised, and yet righteous, movement of 
 the Chartists in England. These young Chart- 
 ists had been stirred into action by the revela- 
 tions of the facts in regard to child labor and of 
 the condition of the women workers in the coal 
 mines of England. 
 
 These few examples are taken from a vast num- 
 ber that might be cited by way of indicating what 
 has been attempted and accomplished in times 
 not far distant from our own. 
 
 It seems as though, to have the best kind of 
 association among students, three things are 
 necessary. A really great purpose, an older man 
 who can act as adviser, and at least one in the 
 
UNIVEESITY AS A FKATERNITY 93 
 
 group who has the courage and the finely touched 
 nature which fits him to be a leader. The first 
 of these three essentials may be readily ad- 
 mitted, but it may not be commonly recog- 
 nized how important is the second, the older ad- 
 viser. 
 
 In talking with students about the university 
 life of to-day, it sometimes seems as though there 
 were a place for every one and everything in that 
 life except the faculty, who sometimes figure in 
 the light of a necessary evil, and as though they 
 were hardly to be reckoned among the essentials. 
 It is not to be forgotten that Toynbee's friend and 
 biographer was Professor Jowett; that Fichte 
 and Schleiermacher, Arndt and Jahn, were 
 chosen as examples and leaders by the Burschen- 
 schaften. 
 
 Young men have the vision and enthusiasm and 
 the power of action but not the firm intellectual 
 grasp which is necessary for the continued fol- 
 lowing out of a purpose. However, the young 
 man who is a leader is necessary, for it is always 
 the example rather than the word which stirs to 
 action. 
 
94 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 Now, how does all this apply to the university 
 life of to-day? 
 
 The associations of the college man with others 
 in the university are good natured and friendly, 
 but hardly of a kind which call out the best that 
 is in a man; and if I am not misled by memory 
 and observation, the three main topics of con- 
 versation among college students are athletics, 
 the personalities of the faculty, and girls. All 
 of them good themes, but not even all of them 
 taken together are enough to furnish the best 
 basis of union for friendships and activities 
 among students. The interest in individual 
 achievements is too likely to predominate, the 
 best things in the university likely to go un- 
 perceived, and the greatest value of student as- 
 sociation to be unrealized. I think it is possi- 
 ble to have a finer type of university work and 
 life by having the students take greater interest 
 in each other's work and life. 
 
 In many of the best and most famous schools of 
 the world the chief value comes from the fine, 
 helpful life which those who are learning have 
 
UNIVERSITY AS A FRATERNITY 95 
 
 with each other. If you ask a student of archi- 
 tecture returning from the Beaux Arts in Paris 
 why it is necessary for him to spend years abroad, 
 what it is that he has gotten, he is very likely 
 to tell you that it has not been so much the direct 
 teaching of the professors as it is what he has 
 gotten from the older students in the school. As 
 most of us are aware, the atelier in which each 
 man registers is a purely voluntary organization. 
 Each of them secures a " patron " from the 
 faculty as teacher who comes at stated intervals 
 to give criticism and instruction, but it is not 
 only the patron, it is the older student in the 
 atelier y the " ancient '^ as he is called, who makes 
 years of study abroad of value to our young ar- 
 chitects. 
 
 The same thing holds true to a certain extent 
 in this country. Wherever particularly good 
 work is being done in any school one finds that 
 it is not alone the excellence of the teaching, but 
 the spirit among the students, which is the help- 
 ful and inspiring part of the institution. This 
 fraternity life among all the students is one of 
 
96 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 the greatest assets of any university, as indeed 
 it is one of the greatest assets of any institution 
 or movement. 
 
 One of the reasons that athletics take so deep 
 a hold is that the management is so largely in the 
 hands of the men themselves. There is a chance 
 for personal initiative and to a considerable ex- 
 tent self-government is practiced in athletics. 
 People are more interested in what they them- 
 selves do than in anything else in the world. The 
 older and more experienced man is interested 
 enough in the success of the athletics of his uni- 
 versity to take the trouble to coach the younger. 
 There is no reason why this should not to some 
 degree exist in other departments. The fresh- 
 man who is just beginning to write for the col- 
 lege paper naturally regards the editor-in-chief of 
 that paper with considerable interest, just as the 
 freshman trying to make the crew is sure to have 
 a regard for the stroke in the 'varsity boat. Men 
 who have succeeded in any branch of their col- 
 lege work are sure to have a large personal in- 
 fluence among those who are just beginning their 
 work along that line. The pity is that there are 
 
UNIVERSITY AS A FRATERNITY 97 
 
 so few amateur coaches in anything except ath- 
 letics. The finest spirit of fraternity and of 
 friendship can only rest on some deep social prin- 
 ciple. Mutual helpfulness in work, the further- 
 ing of the aims of a common cause, is surely one 
 of these principles. 
 
 But there is yet a larger and deeper basis for 
 the fraternity spirit in the whole university, just 
 as there is a higher aim for a man than success 
 in his mere work. It has become more and more 
 the custom for the nation to look to the pro- 
 fessors of the universities for assistance. The 
 faculty of Cornell has rendered distinguished 
 service to the United States. In many of the 
 universities, particularly those directly con- 
 nected with the States in which they are situated, 
 this is true. The University of Wisconsin is one 
 of the great factors in administering the rail- 
 roads and the other public affairs of that State. 
 The needs and the welfare of the public, the 
 State, the nation, are the real basis for college 
 life, thought, and discussion. 
 
 Too often a man goes to college with the idea of 
 fitting himself to earn money or solely for the 
 
98 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 purpose of having a good time. The training 
 of citizens should be, to no small extent, the 
 purpose of the university, and the country needs 
 to-day, not alone men trained as engineers, law- 
 yers, and doctors, but also men able to further 
 the ends of our American democracy, men who 
 have the vision of what this democracy is to be, 
 men who have had the practice and the skill 
 which comes from dealing with men. I will take 
 upon myself to say that democracy is but little 
 understood even in this country, and none of us 
 believes that it is fully understood by any of us 
 in all its significance. 
 
 To those who observe the life and government 
 of large cities there come from time to time 
 ghastly realizations. Read down the list of the 
 Republican and Tammany leaders, the men who 
 are in direct control of the people, and if you 
 know their records how do you feel about some 
 of the phases of democratic government? Of 
 course, from the moral and political standpoint 
 the record of Wall Street and some of the cor- 
 porations is no better. 
 
 Out of this situation only the expert, who is 
 
UNIVERSITY AS A FEATERNITY 99 
 
 usually a college man, can save us. But he must 
 be not only great as a craftsman and expert in 
 his particular line, but he must also be democra- 
 tic and social in his aims. The man who has 
 been a social force in his university is the man 
 most likely to be a social force in any community 
 in which he lives. 
 
 There is no training like experience. A man 
 must experiment in the narrower field before he 
 can be of influence in the greater. I say ex- 
 periment because it is unfortunately true that 
 we still are experimenting in public life. The 
 principles of private morality which we have 
 now have been known for centuries, but many 
 principles of public morality are just coming into 
 consciousness. 
 
 The art and the principles of living and work- 
 ing together are surely imperfectly understood 
 by most of us, and what nobler ends can the uni- 
 versity have than teaching this art and these 
 principles? The professors and the heads of 
 departments are those most vitally in touch with 
 the greatest things of life and with the nation. 
 The younger members of the faculty are those 
 
100 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 who have the most personal contact with the 
 student body. The upperclassmen and the lead- 
 ers in the student body have their own field of 
 influence. It is just the value of this influence 
 of the upperclassmen in particular, but of all 
 students in general, which I have in mind. The 
 man who has progressed successfully has an op- 
 portunity to render peculiar service to those 
 working about him. He can do some things that 
 the faculty cannot do, just because he is a mem- 
 ber of the student body. He is not a teacher, 
 but a leader. The fraternal relations come more 
 easily to him and he can render important service 
 to the university and to the larger community 
 by fostering the spirit and making clear the vi- 
 sion of American democracy which can only be 
 realized through an enlarged and deepened ex- 
 perience of fraternal relations. 
 
THEN AND NOW * 
 By Gold win Smith 
 
 EIGHTY years ago in an old house of an old 
 English town, a little boy was lying in bed 
 listening to the Christmas chimes, perhaps to the 
 last call of the watchman on the street, and look- 
 ing at the servant lighting the fire with the flint, 
 steel, and tinder box of the olden time. Since 
 that morning, what changes! The main storm 
 of the French Kevolution may be said to have 
 ended at Waterloo. But there has been a series 
 of after-blasts which has changed the political 
 face of all Europe, and is now apparently ex- 
 tending itself to the hitherto stagnant East. We 
 may set down in some measure to the same ac- 
 count the overthrow by civil war of the same 
 power in the United States. The impelling force 
 everywhere has been democracy, generally tri- 
 umphant, advancing to rule apparently even 
 
 * Published in 1908. 
 
 101 
 
102 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 in Russia, and in England completely possessed 
 of the legislative seat of real power, the House 
 of Commons, though a remnant of aristocratic 
 control still retains a precarious existence in the 
 House of Lords. The United States, now, in- 
 stead of being the vanguard of democracy, might 
 almost be said to be its rearguard, the power of 
 its Presidency and its Senate making its Con- 
 stitution in some respects the most conserva- 
 tive of the set. 
 
 Not less but rather more momentous than the 
 political movement, and fraught with ultimate 
 change, is the advance of science, which in two 
 or three generations has been almost miraculous 
 and has carried mechanical invention with it. 
 Mechanical invention with steamship, rail, and 
 telegraph is bringing the nations into far closer 
 communication and making of them, in some 
 respects, almost one commonwealth. Even this 
 movement in India is due in no small measure to 
 the substitution for the long voyage round the 
 Cape of the short route by the Suez Canal. Mag- 
 ical has been the change in locomotion. About 
 
THEN AND NOW 103 
 
 half a century ago Greville, as he tells us in his 
 Memoirs, was traveling by the first built of the 
 English railroads. He shudders at hearing that 
 an engine driver had been going at the perilous 
 pace of forty-five miles an hour, but is happy to 
 hear that the man had been dismissed by the 
 company. Emigration has now been made so 
 easy that the labor markets are becoming fused. 
 The demarcations of national character can 
 hardly fail to become less sharp. Language 
 must always be a boundary. But even this, com- 
 merce and industry being almost always bilin- 
 gual, is becoming a less sharp division. 
 
 All nations eat the fruits of all climes. That 
 little boy would have to grow to middle age or 
 beyond before he would taste a banana. The ex- 
 pansion of commerce in all lines has been im- 
 mense. The humble cake shop in old Keading at 
 which that little boy bought cakes has now be- 
 come the great biscuit firm of Huntley & Palmer, 
 employing thousands of hands. In one way in- 
 vention unhappily has been retrograde. It has 
 always been increasing the construction of new 
 
104 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 instruments of war, the incentives to enmity be- 
 tween nations, or the appeal to violence and de- 
 struction. 
 
 The growth of physical science or the increase 
 of its influence over the mind have had most mo- 
 mentous effects in another sphere. Those Christ- 
 mas chimes, when the child heard them, spoke 
 to all hearts alike both of the home and of the 
 Church. To not a few they now speak of the 
 home alone. This change has come rapidly and 
 startlingly over the intellectual world. The 
 child when still a youth heard a great professor 
 of physical science struggling to reconcile geol- 
 ogy with Genesis. Now he reads the work of a 
 religious writer such as Gladstone, struggling to 
 reconcile Genesis with geology. Let the evolu- 
 tionist, however, remember two things : first, that 
 evolution cannot have evolved itself; secondly, 
 that, unlike the brutes, humanity, as we have 
 been here noting, advances, and that we cannot 
 tell what the end will be ; whether it may not be 
 the final ascendancy of the spiritual over the ma- 
 terial in man. Man, let the evolutionist remem- 
 ber, advances and rises. The beast does not. 
 
THEN AND NOW 105 
 
 Meanwhile all truth is revelation, all Christian 
 sentiment is religion. There is religion of this 
 sort not a little in Dickens' " Christmas Carol." 
 
THE SPIEIT OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 By Hugh Black 
 
 MEN can live in an institution like this and 
 never realize its essential spirit, never 
 bring out into consciousness the things it really 
 stands for. This probably explains some of the 
 false judgments passed on our universities, such 
 as that they are irreligious. As a matter of 
 fact if we analyze the true nature and purpose 
 of our education, we will be assured that noth- 
 ing in American life is so inspired and informed 
 with true religion. 
 
 The university represents the spirit of truth 
 and the love of truth. This is something more 
 than the acquirement of information, and more 
 than the recognition of facts. Each science 
 works by limiting its field, by differentiation. 
 But science itself is not made perfect till it re- 
 lates itself to the whole round of truth and con- 
 
 106 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSITY 107 
 
 tributes to the complete life of the world. This 
 is simply the religious ideal which gathers up 
 the broken arcs into a perfect round. 
 
 The university also represents the spirit of co- 
 operation. All of us fall heir in some measure 
 to the fruits of this. The friendships of college 
 will be to many a rich and precious heritage. 
 Even in play everything worth while is gained by 
 team-work. We learn the value of holding to- 
 gether, and that singly we can do and be nothing. 
 Our group-work in study teaches us the same 
 lesson. We build on each other's work. And 
 through it all we learn obedience to law. 
 
 The university represents the spirit of service. 
 If we are the privileged class in the democracy, 
 it is not for our own sake, and we must learn the 
 penalty of privilege. The university serves the 
 State; and its members must serve the common 
 weal. Where else should we look for unselfish 
 service and devoted leadership? Men are chosen 
 to receive the great boon of the higher education 
 that they may give back in the highest spirit of 
 service. 
 
108 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 These are all the marks of true religion, and 
 the religious view of life means consecration to 
 these high ends. 
 
COLLEGE MEN IN NEWSPAPER WORK 
 By Arthur Brisbane 
 
 THE newspaper does for a nation and for the 
 whole world what speech does for the in- 
 dividual. 
 
 The Homo Alalus that college boys read about 
 was, as a man, what a nation without newspapers 
 would be as a nation. 
 
 Men that could not speak to each other were 
 brutal, and they talked with rocks and clubs. 
 Nations that have no highly developed free press 
 are speechless nations, and they are brutal — 
 Russia, and China, for instance. 
 
 Newspaper work, if it were what it should be, 
 would be the greatest work in the world, and the 
 ambitious man would think of no other. There 
 could be no greater work than talking every day 
 to millions. 
 
 The newspaper editor who can write what men 
 will read has in his hands powerful weapons — 
 
 109 
 
110 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 suggestion and repetition. One read by millions 
 of Ms fellows can at least decide on what subject 
 the millions shall think — although he cannot de- 
 cide what their thoughts shall be. 
 
 The newspaper editorial takes the place of the 
 public square of twenty-five centuries ago. As 
 all the citizens met in the public square, dis- 
 cussed their grievances, planned remedies, and 
 opposed laws and men unpopular, so one hundred 
 millions of Americans meet every morning and 
 evening in another public square — the editorial 
 and the news columns of the newspaper. They 
 hear the same news, think along the same lines, 
 and are as closely united in action as though 
 they were meeting and discussing face to face 
 daily. Without the newspapers, imperfect as 
 they are, democratic government would be im- 
 possible. 
 
 The man who in the future shall do the really 
 great newspaper work of the world will be the 
 greatest democratic leader that the world has 
 ever known — one ruling by argument, persua- 
 sion, and the power of truth. 
 
COLLEGIANS IN NEWSPAPER WORK 111 
 
 Young men ask, " Does college work fit us for 
 newspaper work? " It does, if thej do their 
 college work well. Any kind of work thoroughly 
 done helps a man in newspaper work. For any 
 kind of work thoroughly done accustoms the 
 mind to concentrated effort and strengthens the 
 machine that must do the newspaper man's work. 
 
 A newspaper man may succeed without the 
 foundation of a thorough education. The most 
 successful newspaper men have done so. That is 
 because a great majority of all men have no col- 
 lege education and the ablest men in every line 
 always come out of the great majority. 
 
 The practical newspaper worker would say, 
 perhaps, that the man who stays at college until 
 he is twenty-three or twenty -four has lost three or 
 four years that would have been more valuable to 
 him in a newspaper office than at college. It 
 depends upon what the man does in the four 
 years — whether at college or in journalism. 
 
 Work at a first-class college or university con- 
 scientiously attended to is good preparation for 
 newspaper work, but only preparation. The dif - 
 
112 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 ference is great between knowing about what 
 other human beings have done in the past and 
 playing your part in the work that human beings 
 are doing in the present. 
 
 This the young man realizes when he tries to 
 utilize in newspaper work the knowledge, self- 
 control, energy stored up in youth. 
 
 Editorial writers should remember that read- 
 ers want to know not what the writer thinks, but 
 what the reader thinks. 
 
 If you want to succeed as a newspaper man, 
 you must interpret your readers to them- 
 selves. A crying baby wants the nurse to find 
 out what is the matter with the baby — not what 
 is the matter with the nurse. 
 
 The public wants to know what is the matter 
 with itself. What it thinks, what it feels, what it 
 wants — not what the editor thinks or feels. 
 
 And to be successful newspaper men, you must 
 live in the brain of the public and tell the public 
 what that public brain is saying. 
 
 It can't tell itself. 
 
COLLEGIANS IN NEWSPAPEE WORK 113 
 
 The newspaper man becomes less valuable nine 
 times out of ten as he becomes more familiar with 
 his work — and for this reason. The value of a 
 newspaper man's work depends upon the 
 strength of the impression that events make upon 
 him, and upon his ability to convey that impres- 
 sion in what he writes. The longer the ordinary 
 man continues to see, the less he feels. In ordi- 
 nary lines of professional w^ork diminished emo- 
 tion is not a detriment, but a help. 
 
 A young doctor cuts off a leg from a living 
 creature for the first time and suffers torments 
 — his impressions are vivid. 
 
 Ten years later he cuts off a leg with no emo- 
 tion whatever, doing his work carefully, but 
 thinking perhaps of the golf game in the 
 afternoon. And he is a better doctor than in the 
 days when he felt emotion. 
 
 When the young reporter sees his first " elec- 
 trocution," describes his first great labor strike 
 or fire, he is deeply impressed, feels strongly, and 
 writes " a good story." Ten years later, in nine 
 cases out of ten, he is like the doctor cutting off 
 the leg. He feels little and then he is no longer 
 
114 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATEKS 
 
 a good newspaper man. For no man can suc- 
 cessfully pretend to feel what he doesn't feel. 
 He may not see the difference, and his editor 
 may not see the difference, but the man who reads 
 the newspaper will see the difference. Sincerity 
 is visible. 
 
 Another problem for the newspaper man is 
 this : 
 
 He must make his reputation afresh every day. 
 The lawyer of fifty lives perhaps on the work that 
 he did at thirty; that work brought him clients 
 whom he keeps. 
 
 The doctor at fifty lives on the patients gath- 
 ered about him in his youth and vigor — not so, 
 the newspaper man. If he cannot do to-day what 
 he did ten years ago or twenty years ago, he is 
 not wanted to-day. The newspaper man in that 
 respect is even more unfortunate than the actor. 
 If the actor loses power, if the singer loses his 
 voice, the public will still hear with pleasure an 
 old favorite, and the advertising of the name has 
 value. Not so with the newspaper man. When 
 
COLLEGIANS IN NEWSPAPER WORK 115 
 
 lie can no longer act or sing — in his line of work 
 — his day is done. 
 
 However, newspaper work is the best work — 
 since the greatest thing that a man can do is to 
 deal with millions of others. Newspaper power 
 is the great power — for it is the power that 
 shapes and directs the thoughts of men. And 
 there is no power but thought. Newspaper work, 
 though it may not lead to great newspaper suc- 
 cess or great financial reward, is the most useful 
 school of experience. The young man who goes 
 to work as a reporter — and that is the only way 
 to begin — who studies life, takes care of him- 
 self, keeps out of temptation and all forms of 
 nonsense, is attending a real life college of the 
 greatest possible value. 
 
STUDENTS NEED EXPOSURE TO THE 
 SOCIAL FACTS OF OUR TIME 
 
 By John R. Mott 
 
 WE hear much in these days emphasizing 
 the fact that the students going forth 
 from our universities are needed to help solve 
 the most pressing problems of our generation — 
 the social problems. It is well that this need 
 is recognized. The converse aspect of the sub- 
 ject, however, needs quite as much emphasis. 
 Why do the universities need to be exposed to 
 the serious social facts and demands of our time, 
 and why should students in their undergraduate 
 days study the social question and engage in 
 social service? 
 
 The universities need to come into intelligent 
 and sympathetic touch with the social problems 
 and activities in order to help to counteract and 
 overcome some of the gravest perils of modern 
 college life; for example, the dangers resulting 
 
 116 
 
EXPOSURE TO THE SOCIAL FACTS 117 
 
 from the increasing luxury and extravagance, 
 the growing love of selfish pleasure, and the 
 tendency to softness which characterizes so many 
 colleges ; the perils of subtle forms of selfishness, 
 necessarily accentuated by the very process of 
 self -culture ; the marked development of class 
 spirit and a consequent weakening of the spirit of 
 democracy and true brotherhood; the danger of 
 becoming too academic and too critical in atti- 
 tude and spirit. The students of our day need 
 to be led to stand before the stern facts of social 
 injustice and neglect. They need to confront 
 tasks vast enough to call out and exercise the 
 energies of their hearts as well as of their minds, 
 absorbing enough to emancipate them from them- 
 selves, tragic enough to startle them from their 
 theorizing habit of thought into reality. 
 
 Stress should be laid on the point that the 
 students of the university need to concern them- 
 selves vitally with the cause of social progress in 
 order to develop lives of reality. It is dangerous 
 to grow in the knowledge of the needs of men and 
 of the principles underlying true social progress 
 and not to give expression to one's growing con- 
 
118 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 victions and feelings by seeking to do all in one's 
 power to help meet these needs. Not to do so 
 tends to develop an untrue character and an 
 unresponsive nature. 
 
 Participation in social study and service is 
 essential to the realization of the highest ob- 
 jective of education — and that is not so much 
 personal betterment as public service. What 
 gives the students the right to stand in the high- 
 est place? Noblesse oblige. We may retain the 
 place of leadership only as we recognize that we 
 have a service to render. 
 
THE ROAD OF LIFE 
 By Martin W. Sampson 
 
 1WALK the road with comrades three, 
 My Love and Joy and Pain : 
 So long as Love keeps step with me, 
 I scorn the other twain. 
 
 And yet we four together pace, 
 
 And if Pain lag behind, 
 Joy urges, " Halt ! my brother's place 
 
 No one may vacant find.'' 
 
 And if Joy loiter in the rear. 
 
 Pain cries, " No farther go ! 
 My brother's place is by me here; 
 
 Wait, though his step be slow." 
 
 We walk the road as comrades four, 
 
 Love, Joy, and Pain, and I ; 
 E'en Love would walk with me no more, 
 
 Save Joy and Pain were nigh. 
 
 119 
 
A NECESSITY TO CULTURE 
 By Norman Hapgood 
 
 EDUCATION is not the same thing as cul- 
 ture. A man may know a great deal about 
 one thing, or about many things, and yet be by 
 no means a cultivated man. A cultivated man is 
 one who sees life in a well-trained, well-balanced, 
 illuminated way, distinguished by familiarity 
 with the thoughts about the universe left by the 
 great thinkers of the past and with their inspired 
 expressions. A man who knows only one sub- 
 ject, only one country, and only one century is 
 likely to be parochial in the quality of his mind. 
 The cultivated man is interested in the past, the 
 present, the future. He sees, as the Latin motto 
 of one college puts it, before, behind, and all 
 around. Thus he sees events, ambitions, ideals, 
 and accomplishments in perspective. The man 
 who does not in college acquire or develop the 
 habit of reading great books fails to receive the 
 
 120 
 
A NECESSITY TO CULTUEE 121 
 
 best that those years of leisure, isolation, and 
 opportunity can give. If a young graduate 
 should come to me for a job I should wish to 
 know many things about him ; does he have com- 
 mon sense, keenness, interest in present occur- 
 rences, application; but the thing I should wish 
 most of all to know is, does he have an intimate 
 acquaintance with a number of great men — be 
 they Greek, English, Koman, German, French, 
 American — and does he enjoy keeping up his 
 intimacy with their lives and thoughts. 
 
HILLS 
 By F. Dana Burnet 
 
 1HAVE remembered the hills through all my 
 street, 
 Though life press close, and Sorrow brush my 
 hand, 
 Still I have kept my last horizons sweet 
 With all that memory of a lifted land. 
 
 Safe from the years my windows hold them still, 
 Far citadels from whence a glory streams! 
 
 Upon their heights my spirit goes athrill 
 And in my heart are old forgotten dreams. 
 
 You may look out and see them in the dawn, 
 Their cowls thrust back, and crimson in their 
 dress ; 
 
 For you are young, and splendidly withdrawn, 
 And life has still its golden distances. 
 
 122 
 
HILLS 123 
 
 But I have walked a street with straining crowds, 
 With surging men who would not say their 
 names ; 
 We were no more than dust and dreams and 
 shrouds, 
 And dress and gold and little, passing fames. 
 
 And some there were who did not lift their eyes, 
 From the dun, bitter highway where we trod; 
 
 But I was rich! Against the distant skies 
 I saw the hill that raised my world to God ! 
 
STUDENT ACTIVITIES AND STUDIOUS 
 ACTIVITIES 
 
 By Jacob Gould Schurman 
 
 A MAN is more than Ms work. Wherever, 
 therefore, human beings come together to 
 engage in work, other interests spring up, find 
 expression, and receive attention. We say that 
 the good citizen is the man who not only does 
 faithfully his daily work, but who gives some 
 care also to the interests of the community in 
 which he lives and of the State and nation to 
 which he belongs. Some men and women de- 
 vote more time to these public subjects than 
 others. The man who neglects them altogether 
 is branded as self -centered and selfish. The man 
 who pursues them to the neglect of his own 
 proper work will find it difficult to secure, to 
 hold permanently, a position in the economic 
 system of production and distribution. Some- 
 where a line must be drawn between the two 
 
 124 
 
STUDENT ACTIVITIES 125 
 
 groups of competing claims. There is a happy 
 mean, if men can only find it. 
 
 What takes place in the State on a large scale 
 finds its counterpart also in the university. The 
 university is primarily a place of study. As an 
 institution, study is what justifies its existence. 
 But when young men and w^omen congregate in 
 an institution of learning, they quickly discover 
 that they have interests outside the classroom 
 and apart from hours which they reserve for in- 
 tellectual work. The great majority of these in- 
 terests are entirely proper and worthy of cultiva- 
 tion, while some of them are preeminently im- 
 portant. To the latter class belong solicitude for 
 the name and fame of the university, and all ef- 
 forts which tend to promote a healthful democra- 
 tic and noble spirit in the academic community. 
 And, generally speaking, Cornell University 
 has been blest with an undergraduate body which 
 has been jealous of the reputation of the univer- 
 sity, and zealous in the advancement of its high- 
 est welfare. Such a spirit is not only commend- 
 able in itself, but invaluable to the university. 
 It has been found as our universities increase in 
 
126 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 numbers that the maintenance of their good name 
 devolves more and more largely upon the stu- 
 dents themselves. 
 
 I do not think that such public spirit on the 
 part of an undergraduate need absorb any large 
 portion of his time. But I recognize and empha- 
 size the fact that the time thus spent is of ex- 
 ceeding importance to the university. And I 
 am very desirous that our students, from the 
 freshmen to the seniors and graduates, should 
 realize vividly the fact that just as a community 
 or a State in a democratic country is what the 
 citizens make it, so, in a university democracy, 
 the students largely give the university its tone 
 and fix its standards and make its reputation in 
 the world. And I appeal to the undergraduates 
 to see to it that they enable our university to 
 realize its high ideal, to do well the work for 
 which it is established, and to maintain a repu- 
 tation which shall make it an ornament and an 
 honor to the country. 
 
 I have said that this devotion on the part of 
 undergraduates to the university need not make 
 any large or extensive demands upon their time. 
 
STUDENT ACTIVITIES 127 
 
 The main thing is that every student shall have a 
 just conception of the seriousness and dignity of 
 his work. When each student is animated by 
 such a spirit, little public action on the part of 
 the student community as a whole is called for. 
 Occasionally, however, it may become necessary. 
 Occasionally, that is to say, the ideals and stand- 
 ards of the university may need reassertion and 
 enforcement on the part of the student body. 
 And, just as in the State, this situation calls for 
 courage and patriotism. It is easy to drift with 
 the crowd. By drifting, standards of life and 
 of institutions may be insensibly lowered. The 
 good citizens are men who keep their ideals 
 bright and who summon the public to paths in 
 which they may be realized. Among students, 
 too, there is need of such vision, courage, and 
 patriotism on behalf of the university. I appeal 
 to our student body to give us this spirit in am- 
 ple measure at Cornell. Nothing else is so val- 
 uable for the institution. Land, buildings, en- 
 dowments, are indeed necessary instrumentali- 
 ties of a modern university; but devotion to the 
 intellectual life and absorption in study are the 
 
128 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 activities which, as it were, constitute the uni- 
 versity and alone make it worth while. 
 
 The contrast, however, between the proper 
 work of a student and the outside interests which 
 may absorb his attention has ordinarily little to 
 do with this devotion to the highest welfare of the 
 university for which I have been pleading. It is 
 not public service of that sort which the under- 
 graduate has in mind when he speaks of student 
 activities. That phrase suggests almost exclu- 
 sively the idea of athletic and social activities. 
 And while these are normal and proper interests 
 for young m^n, too, they have tended to usurp 
 too large a portion of the student's time and 
 energy. Sometimes, indeed, one finds it seriously 
 stated and claimed in student publications, that 
 an undergraduate receives as much benefit from 
 these so-called student activities as from devo- 
 tion to those intellectual activities which the uni- 
 versity was founded to maintain and advance. 
 I have always regarded this view as utterly false 
 and mischievous. And, to give the student a 
 sense of proportion and to recall him to his 
 
STUDENT ACTIVITIES 129 
 
 proper work, I coined a phrase a few years ago 
 which seems to have lodged in the mind of our 
 community. I said that, essentially considered, 
 the "student activities are studious activities." 
 I meant, of course, to bring out in this somewhat 
 epigrammatic way the vital and all-important 
 fact that a student was here to study, and that no 
 other activity whatever could take the place of 
 that fundamental duty. It is through and by 
 study that the university is to aid and benefit the 
 student. A student who neglects that vital busi- 
 ness for outside interests, arguing perhaps that 
 these are as beneficial to him as study, is labor- 
 ing under a great and fatal delusion. 
 
 A university is a place of study. The student 
 may, indeed, pursue other objects, but they must 
 always remain subordinate to his main duty and 
 purpose, if he is really to be a student. Study 
 is his vocation; sports, society, the theater, etc., 
 can never be more than an avocation. Legiti- 
 mate and commendable as means of innocent 
 recreation and amusement, they are to be con- 
 demned when they distract the student's atten- 
 
130 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 tion from his proper work, or divert from it time 
 and energy which are needed for the successful 
 accomplishment of that work. 
 
 As regards athletics, a distinction must be 
 made. The tendency in American universities 
 to-day is everywhere to demand too large a por- 
 tion of the time of those undergraduates who en- 
 gage in intercollegiate sports for practice and 
 training. Eeform is called for; but reform, I 
 imagine, is possible only through joint action on 
 the part of the leading universities. It is not, 
 however, too much to hope that in a country 
 governed by public opinion, even this reform in 
 our universities may be brought about by insist- 
 ent and intelligent discussion and criticism, espe- 
 cially by members of university communities. 
 
 Though I am dissatisfied with the athletic 
 system now in vogue in our colleges and universi- 
 ties, I do not want to give the impression that 
 things are really worse than they are. Here at 
 Cornell I recognize that our coaches are insist- 
 ing with constantly increasing emphasis that the 
 members of the teams must maintain good 
 academic records. Of course, they have a special 
 
STUDENT ACTIVITIES 131 
 
 interest in the matter as the faculty ^' drops '' 
 men who fall below the prescribed scholastic 
 standards, and it is of no use to coach under- 
 graduates for intercollegiate teams if they are 
 not permitted to remain in the university. I 
 think, however, that the coaches are also coming 
 to recognize that as the young men have come to 
 the university to study, it is not right to deprive 
 them of the boon of education for the sake of 
 athletic achievements. At any rate, the scholas- 
 tic standing of the men who are members of the 
 Cornell teams and crews, though falling below 
 that of the average student, is not lower than 
 that of the students who are members of fraterni- 
 ties; and in the case of the crew it is distinctly 
 higher. 
 
 The two changes I should like to see in the field 
 of athletics are these : first, a reduction of the time 
 demanded of members of the teams and crews; 
 and, secondly, a more general participation in 
 sports and games of all kinds by students gen- 
 erally. As I have said, the first reform will prob- 
 ably have to wait upon cooperative action on the 
 part of a group of influential or representative 
 
132 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 universities; though every change in that direc- 
 tion which an individual university can possibly 
 make within the limits of the present system 
 should be encouraged at Cornell University. 
 The second reform, however, is within our own 
 power; and I am delighted to signalize the pro- 
 gress which in this regard is constantly going on 
 at Cornell University. Increasing numbers of 
 students do engage in athletic games and sports 
 for the enjoyment of the thing, without any 
 thought of " making " a 'varsity team or crew. 
 And the playground which the alumni have so 
 generously provided in the immediate vicinity of 
 the campus at once facilitates and stimulates this 
 healthful recreation. My own ideal would be 
 the participation in such games of practically 
 every student in the university. And I welcome 
 the contests between our different classes, col- 
 leges, fraternities, and other organizations which 
 at once multiply the number of such games and 
 arouse and intensify interest in them. This sys- 
 tem of democratic and domestic intramural ath- 
 letics will, I venture to predict, survive and 
 flourish when the system of intercollegiate ath- 
 
STUDENT ACTIVITIES 133 
 
 letics, which to-day trains a few men to make 
 spectacles for vast crowds of strangers, shall have 
 been greatly modified, if not entirely suppressed. 
 But no branch of athletics is a substitute for 
 study. The same thing is true of social distrac- 
 tions, to which at Cornell our fraternities are 
 especially exposed. In 1913-14 there were about 
 1500 fraternity men in the university, and their 
 average standing during the first term was 70.7 
 per cent. ; for the same period the average stand- 
 ing of non-fraternity men was 74.2 per cent. It 
 may be that athletics appeal more strongly to fra- 
 ternity men than to other students, but I sus- 
 pect that it is social distractions which, in the 
 main, account for the lower standing of fraternity 
 men. Fraternity houses furnish congenial con- 
 ditions for social life. And social intercourse 
 is a great boon in the life of young men. Here, 
 as elsewhere, the problem is to use our opportu- 
 nities and advantages without abusing them. It 
 is for fraternities to show that they can furnish 
 the conditions of a normal and healthful social 
 life, without interfering with the student's scho- 
 lastic attainments, or weakening his intellectual 
 
134 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 ambitions and interests. So far fraternities in 
 America have not furnished this demonstration. 
 And I desire to impress upon the fraternities of 
 Cornell, which are now so numerous and embrace 
 so large a fraction of our young men, the obliga- 
 tion under which they lie, of proving that the 
 delightful social opportunities which they offer 
 are not incompatible with good scholarship or the 
 development and maintenance of an intellectual 
 atmosphere. 
 
 Besides athletic and social functions, the ex- 
 tra-academic activities of students run in a va- 
 riety of smaller channels, among which may be 
 mentioned undergraduate publications, literary, 
 oratorical, and dramatic performances, political 
 and ethical reform, the organized work of the Cor- 
 nell University Christian Association, etc., etc., 
 etc. I have not time to discuss these in detail. 
 Suffice it to say that they all commend themselves 
 in a measure by their intellectual, moral, or re- 
 ligious character. But to all of them I apply the 
 same criterion which I have laid down in regard 
 to social and athletic activities. The university 
 being a place of study, a student has no right to 
 
STUDENT ACTIVITIES 135 
 
 neglect his studies even for ethical and religious 
 work or edification, and much less to gratify a 
 histrionic ambition, or to win the so-called 
 " honor " of election to the editorial or manag- 
 ing board of some under-graduate publication. 
 The chief end of a student is to study. So long as 
 he is privileged to remain in the university, so 
 long as these precious years of preparation for 
 life are vouchsafed to him, his supreme duty is 
 to study hard. 
 
 In man there is nothing great but mind. Col- 
 leges and universities exist for the training and 
 development of the mind. Let students never 
 forget that everything else in their student lives 
 is subordinate to that transcendent object. 
 There are indeed ancillary activities, but, es- 
 sentially considered, student activities are stu- 
 dious activities. 
 
GEADUATION 
 By Liberty Hyde Bailey 
 
 TO graduate is a worthy result and much to 
 be desired. To graduate is to begin — to 
 pass one epoch and to enter another. It is a time 
 of letting go and of taking hold. One gathers up 
 the past that one may be full of harmonies for the 
 future. One steps out into the world with a great 
 experience in idealism and relieved of the dead 
 burden of selfishness^ as of a strong man entered 
 for the running. 
 
 It is a good world into which you go, albeit a 
 world of wars and rumors of wars. At all events, 
 it is our only world of present activity. We shall 
 gain nothing out of it if we oppose it habitually, 
 but we shall find much if we accept it and enter 
 into its promise. The world would present little 
 to arouse our challenge and to stimulate con- 
 quest, if it were all perfect to our liking, if the 
 paths were broad and all the prospects pleas- 
 
 136 
 
GRADUATION 137 
 
 ing. The high passions of mankind relieve the 
 monotones and provide the deep shadows and the 
 high lights. There is much to overcome. When 
 the problems are all solved, the planet will no 
 longer be a fit abode for living men. 
 
 Every life is a personal life. The degree of its 
 personality is very much the degree of its satis- 
 factions. To develop the social feeling at the 
 same time that we develop and retain the strong 
 individual — this is the major problem of civ- 
 ilization. Every graduate goes out as a highly 
 developed personality ; this is the purpose of edu- 
 cation, for education, if it is effective, deals al- 
 ways with the individual rather than with the 
 class or the mass. At the present day we think 
 much of the group-consciousness. Everything 
 that is organizable is organized, and some things 
 beside. But above all organization are persons, 
 and behind all organizations are persons ; and the 
 organization is only what the persons make it to 
 be. Then be not deceived: think not of life in 
 terms of organization. Personality is the pri- 
 mary product : organization is the secondary. 
 
 The graduate has the rare privilege to carry 
 
138 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 with him always a college course and four years 
 of good reflection. At the time when others have 
 begun business, the graduate has found a phi- 
 losophy of life or has gone far to develop it if the 
 four and more years have been worth the while. 
 He may change his occupation and build his home 
 in strange places, but he will have reasons, he 
 will know bases of comparison, he will go with a 
 purpose in him. It is pleasant to feel the whip- 
 ping of the winds if we do not whip with them. 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN IN BUSINESS 
 By Jacob Gould Schurman 
 
 iEditor's Note: This article was written by President 
 Schurman as a commentary upon several letters which were 
 published in the same number. These letters were received 
 from F. A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank of 
 New York ; Theodore N. Vail, president of the American Tele- 
 phone and Telegraph Company ; F. W. Woolworth, president 
 of the Woolworth Co. ; Samuel Untermeyer, corporation law- 
 yer ; and S. S. McClure, president of the S. S. McClure Com- 
 pany. 
 
 AS regards the letters published in this issue 
 of The Era on the general subject of " The 
 College Man in Business/' I will condense what 
 reflections I desire to make in the following 
 form : 
 
 (1) While the business man aims to make 
 money in rendering service to the community, 
 it must not be assumed that for the business man 
 any more than for the lawyer, doctor, or any other 
 professional man, money is the chief end of life. 
 From the nature of his employment the man of 
 
 139 
 
140 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 business tends to put more emphasis on Ms gains, 
 but the gains by which he measures his success in 
 business are not the standard of success in life. 
 Our having and getting are, in any rational, or 
 moral, or religious view of life, quite subordinate 
 to our being and doing. A great fortune may be 
 a useful instrumentality in life, but the man who 
 makes it the supreme end of life abdicates man- 
 hood with its high call to character, intelligence, 
 and honorable service. It is well to " put money 
 in thy purse," but ill to let the purse lord it over 
 thy heart and mind and spirit. 
 
 (2) From the preceding paragraph it will be 
 easy to see the proper justification for a college 
 education as a part of the training of the future 
 business man. I have always deprecated the 
 common tendency to justify it on the ground that 
 his college training made the graduate a more suc- 
 cessful money-getter. This may be true. Yet 
 even if true, it is not the justification of his col- 
 lege education. That education does not aim at 
 any extrinsic end. Its object is to make the 
 youth a larger being, to expand his faculties, to 
 stimulate his capacities, to enlarge his horizon, 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN IN BUSINESS 141 
 
 to multiply his interests, to develop his whole 
 imaginative, intellectual, and spiritual existence, 
 to nurture him with the creations of immortal 
 genius, and, in a word, to make him, in the fine 
 phrase of Plato, a spectator of all time and all 
 existence. A youth, whose intellectual and spir- 
 itual life has, even in some moderate degree, been 
 awakened and stimulated by his college educa- 
 tion, who has come to feel that the things of the 
 mind and spirit are the highest and most impor- 
 tant things in the world, does not need any fur- 
 ther demonstration of the value of a college edu- 
 cation. And even though he should believe that 
 it does not make him a better money -getter he will 
 never regret the time and effort devoted to it, 
 for he knows that in itself it is worth more than 
 great riches. 
 
 (3 ) It is not, however, to be denied that this col- 
 lege education, which needs no justification be- 
 yond its own intrinsic value and results, does, in 
 many cases, if not in all, turn out to be the best 
 possible preparation for business. A college 
 education tends to nourish and develop mind- 
 power. And, as Mr. Chalmers states, and I 
 
142 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 think with perfect truth, the first condition of 
 success in business is " ability to think.'' Now 
 the college man has been very unfortunate in his 
 training who has not formed the habit of marshal- 
 ing facts, weighing evidence, and drawing correct 
 conclusions. Indeed, the chief aim and object 
 of the college is to give the student this very train- 
 ing in thinking and reasoning which we see to be 
 the first condition of success in business. 
 
 (4) The considerations already set forth show 
 the relative advantages secured respectively by 
 two candidates for a business career, one of whom 
 on leaving the high school enters college and the 
 other of whom goes into business. The latter has 
 the advantage of doing the humble and disagree- 
 able task of his calling at an age when they make 
 the least impression on him. Boys of seventeen 
 or eighteen years of age expect to " fag " and 
 serve their seniors. Furthermore the boy who 
 begins business at that age has acquired the 
 routine and mastery of the specific jobs assigned 
 to boys while his comrade is still a junior or sen- 
 ior in college. But the latter, when he does come 
 upon the scene, will in the course of the next 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN IN BUSINESS 143 
 
 dozen years as a general rule outstrip the former. 
 If he is educated he has learned how to think 
 and use his powers, and though it may be humil- 
 iating to begin with the lowest jobs in the busi- 
 ness, the young American with the right stuff and 
 spirit in him will not disdain any honorable work 
 or forego any opportunity for showing what he 
 can do, and his college training will enable him 
 to do his w^ork more effectively and thus abridge 
 the apprenticeship of preparation for higher 
 things. And, as I have already intimated, the 
 future is with the college graduate. Mr. Chal- 
 mers puts the case clearly and fairly : 
 
 " Four years spent at college are not com- 
 mercially equivalent to four years spent in TdusI- 
 ness. But I think they are potentially more than 
 equivalent to the four business years." 
 
 (5) Being at college is not the same as secur- 
 ing a college education. I wish it were. I wish 
 that all our colleges and universities were places 
 in which everybody worked to the maximum of 
 his capacity without injury to health or interfer- 
 ence with moderate social intercourse, relaxation, 
 and amusement. But, unfortunately, many men 
 
144 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 who live four years at a university do not get a 
 college education. Mr. Vanderlip refers to cer- 
 tain obstacles which hamper the college graduate, 
 such as inaccuracy, procrastination, a laissez- 
 faire attitude, immoderate use of intoxicating 
 liquors. It is undoubtedly true that habits of 
 the character suggested by Mr. Vanderlip may be 
 acquired or fostered in college by many college 
 men. But, in my estimation, only a small minor- 
 ity of college men fall into these evil ways. Such 
 habits handicap college men in business just as 
 they do in the professions or trades. The author- 
 ities in control of American colleges and uni- 
 versities realize the dangers of these vices and are, 
 I believe, doing all they can to encourage ac- 
 curacy, decision, industry, initiative, and temper- 
 ance in the characters of the young men attend- 
 ing the institutions over which they have con- 
 trol. 
 
 But that some, and I think only a small per- 
 centage of college graduates, are lazy or inac- 
 curate or intemperate is not necessarily a reflec- 
 tion upon the advantages of a college education 
 as a preparation for business life. It may well be 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN IN BUSINESS 145 
 
 that these same men who, as college graduates, 
 are vicious, would have acquired the same bad 
 habits had they gone immediately from the high 
 school into business. A certain number of col- 
 lege-bred men are of weak character, a certain 
 number of non-college men are lacking in moral 
 and intellectual strength. I am not inclined to 
 believe that the circumstances and incidents of 
 a college course are more apt to breed bad char- 
 acter than the ordinary environment outside of 
 college. 
 
 The young man measuring the advantage of 
 college as a preparation for business life, how- 
 ever, must fix clearly in his mind the distinction 
 between attending college and getting a college 
 education. Mere residence in a college or uni- 
 versity town will bring him comparatively few 
 benefits. Close and unremitting study alone will 
 train his mind and judgment, store his brain with 
 information, and stimulate his appreciation of the 
 noble and beautiful. 
 
 (6) Lastly, the young man entering a busi- 
 ness career, with or without a college prepara- 
 tion, should note well Mr. Woolworth's statement 
 
146 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 
 
 that probably only five per cent, of all men enter- 
 ing business are successful. Competition is so 
 keen in the field of modern business that only the 
 best-equipped can survive. And many factors en- 
 ter into the determination of success, besides the 
 ability of the man, natural and acquired. The 
 capital at command, the backing of friends, the 
 condition of trade at the time the effort is made, 
 and all the many accidents of commerce, have 
 much to do with the young man's success or fail- 
 ure in business. Not every able college-trained 
 man will succeed in business, nor will every able 
 young man whose experience is acquired solely in 
 business reach commercial success. 
 
 But the " success in business " to which Mr. 
 Woolworth alludes is no doubt the amassing of 
 great wealth and not merely the earning of a 
 livelihood and the acquisition of a comfortable 
 competency. It is without doubt true that only 
 a small proportion of America's young men can 
 hope to become millionaires through their efforts 
 in business. But the great majority of those who 
 are of good character and who are well trained 
 may with justification expect a more moderate de- 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN IN BUSINESS 147 
 
 gree of success. After all, the success which the 
 business man should most covet is the securing 
 of an income sufficient to maintain himself and 
 family comfortably and to give his children a good 
 education, and the rendition of his reasonable 
 service to the community. Under this latter head 
 I would include the benefit he can afford to the 
 community in which he as a business man deals. 
 He should also exercise in the place of his resi- 
 dence the influence of an educated man for the im- 
 provement of social and governmental conditions. 
 The getting of money in large quantities he may 
 well subordinate to his own influence on the 
 welfare of his fellow men. 
 
 THE END 
 
Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 
 
 PreservationTechnologies 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 
 
 1 1 1 Tbomson Park Drive 
 Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
 (724)779-2111 
 
V