DANIEL COIT OILMAN. 837 



immediate purpose was concerned, his estimate of these two experi- 

 ences is doubtless true. But nothing could be further from the truth, 

 if we consider his experience of the scantiness of opportunity for 

 advanced non-professional study at Yale and Harvard in its bearing 

 upon the great problems that were to confront him twenty-two years 

 later. We may well deem it the most happily fruitful failure of his 

 whole life. 



His public service began even in that "wasted year." For in 

 August, 1853, the first annual convention of American Librarians 

 was held, largely as the result of his efforts. In December, 1S53, he 

 and his life-long friend, x\ndrew Dickson White, sailed for Europe 

 as attaches of the American Legation at St. Petersburg. Here his 

 official position gave him uncommon opportunities for learning about 

 libraries and schools and other institutions for public welfare, an 

 admirable preparation for the work of his life as a leader in educational 

 and social progress. On returning, he became librarian at Yale 

 (1856-1865), and then professor of physical and political geography in 

 the Sheffield Scientific School, and indeed virtually its chief executive, 

 improving its working-plans and strengthening its finances. From 

 1872 to 1875 he served as president of the University of California, 

 and, in the face of most discouraging obstacles, succeeded in placing 

 it upon a much securer foundation. Then came the call to organize 

 the new institution created by Johns Hopkins at Baltimore. The 

 Trustees, a group of enlightened and devoted men, sought the advice 

 of President Eliot of Harvard and President Wliite of Cornell and 

 President Angell of Michigan, invited them to come to Baltimore to 

 give it by word of mouth, and wrote to each of them after their return 

 home asking whom they would suggest for the office of president. 

 They all with one accord, and without any previous conference on the 

 matter, replied that "the one man" was Daniel C. Oilman. 



Now that university education in America has grown to be what 

 in large measure Mr. Oilman's initiative and example have made it, 

 it is hard to realize what the problem then was. The will of Johns 

 Hopkins left the utmost freedom to the Trustees. Should they, as 

 was suggested, "raise an architectural pile that shall be a lasting 

 memorial of its founder"? should they establish one more college? 

 At his first meeting with the Trustees, Mr. Oilman urged them to 

 create a "means of promoting scholarship of the first order," some- 

 thing, as he himself sa^'s, that should be " more than a local institution" 

 and that should "aim at national influence." Those whose privilege 

 it was to hear the testimony of such men as President Eliot or Francis 



