THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



agreeable way of earning a living until I could go into something 

 bigger and broader. 



I think this will be a good place to tell what more I have to 

 say about Ithaca and Cornell. In 1884, after a short residence in 

 New York, my mother had married a second time. My step- 

 father, George William Harris, a Nova Scotian by birth, held 

 the position of librarian in Cornell University for many years, 

 succeeding the well-known Willard Fiske, the Dante and Ice- 

 landic scholar. So it was that I went back to Cornell annually 

 until the time of my mother's death in 1893. 



After that, for a period of years, I did not return. But in 1900 

 I was elected to a five-year term as Alumni Trustee, and this 

 brought me back twice a year, in the autumn and in the spring, 

 to the Trustee meetings. In the meantime Andrew D. White had 

 resigned as president to become Ambassador to Germany. Charles 

 Kendall Adams of Ann Arbor was president for a few years, 

 when he resigned and was succeeded by Jacob G. Schurman, 

 who held the office for many years, including those of my term 

 as trustee. Schurman, also a Nova Scotian by birth, had studied 

 philosophy in Germany and had occupied the professorship of 

 philosophy at Cornell. He was a young, charming, high-minded, 

 almost spiritual personality. He married a delightful and wealthy 

 lady from New York and was very successful in his management 

 of the affairs of the University. 



I went back to Ithaca to the first meeting of the Board of 

 Trustees in a very modest frame of mind, but impressed with 

 the responsibilities of my new office. I soon found that the Board 

 and the President were virtually controlled by the executive com- 

 mittee, composed of local residents, and I thought I saw that 

 their horizon was very limited. The out-of-town members of the 

 Board, coming to Ithaca only twice a year, had apparently litde 



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