SUSANNA PHELPS GAGE 13 
point of view may best be seen by a quotation from her paper 
before the University Convocation held in the senate chamber 
at Albany in 1897. The subject of the paper was the need of a 
national university for the common schools, and the quotation 
follows the description of the vitalizing power with which a 
university teacher had conducted a common school exercise in a 
difficult subject. 
But we can not spare from their present work of investigation the 
few men and women in the country who are specialists, to preach their 
gospel in the highways and hedges. We need thousands of young men 
and women who shall go to these specialists and receive such training 
that they can give living inspiration to the children. We need more 
and more places where this supreme training can be acquired, we need 
finally a national university where in quiet thoughtfulness the newest 
questions may be solved and the oldest be reconsidered. The knowl- 
edge gained here at the very surface of the known, will then penetrate 
through college and high school and common school to the living units 
of the great democratic mass, that each may live a life richer in the 
things of the spirit. He at the very outside not only gives to him 
within but some. day he helps the pupil now standing at his side to 
mount upon his shoulders and push a little farther into the hitherto 
unknown universal knowledge. 
Like so many of the splendid dreams of noble men and women 
she did not see even the beginnings of a National University 
realized any more than did Washington. Apparently it must 
wait, but that it would come true sometime she never doubted. 
While the great public service she hoped to render in helping 
to make real Washington’s plan for higher education seemed to 
fail, she found it possible to aid her native village by the gift 
to it of her childhood home for a library. And now in her father’s 
house is one of the best libraries of any village in the state; 
and it is greatly appreciated by the people of the surrounding 
region as well as by the villagers. 
In the bookplate and the bronze tablet which she designed 
for the library, the bittersweet was used for decoration. ‘This 
came about naturally from the fact that for many years a mag- 
nificent bittersweet vine was a distinguishing feature of her 
father’s house, and the clusters of red fruit gave it in winter the 
appearance of cheer that the abundant flowers around the house 
