isss'2 A Great Sorrow 



At the time of my election, the trustees were ap- Alumni 

 pointed by the state board of education, an ex ''^"^'^^^ 

 officio body presided over by the superintendent of 

 public instruction. In the spring of 1891 I secured 

 the passage of a bill providing that three of the eight 

 members should be chosen by the alumni of the in- 

 stitution resident in the state. This ensured a 

 healthy participation in university affairs by the 

 graduates, and a renewed interest in its operations. 



In the spring of 1885, accompanied by three of my 

 colleagues, I made a visit to Lake Superior. The 

 scientific results of this trip were not very important, 

 being mainly a verification of Agassiz's observations, 

 published in 1850. The scenery about Mackinac 

 Island, Sault Ste. Marie, and the Keweenaw Pen- 

 insula we found very interesting. 



In November of the same year my children and I Death of 

 suffered a disheartening loss in the death of my wife '^"^'^" 

 Susan. This was the last of a series of fateful events Jordan 

 with which the reader is now familiar and which oc- 

 curred during a period of little more than two years 

 out of the middle of my life. Edith, the eldest of 

 the children, was then not quite nine, Harold a little 

 over three, and Thora, a sweet child whom we thought 

 like her mother, only a baby. Edith and Harold 

 — both of whom graduated from Stanford Uni- 

 versity in due season — have now for some years 

 been living useful lives of their own, though always 

 in touch with mine. Upon leaving Stanford, where 

 she specialized in History, Edith took her master's 

 degree under Dr. Henry Morse Stephens at Cornell. 

 Returning to California, she became a very success- 

 ful teacher of History in secondary schools. At the 



