The Days of a Man C1891 



Seeking In Older, therefore, to proceed intelligently, the 

 expert Stanfords again visited several different institutions 

 of advanced learning — Johns Hopkins, Harvard, the 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Cornell. 

 Johns Hopkins pleased them especially because of 

 its well-deserved reputation for research, while Dr. 

 Gilman, its head, they had known and admired as 

 president of the University of California. General 

 Francis A. Walker of the Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology was one of their special friends, and as 

 a valued adviser had spent a month with them at 

 Palo Alto. 



Cornell met Mr. Stanford's educational ideals 

 more fully than any other institution, primarily be- 

 cause it gave to the applied sciences, engineering, 

 and agriculture the same academic valuation and 

 support as to the humanist studies, braced by equal 

 attention to the securing of first-rate teachers. Mr. 

 Stanford also held the opinions of ex-President 

 White in very high esteem, having often applied to 

 him for guidance and inspiration. On the occasion 

 in question, he offered White the presidency of 

 Stanford University. Concerning this matter the 

 latter writes in his Autobiography, in part, as follows: 



An offer This [position] I had felt obliged to decline. I said to them 

 declined that the best years of my life had been devoted to building 

 up two universities — Michigan and Cornell — and that not 

 all the treasures of the Pacific Coast would tempt me to begin 

 with another; that this feeling was not due to a wish to evade 

 my duty, but to a conviction that my work of that sort was 

 done. 



Being thereupon asked to suggest some one else 

 for the place. White recommended me, and the Stan- 



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