352 AS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT -IV 



Still another thing which I sought to promote was a 

 reasonable devotion to athletics. My own experience as 

 a member of a boating-club at Yale had shown me what 

 could be done, and I think one of the best investments I 

 ever made was in giving a racing-boat to the Cornell crew 

 on Cayuga Lake. The fact that there were so many 

 students trained sturdily in rural homes in the bracing 

 air of western New York, who on every working-day of 

 college life tramped up the University Hill, and on other 

 days explored the neighboring hills and vales, gave us a 

 body of men sure to do well as athletes. At their first 

 contest with the other universities on the Connecticut 

 Eiver at Springfield they were beaten, but they took their 

 defeat manfully. Some time after this, General Grant, 

 then President of the United States, on his visit to the 

 university, remarked to me that he saw the race at Spring 

 field ; that our young men ought to have won it ; and that, 

 in his opinion, they would have won it if they had not 

 been unfortunately placed in shallow water, where there 

 were eddies making against them. This remark struck 

 me forcibly, coming as it did from one who had so keen a 

 judgment in every sort of contest. I bore it in mind, and 

 was not surprised when, a year or two later (1875), the 

 Cornell crews, having met at Saratoga Lake the crews 

 from Harvard, Yale, and other leading universities, won 

 both the freshman and university races. It was humor 

 ously charged against me that when the news of this 

 reached Ithaca I rang the university bells. This was not 

 the fact. The simple truth was that, being in the midst 

 of a body of students when the news came, and seeing them 

 rush toward the bell-tower, I went with them to prevent 

 injury to the bells by careless ringing; the ringing was 

 done by them. I will not deny that the victory pleased me, 

 as many others since gained by the Cornell crews have 

 done; but far more to me than the victory itself was a 

 letter written me by a prominent graduate of Princeton 

 who was at Saratoga during the contest. He wrote me, as 

 he said, not merely to congratulate me on the victory, but 



