AN UNSECTARIAN PULPIT -1871-1904 407 



the Promotion of God s Work among Men.&quot; This has 

 seemed, ever since, to be the key-note of the work done 

 in that building. 



It has been, and is, a great pleasure to me to see young 

 men joining in religious effort; and I feel proud of the 

 fact that from this association at Cornell many strong and 

 earnest men have gone forth to good work as clergymen 

 in our own country and in others. 



In the erection of the new group of buildings south of 

 the upper university quadrangle, as well as in building 

 the president s house hard by, an opportunity was offered 

 for the development of some minor ideas regarding the 

 evolution of university life at Cornell which I had deeply 

 at heart. During my life at Yale, as well as during visits 

 to various other American colleges, I had been painfully 

 impressed by the lack of any development of that which 

 may be called the commemorative or poetical element. In 

 the long row of barracks at Yale one longed for some 

 little bit of beauty, and hungered and thirsted for some 

 thing which connected the present with the past ; but, with 

 the exception of the portraits in the Alumni Hall, there 

 was little more to feed the sense of beauty or to meet one s 

 craving for commemoration of the past than in a cotton- 

 factory. One might frequent the buildings at Yale or 

 Harvard or Brown, as they then were, for years, and see 

 nothing of an architectural sort which had been put in 

 its place for any other reason than bare utility. 



Hence came an effort to promote at Cornell some devel 

 opment of a better kind. Among the first things I ordered 

 were portraits by competent artists of the leading non 

 resident professors, Agassiz, Lowell, Curtis, and Goldwin 

 Smith. This example was, from time to time, followed 

 by the faculty and trustees, the former commemorating 

 by portraits some of their more eminent members, and the 

 latter ordering portraits of some of those who had con 

 nected their names with the university by benefactions or 

 otherwise, such as Mr. Cornell, Senator Morrill, Mr. Sage, 

 Mr. McGraw, and others. The alumni and undergradu- 



