416 AS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT -VIII 



and my first effort to carry through a plan to this effect 

 failed ; but at the next meeting I was successful ; and so, in 

 this apparently calamitous revelation of debt began that 

 system of university fellowships and scholarships which 

 has done so much for the development of higher instruc 

 tion at Cornell. 



So far as the university treasury was concerned, mat 

 ters thenceforth went on well. Never again did the uni 

 versity incur any troublesome debt ; from that day to this 

 its finances have been so managed as to excite the admi 

 ration even of men connected with the most successful and 

 best managed corporations of our country. But financial 

 difficulties far more serious than the debt just referred 

 to arose in a different quarter. In assuming the ex 

 penses of locating and managing the university lands, 

 protecting them, paying taxes upon them, and the like, Mr. 

 Cornell had taken upon himself a fearful load, and it 

 pressed upon him heavily. But this was not all. It was, 

 indeed, far from the worst; for, in his anxiety to bring 

 the university town into easy connection with the railway 

 system of the State, he had invested very largely in local 

 railways leading into Ithaca. Under these circumstances, 

 while he made heroic efforts and sacrifices, his relations 

 to the comptroller of the State, who still had in his charge 

 the land scrip of the university, became exceedingly 

 difficult. At the very crisis of this difficulty Mr. Cornell s 

 hard work proved too much for him, and he lay down to 

 die. The university affairs, so far as the land-grant fund 

 was concerned, seemed hopelessly entangled with his own 

 and with those of the State: it seemed altogether likely 

 that at his death the institution would be subjected to 

 years of litigation, to having its endowment tied up in the 

 courts, and to a suspension of its operations. Happily, we 

 had as our adviser Francis Miles Finch, since justice of 

 the Court of Appeals of the State, and now dean of the 

 Law School a man of noble character, of wonderfully 

 varied gifts, an admirable legal adviser, devoted person 

 ally to Mr. Cornell, and no less devoted to the university. 



