CONCLUDING YEARS -1881-1885 435 



change of scene. Another example of this was during my 

 stay of a year abroad as commissioner at the Paris Ex 

 position. During that stay I prepared several additions 

 to my course of general lectures, and during my official 

 stay in Berlin added largely to my course on German his 

 tory. But the change of work saved me: though minor 

 excursions were frequently given up to work with book 

 and pen, I returned from them refreshed and all the more 

 ready for administrative duties. 



As to the effect of such absences upon the university, 

 I may say that it accorded with the theory which I held 

 tenaciously regarding the administration of the university 

 at that formative period. I had observed in various 

 American colleges that a fundamental and most injurious 

 error was made in relieving trustees and faculty from 

 responsibility, and concentrating all in the president. The 

 result, in many of these institutions, had been a sort of 

 atrophy, the trustees and faculty being, whenever an 

 emergency arose, badly informed as to the affairs of their 

 institutions, and really incapable of managing them. This 

 state of things was the most serious drawback to Presi 

 dent Tappan s administration at the University of Michi 

 gan, and was the real cause of the catastrophe which 

 finally led to his break with the regents of that university, 

 and his departure to Europe, never to return. Worse still 

 was the downfall of Union College, Schenectady, from 

 the position which it had held before the death of Presi 

 dent Nott. Under Drs. Nott and Tappan the tendency in 

 the institutions above named was to make the trustees 

 in all administrative matters mere ciphers, and to make 

 the faculty more and more incapable of administering dis 

 cipline or conducting current university business. That 

 system concentrated all knowledge of university affairs 

 and all power of every sort in the hands of the president, 

 and relieved trustees and faculty from everything except 

 nominal responsibility. From the very beginning I de 

 termined to prevent this state of things at Cornell. Great 

 powers were indeed given me by the trustees, and I used 



