CONCLUDING YEARS -1881-1885 441 



Philippine Islands, the university progressing during his 

 absence, and showing that it has a life of its own and is 

 not dependent even on the most gifted of presidents. 



On laying down the duties of the university presidency, 

 it did not seem best to me to remain in its neighbor 

 hood during the first year or two of the new administra 

 tion. Any one who has ever been in a position similar 

 to mine at that period will easily understand the reason. 

 It is the same which has led thoughtful men in the 

 churches to say that it is not well to have the old pastor 

 too near when the new pastor is beginning his duties. Obe 

 dient to this idea of leaving my successor a free hand, my 

 wife and myself took a leisurely journey through England, 

 France, and Italy, renewing old acquaintances and making 

 new friends. Returning after a year, I settled down 

 again in the university, hoping to complete the book for 

 which I had been gathering materials and on which I had 

 been working steadily for some years, when there came the 

 greatest calamity of my life, the loss of her who had been 

 my main support during thirty years, and work became, 

 for a time, an impossibility. Again I became a wanderer, 

 going, in 1888, first to Scotland, and thence, being ordered 

 by physicians to the East, went again through France and 

 Italy, and extended the journey through Egypt, Greece, 

 and Turkey. Of the men and things which seemed most 

 noteworthy to me at that period I speak in other chapters. 

 From the East I made my way leisurely to Paris, with 

 considerable stops at Buda-Pesth, Vienna, Ulm, Munich, 

 Frankfort-on-the-Main, Paris, London, taking notes in li 

 braries, besides collecting books and manuscripts. 



Returning to the United States in the autumn of 1889, 

 and settling down again in my old house at Cornell, I was 

 invited to give courses of historical lectures at various 

 American universities, especially one upon the &quot; Causes 

 of the French Revolution, at Johns Hopkins, Columbian 

 University in Washington, the University of Pennsylva 

 nia, Tulane University in New Orleans, and Stanford Uni 

 versity in California. Excursions to these institutions 



