460 SUNDRY JOURNEYS AND EXPERIENCES-V 



his own art that he apparently knew next to nothing about 

 that of other European masters, nothing of Puvis de 

 Chavannes at Paris ; nothing of Menzel, Knaus, and Wer 

 ner at Berlin. 



Having returned to America, I was soon settled in my 

 old homestead at Cornell, as I supposed for the rest of 

 my life. Very delightful to me during this as we ll as 

 other sojourns at Cornell after my presidency were sun 

 dry yisits to American universities at which I was asked 

 to read papers or make addresses. Of these I may 

 mention Harvard, Yale, and the State universities of 

 Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, at each of which 

 I addressed bodies of students on subjects which seemed 

 to me important, among these &quot;The Diplomatic Ser 

 vice of the United States,&quot; &quot;Democracy and Education,&quot; 

 &quot;Evolution vs. Revolution in Politics,&quot; and &quot;The Prob 

 lem of High Crime in the United States.&quot; To me, as an 

 American citizen earnestly desiring a noble future for 

 my country, it was one of the greatest of pleasures to look 

 into the faces of those large audiences of vigorous young 

 men and women, and, above all, at the State universities 

 of the West, which are to act so powerfully through so 

 many channels of influence in this new century. The 

 last of the subjects above-named interested me painfully, 

 and I was asked to present it to large general audiences, 

 and not infrequently to the congregations of churches. I 

 had become convinced that looseness in the administra 

 tion of our criminal law is one of the more serious dan 

 gers to American society, and my earlier studies in this 

 field were strengthened by my observations in the com 

 munities I had visited during the long journey through 

 our Southern and Pacific States, to which I have just 

 referred. Of this I shall speak later. 



Returning to Washington in February of 1897, 1 joined 

 the Venezuela Commission in presenting its report to the 

 President and Secretary of State, and so ended my duties 

 under the administration of Mr. Cleveland. Of my con 

 nection with the political campaign of 1896 I have spoken 



