EZRA CORNELL- 1864-1874 297 



subject; but had obtained no encouragement, until this 

 strange and unexpected combination of circumstances a 

 great land grant, the use of which was to be determined 

 largely by the committee of which I was chairman, and 

 this noble pledge by Mr. Cornell. 



Yet for some months nothing seemed to come of our 

 conference. At the assembling of the legislature in the 

 following year, it was more evident than ever that the 

 trustees of the People's College intended to do nothing. 

 During the previous session they had promised through 

 their agents to supply the endowment required by their 

 charter ; but, though this charter obliged them, as a condi- 

 tion of taking the grant, to have an estate of two hundred 

 acres, buildings for the accommodation of two hundred 

 students, and a faculty of not less than six professors, with 

 a sufficient library and other apparatus, yet our commit- 

 tee, on again taking up the subject, found hardly the faint- 

 est pretense of complying with these conditions. More- 

 over, their charter required that their property should be 

 free from all encumbrance ; and yet the so-called donor of 

 it, Mr. Charles Cook, could not be induced to cancel a 

 small mortgage which he held upon it. Still worse, before 

 the legislature had been in session many days, it was found 

 that his agent had introduced a bill to relieve the People's 

 College of all conditions, and to give it, without any pledge 

 whatever, the whole land grant, amounting to very nearly 

 a million of acres. 



But even worse than this was another difficulty. In ad- 

 dition to the strong lobby sent by Mr. Cook to Albany in 

 behalf of the People's College, there came representatives 

 of nearly all the smaller denominational colleges in the 

 State, men eminent and influential, clamoring for a divi- 

 sion of the fund among their various institutions, though 

 the fragment which would have fallen to each would not 

 have sufficed to endow even a single professorship. 



While all this was uncertain, and the fund seemed 

 likely to be utterly frittered away, I was one day going 

 down from the State Capitol, when Mr. Cornell joined me 



