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With large wisdom our State confined to one college the lands 

 that thus came to New York. With great generosity a citizen of 

 Ithaca gave half a million dollars to secure the location of that Uni- 

 versity here in Ithaca. With singular good fortune there were as- 

 sociated with Ezra Cornell, a body of men who made the realiza- 

 tion of this idea possible. There was John McGraw who is now 

 gone ; there were Hiram Sibley and Henry W. Sage who are still 

 with us. These were four men who had never been inside college 

 doors. But they were men who had learned the practical power of 

 science. They were men who, without early education, had under- 

 taken great enterprises, which required a high order of mechani- 

 cal training and scientific knowledge. They were men who had 

 made great fortunes for themselves, and who said : ''Others, no 

 matter how poor they are, shall have better advantages than we 

 had when we began, so that they may do better work than we have 

 been permitted to do." Thus Cornell University was founded. 

 Thus has it grown. 



The builders of Cornell were fortunate in bringing to their help 

 and aid a wise and cultured although young man who knew what 

 was meant by higher education in its best and truest application. 

 Cornell was fortunate in its founders. It has been equally fortu- 

 nate in its first President. Thus under the guidance of men who 

 had made their own fortune and of a man who, having inherited 

 a fortune, had given his life to educational work, they built this 

 University. Labor, science and the highest education have min- 

 gled and wrought together, laying the foundations deep and broad, 

 and building upwards towards a high and ever higher ideal. 



To-day that dream is realized. We stand within the .arsenal, 

 on the site of a great military school. Behind us stretch the 

 broad acres of our college farm. Yonder at the further end of 

 the Campus is the great mechanical college, and between, is 

 Founder's Chapel where to-day you will unveil the name of one 

 of the great scientists of the land. 



On this beautiful hill, under this golden sunlight, and amid these 

 pleasant breezes of the early summer, we can say to-day that all 

 which Ezra Cornell dreamed has been more than fulfilled, and yet 

 we feel and know that what is here to-day is only the incomplete 

 suggestion of the larger results that shall be here to-morrow. 



