32 
Hewitt, to say a few words to you, and then we have with us 
also, I am happy to say, our friends Bishop Potter and Archbishop 
Corrigan, and I am going to ask them if they will say a few words. 
It is not often that we get together, ladies and gentlemen, on an 
occasion like this, and I am sure that you will not begrudge a 
few minutes longer. 
Address by the Hon. Abram S. Hewitt: 
Ladies and Gentlemen. — Perhaps I ought to begin by say- 
ing that I am not the Trustee who offered to give Mr. Jesup fifty 
dollars in case he would't read his address, and if I had been the 
Trustee who made the offer I certainly have gained nothing by 
the proposition, for Mr. Jesup has not only delivered his address, 
but he has delivered it with a fullness and a force which leaves 
nothing for any other Trustee to add. But* there is one thought 
which has come into my mind in listening to the addresses of 
Mr. Jesup, President Dana and President Low, and that is the 
duty of the city to itself in reference to the great institutions of 
learning and the means of instruction which exist in this city. 
St. Paul, who I think our good friend the Bishop will admit 
had a level head, divided cities into two kinds, one of which he 
called mean city and the other he called city, by distinction, and 
he prided himself upon being a citizen of " no mean city." Now, 
you and I and all of us have a, right to be proud of the City of 
New York. It is not a mean city ; it never has been a mean city. 
In every period of its history it has shown itself to be equal to 
any demand that has been made upon its intelligence, its patriot- 
ism, its liberality. It is not going to be a mean city. Athens, 
according to the best authority that I know, its great ruler Peri- 
cles, was the type of a noble city. Pericles tells us that there was 
not in Athens much spirit of private display, that there were not 
much riches in private hands, that there was a wise economy, to 
use his words, in the expenditures of the citizens within their 
own households, but when it came to the city itself he says, 
" There is a proud consciousness on the part of the people of 
Athens that they live in a noble city, and that they must be 
worthy of the city," and hence although there were no laws in 
