674 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
tution to a truer and higher intellectual position. This is the 
greatest service that a president can render to- his university, 
and this President Adamsi has fully rendered to us. To- this 
end all his measures have tended. In carrying out this main 
purpose, President Adams has shown; great breadth and large¬ 
ness of view. He has been, able to' conceive large plans for the 
university, which he has boldly executed. Yet he has never 
striven to enforce his own ideas upon the various departments, 
aiming rather to inspire unity and harmony of spirit and pur¬ 
pose than to secure a similarity in method. Thus he has been 
able to win and hold the sympathy of the faculty for his plans 
and their co-operation in working them out and applying them 
in. the administration and the teaching of the university.”. 
President Adams was stricken down, about February 1, 1900, 
and was never at the helm for more than 1 a day or two at a time 
after that. After weeks of suffering at home he was sent by 
his physicians, first to Virginia, then to' Battle Creek, Mich., 
and finally for a year to Italy and Germany. During all that 
period I was in constant correspondence with him, and some 
extracts from his letters may be used to' illustrate his absorbing 
devotion to the university, and to indicate some of his plans and 
ideals in educational work. He was trying to' get well for the 
sake of the work he felt he had still to do at Madison, and every 
movement for a, year and a, half was determined by that. He 
abandoned a contemplated trip from 1 Italy to' Egypt, “for the 
reasons,” he wrote, “of the twofold fact of my continued im¬ 
provement and the opinion of the doctor that I should probably 
not return from Egypt as well as I might be on going. I hope 
that in the spring we may go to Athens and, perhaps, to Sicily.” 
By January 1, 1901, he 1 had reached his normal weight again 
and the physician who had accompanied himi from Battle Creek 
returned home, saying that it was “absurd for him to remain 
longer.” “I should call myself entirely well,” he wrote, “but 
for a little nervous weakness-, which, I suppose, is the last rem¬ 
nant of the illness.” Nature just, then was in sympathy with 
their returning health. “The climate here is charming,” he 
wrote. “Boses, heliotropes and oleanders seem 1 not to' know 
any such thing as winter. Their blossoms are now upon every 
wall and along every roadside. Today we sat with our win¬ 
dows wide open to- the floor, and many have sat among the 
flowers in the garden.” “What a country it is!” he wrote again 
