But there was still much hope of inducing the main heirs to allow the purpose of Mrs. Fiske to be carried out. Without imputing any evil intentions to any person, I fully believe--indeed, I may say I KNOW--that, had the matter been placed in my hands, this vast endowment would have been saved to us; but it was not so to be. Personal complications had arisen between the main heir and two of our trustees which increased the embarrassments of the situation. It is needless to go into them now; let all that be buried; but it may at least be said that day and night Ilabored to make some sort of arrangement between the principal heir and the university, and finally took the steamer for Europe in order to meet him and see if some arrangement could be made. But personal bitterness had entered too largely into the contest, and my efforts were in vain. Though our legal advisers insisted that the university was sure of winning the case, we lost it in every court--first in the Supreme Court of the State, then in the Court of Appeals, and finally in the Supreme Court of the United States. To me all this was most distressing. The creation of such a library would have been the culmination of my work; I could then have sung my Nunc dimittis. But the calamity was not without its compensations. When the worst was known, Mr. Henry W. Sage, a lifelong friend of Mr. McGraw and of Mrs. Fiske, came to my house, evidently with the desire to console me. He said: ``Don't allow this matter to prey upon you; Jenny shall have her library; it shall yet be built and well endowed.'' He was true to his promise. On the final decision against us, he added to his previous large gifts to the university a new donation of over six hundred thousand dollars, half of which went to the erection of the present library building, and the other half to an endowment fund.
Professor Fiske also joined munificently in enlarging the library, adding various gifts which his practised eye showed him were needed, and, among these, two collections, one upon Dante and one in Romance literature, each the best of its kind in the United States. Mr. William Sage also added the noted library in German literature of Professor Zarncke of Leipsic; and various others contributed collections, larger or smaller, so that the library has become, as a whole, one of the best in the country. As I visit it, there often come back vividly to me remembrances of my college days, when I was wont to enter the Yale library and stand amazed in the midst of the sixty thousand volumes which had been brought together during one hundred and fifty years. They filled me with awe.
But Cornell University has now, within forty years from its foundation, accumulated very nearly three hundred thousand volumes, many among them of far greater value than anything contained in the Yale library of my day;and as I revise these lines comes news that the will of Professor Fiske, who recently died at Frankfort-on-the-Main, gives to the library all of his splendid collections in Italian history and literature at Florence, with the addition of nearly half a million of dollars.
Beside these financial and other troubles, another class of difficulties beset us, which were, at times, almost as vexatious. These were the continued attacks made by good men in various parts of the State and Nation, who thought they saw in Cornell a stronghold-first, of ideas in religion antagonistic to their own; and secondly, of ideas in education likely to injure their sectarian colleges. From the day when our charter was under consideration at Albany they never relented, and at times they were violent.
The reports of my inauguration speech were, in sundry denominational newspapers, utterly distorted; far and wide was spread the story that Mr. Cornell and myself were attempting to establish an institution for the propagation of ``atheism'' and ``infidelity.'' Certainly nothing could have been further from the purpose of either of us.
He had aided, and loved to aid, every form of Christianity;I was myself a member of a Christian church and a trustee of a denominational college. Everything that we could do in the way of reasoning with our assailants was in vain.
In talking with students from time to time, I learned that, in many cases, their pastors had earnestly besought them to go to any other institution rather than to Cornell;reports of hostile sermons reached us; bitter diatribes constantly appeared in denominational newspapers, and especially virulent were various addresses given on public occasions in the sectarian colleges which felt themselves injured by the creation of an unsectarian institution on so large a scale. Typical was the attack made by an eminent divine who, having been installed as president over one of the smaller colleges of the State, thought it his duty to denounce me as an ``atheist,'' and to do this especially in the city where I had formerly resided, and in the church which some of my family attended. I took no notice of the charge, and pursued the even tenor of my way; but the press took it up, and it recoiled upon the man who made it.
