trustees, faculty, and students were most kind to me. As regards the first of these bodies, I cannot resist the temptation to mention two evidences of their feeling which touched me deeply. The first of these was the proposal that I should continue as honorary president of the university. This I declined. To hold such a position would have been an injury to my successor; I knew well that the time had come when he would be obliged to grapple with questions which I had left unsettled from a feeling that he would have a freer hand than I could have.
But another tender made me I accepted: this was that Ishould nominate my successor. I did this, naming my old student at the University of Michigan, who had succeeded me there as professor of history--Charles Kendall Adams;and so began a second and most prosperous administration.
In thus leaving the presidency of the university, it seemed to me that the time had come for carrying out a plan formed long before--the transfer to the university of my historical and general library, which had become one of the largest and, in its field, one of the best private collections of books in the United States. The trustees accepted it, providing a most noble room for it in connection with the main university library and with the historical lecture-rooms; setting apart, also, from their resources, an ample sum, of which the income should be used in maintaining the library, in providing a librarian, in publishing a complete catalogue, and in making the collection effective for historical instruction. My only connection with the university thenceforward was that of a trustee and member of its executive committee. In this position it has been one of the greatest pleasures and satisfactions of my life to note the large and steady development of the institution during the two administrations which have succeeded my own. At the close of the administration of President Adams, who had especially distinguished himself in developing the law department and various other important university interests, in strengthening the connection of the institution with the State, and in calling several most competent professors, he was succeeded by a gentleman whose acquaintance I had made during my stay as minister to Germany, he being at that time a student at the University of Berlin,--Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman, whose remarkable powers and gifts have more than met the great expectations I then formed regarding him, and have developed the university to a yet higher point, so that its number of students is now, as Irevise these lines, over three thousand. He, too, has been called to important duties in the public service; and he has just returned after a year of most valuable work as president of the Commission of the United States to the Philippine Islands, the university progressing during his absence, and showing that it has a life of its own and is not dependent even on the most gifted of presidents.
On laying down the duties of the university presidency, it did not seem best to me to remain in its neighborhood during the first year or two of the new administration.
Any one who has ever been in a position similar to mine at that period will easily understand the reason.
It is the same which has led thoughtful men in the churches to say that it is not well to have the old pastor too near when the new pastor is beginning his duties.
