The administrative care of the university was very engrossing. With study of the various interests combined within its organization; with the attendance on meetings of trustees, executive committee, and faculty, and discussion of important questions in each of these bodies--with the general oversight of great numbers of students in many departments and courses; with the constant necessity of keeping the legislature and the State informed as to the reasons of every movement, of meeting hostile forces pressing us on every side, of keeping in touch with our graduates throughout the country, there was much to be done. Trying also, at times, to a man never in robust health was the duty of addressing various assemblies of most dissimilar purposes. Within the space of two or three years I find mention in my diaries of a large number of addresses which, as president of the university, I could not refuse to give; among these, those before the legislature of the State, on Technical Education;before committees of Congress, on Agriculture and Technical Instruction; before the Johns Hopkins University, on Education with Reference to Political Life; before the National Teachers' Association at Washington, on the Relation of the Universities to the State School Systems;before the American Social Science Association of New York, on Sundry Reforms in University Management; before the National Association of Teachers at Detroit, on the Relations of Universities to Colleges; before four thousand people at Cleveland, on the Education of the Freedmen; before the Adalbert College, on the Concentration of Means for the Higher Education; before the State Teachers' Association at Saratoga, on Education and Democracy; at the Centennial banquet at Philadelphia, on the American Universities; and before my class at Yale University, on the Message of the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth; besides many public lectures before colleges, schools, and special assemblies.
There seemed more danger of wearing out than of rusting out, especially as some of these discourses provoked attacks which must be answered. Time also was required for my duties as president of the American Social Science Association, which lasted several years, and of the American Historical Society, which, though less engrossing, imposed for a time much responsibility. Then, too, there was another duty, constantly pressing, which I had especially at heart. The day had not yet arrived when the president of the university could be released from his duties as a professor. I had, indeed, no wish for such release; for, of all my duties, that of meeting my senior students face to face in the lecture-room and interesting them in the studies which most interested me, and which seemed most likely to fit them to go forth and bring the influence of the university to bear for good upon the country at large, was that which I liked best. The usual routine of administrative cares was almost hateful to me, and I delegated minor details, as far as possible, to those better fitted to take charge of them--especially to the vice-president and registrar and secretary of the faculty. But my lecture-room I loved. Of all occupations, I know of none more satisfactory than that of a university professor who feels that he is in right relations with his students, that they welcome what he has to give them, and that their hearts and minds are developed, day by day, by the work which he most prizes. I may justly say that this pleasure was mine at the University of Michigan and at Cornell University. It was at times hard to satisfy myself; for next to the pleasure of directing younger minds is the satisfaction of fitting one's self to do so. During my ordinary working-day there was little time for keeping abreast with the latest and best in my department; but there were odds and ends of time, day and night, and especially during my frequent journeys by rail and steamer to meet engagements at distant points, when I always carried with me a collection of books which seemed to me most fitted for my purpose; and as I had trained myself to be a rapid reader, these excursions gave me many opportunities.
But some of these journeys were not well suited to study. During the first few years of the university, being obliged to live in the barracks on the University Hill under many difficulties, I could not have my family with me, and from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning was given to them at Syracuse. In summer the journey by Cayuga Lake to the New York Central train gave me excellent opportunity for reading and even for writing.
But in winter it was different. None of the railways now connecting the university town with the outside world had then been constructed, save that to the southward;and, therefore, during those long winters there was at least twice a week a dreary drive in wagon or sleigh sometimes taking all the better hours of the day, in order to reach the train from Binghamton to Syracuse. Coming out of my lecture-room Friday evening or Saturday morning, I was conveyed through nearly twenty-five miles of mud and slush or sleet and snow. On one journey my sleigh was upset three times in the drifts which made the roads almost impassable, and it required nearly ten hours to make the entire journey. The worst of it was that, coming out of my heated lecture-room and taking an open sleigh at Ithaca, or coming out of the heated cars and taking it at Cortland, my throat became affected, and for some years gave me serious trouble.
But my greater opportunities--those which kept me from becoming a mere administrative machine--were afforded by various vacations, longer or shorter. During the summer vacation, mainly passed at Saratoga and the seaside, there was time for consecutive studies with reference to my work, my regular lectures, and occasional addresses.
But this was not all. At three different times Iwas summoned from university work to public duties.
