THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, OF BALTIMORE.
We are indebted to “Scribner’s Monthly” for the following remarks concerning this institution:—“By the will of Johns Hopkins, a merchant of Baltimore, the sum of $7,000,000 was devoted to the endowment of a University and a Hospital, $3,500,000 being devoted to each. This is the largest single endowment ever made to an institution of learning in this country. To the bequest no burdensome conditions were attached.”… “The Physiological Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins has no peer in this country, and the other laboratories few equals and no superiors.”
In the First Annual Report of the University (1876) we read:—“Early in the month of February, 1874, the Trustees of the University having been apprised by the Executors of Johns Hopkins, of the endowment provided by his will, took proper steps for organization and entering upon the practical duties of the trust, and addressed themselves to the selection of a President of the University. With this view the Trustees sought the counsel and advice of the heads of several of the leading seats of learning in the country, and, upon unanimous recommendation and endorsement from these sources, the choice fell upon Mr. Daniel C. Gilman, who, at the time, occupied the position of President of the University of California.
“Mr. Gilman is a graduate of Yale College, and for several years before his call to California, was a Professor in that institution, taking an active part in the organization and development of ‘The Sheffield Scientific School of Yale College,’ at New Haven. Upon receiving an invitation to Baltimore, he resigned the office which he had held in California since 1872, and entered upon the service of The Johns Hopkins University, May 1, 1875.”—Galloway Cheston.
“In the hunt for truth, we are not first hunters, and then men; we are first and always men, then hunters.”—D. C. Gilman, Oct., 1883.
The “One Hundred Proofs that the Earth is Not a Globe” have been running around within the observation of the master huntsman and his men for a year or more: now let the hunters prove themselves to be men; and the men, hunters. It is impossible to be successful hunters for Truth, if Error be allowed to go scot-free. Nay, it is utterly impossible for the Johns Hopkins University to answer the purpose of its founder if its hunters for Truth do not first hunt Error with their hounds and hold it up to ridicule, and then, and always, keep a watchful eye for the Truth lest they should injure it by their hot haste or wound it with their weapons. Prof. Daniel C. Gilman, we charge you that the duties of your office render it imperative that, sooner or later, you lead your men into the field against the hundred proofs, to show the world that they are hunters worthy of the name—if, in your superior judgment, you decide that there is Error to be slain—or, show that your hunters are worthy of the better name of men, by inducing them to follow and sustain you, out of the beaten track, in your endeavors to uphold God’s Truth, if, in your superior judgment, you tell them, “There is a Truth to be upheld!”