Among my most delightful reminiscences of this period are my walks and talks with my old Yale and Paris student friend of nearly forty years before, Randall Gibson, who, having been a general in the Confederate service, was now a United States senator from Louisiana. Revisiting our old haunts, especially the Sorbonne, the Pantheon, St. Sulpice, and other monuments of the Latin Quarter, we spoke much of days gone by, he giving me most interesting reminiscences of our Civil War period as seen from the Southern side. One or two of the things he told me are especially fastened in my mind. The first was that as he sat with other officers over the camp-fire night after night, discussing the war and their hopes regarding the future, all agreed that when the Confederacy obtained its independence there should be no "right of secession" in it. But what interested me most was the fact that he, a Democratic senator of the United States, absolutely detested Thomas Jefferson, and, above all things, for the reason that he considered Jefferson the real source of the extreme doctrine of State sovereignty. Gibson was a typical Kentucky Whig who, in the Civil War, went with the South from the force of family connections, friendships, social relations, and the like, but who remained, in his heart of hearts, from first to last, deeply attached to the Union.
Leaving Paris, we went together to Homburg, and there met Mr. Henry S. Sanford, our minister at Belgium during the Civil War, one of Secretary Seward's foremost agents on the European continent at that period. His accounts of matters at that time, especially of the doings of sundry emissaries of the United States, were all of them interesting, and some of them exceedingly amusing. At Homburg, too, I found my successor in the legation at Berlin, Mr. Pendleton, who, though his mind remained clear, was slowly dying of paralysis.
Thence with Gibson and Sanford down the Rhine to Mr. Sanford's country-seat in Belgium. It was a most beautiful place, a lordly chateau, superbly built, fitted, and furnished, ample for the accommodation of a score of guests, and yet the rent he paid for it was but six hundred dollars a year. It had been built by a prince at such cost that he himself could not afford to live in it, and was obliged to rent it for what he could get. Thence we made our way to London and New York.
CHAPTER LV
MEXICO, CALIFORNIA, SCANDINAVIA, RUSSIA, ITALY, LONDON, AND BERLIN—1892-1897
Arriving at New York in the autumn of 1889, I was soon settled at my accustomed work in the university,—devoting myself to new chapters of my book and to sundry courses of lectures. Early in the following year I began a course before the University of Pennsylvania; and my stay in Philadelphia was rendered very agreeable by various new acquaintances. Interesting to me was the Roman Catholic archbishop, Dr. Ryan. Dining in his company, I referred admiringly to his cathedral, which I had recently visited, but spoke of what seemed to me the defective mode of placing the dome upon the building; whereupon he made one of the most tolerable Latin puns I have ever heard, saying that during the construction of both the nave and the dome his predecessors were hampered by lack of money,—that, in fact, they were greatly troubled by the res angustae domi. Interesting also was attendance upon the conference at Lake Mohonk, which brought together a large body of leading men from all parts of the country to discuss the best methods of dealing with questions relating to the freedmen and Indians. The president of the conference, Mr. Hayes, formerly President of the United States, I had known well in former days, when I served under him as minister to Germany, and the high opinion I had then formed of him was increased as I heard him discuss the main questions before the conference. It was the fashion at one time among blackguards and cynics of both parties to sneer at him, and this, doubtless, produced some effect on the popular mind; but nothing could be more unjust: rarely have I met a man in our own or any other country who has impressed me more by the qualities which a true American should most desire in a President of the United States; he had what our country needs most in our public men—sobriety of judgment united to the power of calm, strong statement.
The two following years, 1890-1891, were passed mainly at Cornell, though with excursions to various other institutions where I had been asked to give addresses or lectures; but in February of 1892, having been invited to lecture at Stanford University in California, I accepted an invitation from Mr. Andrew Carnegie to become one of the guests going in his car to the Pacific coast by way of Mexico. Our party of eight, provided with cook, servants, and every comfort, traveled altogether more than twelve thousand miles—first through the Central and Southern States of the Union, thence to the city of Mexico and beyond, then by a series of zigzag excursions from lower California to the northern limits of Oregon and Washington, and finally through the Rocky Mountains and the canons of Colorado to Salt Lake City and Denver. Thence my companions went East and I returned alone to Stanford to give my lectures. During this long excursion I met many men who greatly interested me, and especially old students of mine whom I found everywhere doing manfully the work for which Cornell had aided to fit them. Never have I felt more fully repaid for any labor and care I have ever given to the founding and development of the university. Arriving in the city of Mexico, I said to myself, "Here certainly I shall not meet any more of my old Cornellians"; but hardly was I settled in my room when a card came up from one of them, and I soon learned that he was doing honor to the Sibley College of the university by superintending the erection of the largest printing-press which had ever been brought into Mexico. The Mexican capital interested me greatly. The cathedral, which, up to that time, I had supposed to be in a debased rococo style, I found to be of a simple, noble Renaissance character, and of real dignity. Being presented to the President, Porfirio Diaz, I was greatly impressed by his quiet strength and self-possession, and then understood for the first time what had wrought so beneficent a change in his country. His ministers also impressed me favorably, though they were evidently overshadowed by so great a personality. One detail struck me as curious: the room in which the President received us at the palace was hung round with satin draperies stamped with the crown and cipher of his predecessor—the ill-fated Emperor Maximilian.
California was a great revelation to me. We arrived just at the full outburst of spring, and seemed to have alighted upon a new planet. Strong and good men I found there, building up every sort of worthy enterprise, and especially their two noble universities, one of which was almost entirely officered by Cornell graduates. To this institution I was attached by a special tie. At various times the founders, Governor and Mrs. Stanford, had consulted me on problems arising in its development; they had twice visited me at Cornell for the purpose of more full discussion, and at the latter of the two visits had urged me to accept its presidency. This I had felt obliged to decline. I said to them that the best years of my life had been devoted to building up two universities,—Michigan and Cornell,—and that not all the treasures of the Pacific coast would tempt me to begin with another; that this feeling was not due to a wish to evade any duty, but to a conviction that my work of that sort was done, and that there were others who could continue it far better than I. It was after this conversation that, on their asking whether there was any one suitable within my acquaintance, I answered, "Go to the University of Indiana; there you will find the president, an old student of mine, David Starr Jordan, one of the leading scientific men of the country, possessed of a most charming power of literary expression, with a remarkable ability in organization, and blessed with good, sound sense. Call him." They took my advice, called Dr. Jordan, and I found him at the university. My three weeks' stay interested me more and more. Evening after evening I walked through the cloisters of the great quadrangle, admiring the solidity, beauty, and admirable arrangement of the buildings, and enjoying their lovely surroundings and the whole charm of that California atmosphere.
The buildings, in simplicity, beauty, and fitness, far surpassed any others which had at that time been erected for university purposes in the United States; and I feel sure that when the entire plan is carried out, not even Oxford or Cambridge will have anything more beautiful. President Jordan had more than fulfilled my prophecies, and it was an inspiration to see at their daily work the faculty he had called together. The students also greatly interested me. When it was first noised abroad that Senator Stanford was to found a new university in California, sundry Eastern men took a sneering tone and said, "What will it find to do? The young men on the Pacific coast who are as yet fit to receive the advantages of a university are very few; the State University of California at Berkeley is already languishing for want of students." The weakness of these views is seen in the fact that, at this hour, each of these universities has nearly three thousand undergraduates. The erection of Stanford has given an impetus to the State University, and both are doing noble work, not only for the Pacific coast, but for the whole country. One of the most noteworthy things in the history of American university education thus far is the fact that the university buildings erected by boards of trustees in all parts of the country have, almost without exception, proved to be mere jumbles of mean materials in incongruous styles; but to this rule there have been, mainly, two noble exceptions: one in the buildings of the University of Virginia, planned and executed under the eye of Thomas Jefferson, and the other in these buildings at Palo Alto, planned and executed under the direction of Governor and Mrs. Stanford. These two groups, one in Virginia and one in California, with, perhaps, the new university buildings at Philadelphia and Chicago, are almost the only homes of learning in the United States which are really satisfactory from an architectural point of view.
The "City of the Saints," which I saw on my way, had much interest for me. I collected while there everything possible in the way of publications bearing on Mormonism, beginning with a copy of the original edition of the "Book of Mormon"; but nothing that I could find in any of these publications indicated any considerable intellectual development, as yet.