BRIDGE OVER CEDAR RIVER AT CENTER POINT
1904 Lucy Hayes King Foundation, now in support of the presidency, by ex-president Wm. F. King, $50,000.
1910 Alumni Professorship of Geology, $50,000, by The Alumni.
Among the other notable gifts to the college must be mentioned that by the Hon. Andrew Carnegie, of $50,000 for the erection of the Carnegie library, dedicated in 1905.
The largest donations to the college have been those of its president emeritus, William Fletcher King. Most valuable of all have been the long years of service, but besides these he has given from time to time many financial gifts to meet current needs and near the end of his term of office, he crowned his benefactions not only with the endowment of the professorship just mentioned, but with the munificent gift of $100,000 to found 100 scholarships in memory of Margaret Fletcher King. At the unveiling of the bronze tablet in her memory, in 1904, Hon. L. M. Shaw spoke these fitting words: "It is my privilege to witness the unveiling of a tablet erected in memory of a saintly woman who came in bridal clothes and left in cerements, and who spent the entire thirty-eight years of her married life wedded as completely to Cornell college as to William F. King, and who served both with equal faithfulness and with unfaltering devotion. Words are inadequate to measure the influence of a Christian woman's life spent amid surroundings such as have existed here for a generation. Neither does bronze suffice to prophesy the lift toward righteousness and higher citizenship of what is here done by the bereaved husband in the name of Margaret McKell King.... The tablet so thoughtfully erected to her memory and the endowment of scholarships so generously made by Dr. King guarantee the perpetuation of the sweet influence of a noble life and extend the benison of Christian education to one hundred students per annum, on and on, far beyond the ken of those who knew her and knowing loved her."
In 1910 the general education board made a conditional gift to the college of $100,000 for endowment, and of the $300,000 to be secured to meet the conditions nearly half has already been promised in sums among the largest ever given to the school.
THE CURRICULUM
In the fifties Cornell college was a very simple organization. In the first year of the college as distinct from the seminary, six teachers taught the entire round of the college course, which then included but forty subjects, each pursued for but three months. Besides Latin, Greek and mathematics, there were offered six terms in science and seven in the following subjects: Natural Theology, Evidences of Christianity, Moral Science, Butler's Analogy, Mental Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Elements of Criticism. This simple curriculum was stated by the catalog to embrace "the course of study in Mathematics, Languages, Sciences, and Belle Lettres which is prescribed in the best colleges and universities. It is thorough, extensive and systematic." All the same, both Cornell and "the best colleges and universities" have found that college courses could be made more "thorough and extensive" if not "more systematic." Latin, for example, at Cornell now offers eleven half-year courses instead of nine third-year courses as in 1857-1858. Sciences, which then offered six terms, now offer thirty-seven half-years and form five strong departments with their own professors and assistants. In 1875 the department of English Literature was organized, and the same year special teachers were employed for the first time in public speaking, although the School of Oratory was not organized until 1891. History and Politics became a distinct department in 1886. Courses in the English Bible were offered in 1894, and in Sociology in 1900. In all, the last catalog lists more than two hundred half-year collegiate courses of study.