ranks, may we not fairly attribute this
sympathy with their kind to the benign influence of democracy rightly
understood? My dear and honored friend, George William Curtis, told me
that he was sitting in front of the late Mr. Ezra Cornell in a
convention, where one of the speakers made a Latin quotation. Mr.
Cornell leaned forward and asked for a translation of it, which Mr.
Curtis gave him. Mr. Cornell thanked him, and added: "If I can help it,
no young man shall grow up in New York hereafter without the chance, at
least, of knowing what a Latin quotation means when he hears it." This
was the germ of Cornell University, and it found food for its roots in
that sympathy and thoughtfulness for others of which I just spoke. This
is the healthy side of that good nature which democracy tends to foster,
and which is so often harmful when it has its root in indolence or
indifference; especially harmful where our public affairs are concerned,
and where it is easiest, because there we are giving away what belongs
to other people. In this country it is as laudably easy to procure
signatures to a subscription paper as it is shamefully so to obtain them
for certificates of character and recommendations to office. And is not
this public spirit a natural evolution from that frame of mind in which
New England was colonized, and which found expression in these grave
words of Robinson and Brewster: "We are knit together as a body in a
most strict and sacred bond and covenant of the Lord, of the violation
of which we make great conscience, and by virtue whereof we hold
ourselves strictly tied to all care of each other's good, and of the
whole." Let us never forget the deep and solemn import of these words.
The problem before us is to make a whole of our many discordant parts,
many foreign elements, and I know of no way in which this can better be
done than by providing a common system of education and a common door of
access to the best books by which that education may be continued,
broadened, and made fruitful. For it is certain that, whatever we do or
leave undone, those discordant parts and foreign elements are to be,
whether we will or no, members of that body which Robinson and Brewster
had in mind, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, for good or ill.

There is no way in which a man can build so secure and lasting a
monument for himself as in a public library. Upon that he may
confidently allow "Resurgam" to be carved, for th