At a dinner with Senator Morrill of Vermont I met General Schenck, formerly a leading member of Congress and minister to Brazil and to England. He was very interesting in his sketches of English orators; thought Bright the best, Gladstone admirable, and Sir Stafford Northcote, with his everlasting hawing and humming, intolerable. He gave interesting reminiscences of Tom Corwin, his old preceptor, and said that Corwin's power over an audience was magical. He added that he once attended a public dinner in Boston, and, sitting near Everett, who was the chief speaker, noticed that when the waiters sought to clear the table and were about to remove a bouquet containing two small flags, Everett would not allow them to do it, and that later in the evening, during his speech, just at the proper point, he caught up these flags, as if accidentally, and waved them. He said that everything with Everett and Choate seemed to be cut and dried; that even the interruptions seemed prepared beforehand. Senator Morrill then told a story regarding Everett's great speech at the opening of the Dudley Observatory at Albany, which I had heard at the time of its delivery. In this speech Everett said: ``Last night, crossing the Connecticut River, I saw mirrored in its waters Arcturus, then fully at the zenith, and I thought,'' etc., etc.; ``but,'' said Morrill, ``some one looked into the matter and found that Everett, before leaving home, had evidently turned the globe in his study wrong side up, for at that time Arcturus was not at the zenith, but at the nadir.'' At the Cornell commencement of this year (1885) I resigned my presidency of the university. It had nominally lasted eighteen years, but really more than twenty, since I had taken the lead in the work of the university even before its charter was granted, twenty years previously, and from that day the main charge of its organization and of everything except providing funds had been intrusted to me. Regarding this part of my life I shall speak more fully in another chapter. Shortly after this resignation two opportunities were offered me which caused me considerable thought.