My mother had a more serene career. In another part of these Reminiscences, saying something of my religious and political development, I shall speak again of her and of her parents. Suffice it here that her father prospered as a man of business, was known as ``Colonel,'' and also as ``Squire'' Dickson, and represented his county in the State legislature. He died when I was about three years old, and I vaguely remember being brought to him as he lay upon his death-bed. On one account, above all others, I have long looked back to him with pride. For the first public care of the early settlers had been a church, and the second a school. This school had been speedily developed into Cortland Academy, which soon became fa- mous throughout all that region, and, as a boy of five or six years of age, I was very proud to read on the corner- stone of the Academy building my grandfather's name among those of the original founders. Not unlikely there thus came into my blood the strain which has led me ever since to feel that the building up of goodly institutions is more honorable than any other work,--an idea which was at the bottom of my efforts in developing the University of Michigan, and in founding Cornell University. To Cortland Academy students came from far and near; and it soon began sending young men into the foremost places of State and Church. At an early day, too, it began receiving young women and sending them forth to become the best of matrons. As my family left the place when I was seven years old I was never within its walls as a student, but it acted powerfully on my education in two ways,--it gave my mother the best of her education, and it gave to me a respect for scholarship. The library and collections, though small, suggested pursuits better than the scramble for place or pelf; the public exercises, two or three times a year, led my thoughts, no matter how vaguely, into higher regions, and I shall never forget the awe which came over me when as a child, I saw Principal Woolworth, with his best students around him on the green, making astronomical observations through a small telescope. Thus began my education into that great truth, so imperfectly understood, as yet, in our country, that stores, shops, hotels, facilities for travel and traffic are not the highest things in civilization.