Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 1White, Andrew Dickson
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Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 1
White, Andrew Dickson
Cornell University; Diplomats -- United States -- Biography; White, Andrew Dickson, 1832-1918
Then came the Jewett collection in geology, which he
gave at a cost of ten thousand dollars; the Ward collection
of casts, at a cost of three thousand; the Newcomb collection
in conchology, at a cost of sixteen thousand; an addition
to the university grounds, valued at many thousands
more; and it was only the claims of a multitude of minor
university matters upon his purse which prevented his
carrying out a favorite plan of giving a great telescope, at
a cost of fifty thousand dollars. At a later period, to
extinguish the university debt, to increase the equipment, and
eventually to provide free scholarships and fellowships,
he made an additional gift of about eighty thousand dollars.
While doing these things, he was constantly advancing
large sums in locating the university lands, and in paying
university salaries, for which our funds were not yet
available; while from time to time he made many gifts which,
though smaller, were no less striking evidences of the
largeness of his view. I may mention a few among these
as typical.
Having found, in the catalogue of a London book-
seller, a set of Piranesi's great work on the ``Antiquities
of Rome,''--a superb copy, the gift of a pope to a royal
duke,--I showed it to him, when he at once ordered it for
our library at a cost of about a thousand dollars. At
another time, seeing the need of some costly works to
illustrate agriculture, he gave them to us at a somewhat
greater cost; and, having heard Professor Tyndall's
lectures in New York, he bought additional physical apparatus
to enable our resident professor to repeat the lectures
at Ithaca, and this cost him fifteen hundred dollars.
Characteristic of him, too, was another piece of quiet
munificence. When the clause forced into the university
charter, requiring him to give twenty-five thousand dollars
to another institution before he could be allowed to
give half a million to his own, was noised abroad through
the State, there was a general feeling of disgust; and at
the next session of the legislature a bill was brought in
to refund the twenty-five thousand dollars to him. Upon
this, he remarked that what he once gave he never took
back, but that if the university trustees would accept it he
had no objection. The bill was modified to this effect, and
thus the wrong was righted.
During my stay in Europe, through the summer of 1868,
under instructions to study various institutions for technical
education, to make large purchases of books, and to
secure one or two men greatly needed in special departments
not then much cultivated in this country, his generosity
was unfailing. Large as were the purchases which
I was authorized to make, the number of desirable things
outside this limit steadily grew larger; but my letters to
him invariably brought back the commission to secure
this additional material.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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