During this occupation of mine in Europe, he was quite as busy in the woods of the upper Mississippi and on the plains of Kansas, selecting university lands. No fatigue or expenditure deterred him. At various periods I passed much time with Mr. Cornell on his home farm. He lived generously, in a kind of patriarchal simplicity, and many of his conversations interested me intensely. His reticence gradually yielded, and he gave me much information regarding his earlier years: they had been full of toil and struggle, but through the whole there was clear evidence of a noble purpose. Whatever worthy work his hand had found to do, he had done it with his might: the steamers of Cayuga Lake; the tunnel which carries the waters of Fall Creek to the mills below; the mills themselves; the dams against that turbulent stream, which he built after others had failed, and which stand firmly to this day; the calendar clocks for which Ithaca has become famous, and of which he furnished the original hint--all these he touched upon, though so modestly that I never found out his full agency in them until a later period, when I had made the acquaintance of many of his townsmen. Especially interesting were his references to the beginnings of American telegraphic enterprise, with which he had so much to do. His connection with it began in a curious way. Traveling in northern New England to dispose of a plow which he had invented, he entered the office of a gentleman who had taken the contract for laying the first telegraphic wires underground between Washington and Baltimore, and found him in much doubt and trouble: the difficulty was to lay the leaden pipe containing the two insulated wires at a cost within the terms of the contract. Hearing this, Mr. Cornell said: ``I will build you a machine which will dig the trench, lay the pipe and wires, and cover them with earth rapidly and cheaply.'' This proposal was at first derided; but, as Mr. Cornell insisted upon it, he was at last allowed to show what he could do. The machine having been constructed, he exhibited it to a committee; but when the long line of horses attached to it were started, it was so thrown about by the inequalities of the surface that the committee declared it a failure. Presently Mr. Cornell took them to the ground over which the machine had just passed, and, showing them a line of newly turned earth, asked them to dig in it. Having done this, they found the pipe incasing the wires, acknowledged his triumph, and immediately gave him and his machine permanent employment.