The point of this lay in the fact, which Mr. Cornell knew very well, that he was frequently charged with obstinacy. Yet an obstinate man, in the evil sense of that word, he was not. For several years it fell to my lot to discuss a multitude of questions with him, and reasonableness was one of his most striking characteristics. He was one of those very rare strong men who recognize adequately their own limitations. True, when he had finally made up his mind in a matter fully within his own province, he remained firm; but I have known very few men, wealthy, strong, successful, as he was, so free from the fault of thinking that, because they are good judges of one class of questions, they are equally good in all others. One mark of an obstinate man is the announcement of opinions upon subjects regarding which his experience and previous training give him little or no means of judging. This was not at all the case with Mr. Cornell. When questions arose regarding internal university management, or courses of study, or the choice of professors, or plans for their accommodation, he was never quick in announcing or tenacious in holding an opinion. There was no purse pride about him. He evidently did not believe that his success in building up a fortune had made him an expert or judge in questions to which he had never paid special attention. During the last year or two of his life, I saw not so much of him as during several previous years. He had become greatly interested in various railway projects having as their purpose the connection of Ithaca, as a university town, with the State at large; and he threw himself into these plans with great energy. His course in this was prompted by a public spirit as large and pure as that which had led him to found the university. When, at the suggestion of sundry friends, I ventured to remonstrate with him against going so largely into these railway enterprises at his time of life, he said: ``I shall live twenty years longer, and make a million of dollars more for the university endowment.'' Alas! within six months from that day he lay dead in the midst of many broken hopes. His plans, which, under other circumstances, would have been judged wise, seemed for a time wrecked by the financial crisis which had just come upon the country. In his last hours I visited him frequently. His mind remained clear, and he showed his old freedom from any fault-finding spirit, though evidently oppressed by business cares and bodily suffering. His serenity was especially evident as I sat with him the night before his death, and I can never forget the placidity of his countenance, both then and on the next morning, when all was ended.