History of Linn County Iowa Part 45

But the facts are that through the force of circ.u.mstances, the school at Cedar Rapids was obliged to suspend its work, and little or nothing was done in the building erected in 1868 from 1871 to 1875. Then for the third time, and under new auspices, was the work begun afresh, and it took place on this wise: On the 26th of April, 1875, the trustees of Parsons Seminary held a meeting, at which meeting a committee of the Presbytery of Cedar Rapids was present for the purpose of consulting with the board to the end that the seminary building and the Coe legacy located at Cedar Rapids might be made available for the establishment of a school of a high order under the care of the said Presbytery. This committee had been appointed by the Presbytery at its session at Anamosa April 24, 1875, and they presented to the board of trustees of Parsons Seminary a formal report in writing, which expressed the readiness of the Presbytery to undertake the care of the school at Cedar Rapids on condition that all its debts be cancelled, and its charter be so amended as to give to the Presbytery the power to appoint its board of trustees. The Presbytery also pledged itself to do all in its power to maintain the school and open it in the school building by the 1st of October, 1875. The board of trustees consented to the proposition of the Presbytery and resolved to change the name of the inst.i.tution from Parsons Seminary to Coe Collegiate Inst.i.tute. The articles of incorporation of Parsons Seminary, which had been adopted October 30, 1866, were amended May 11, 1875, to meet the new conditions. The board of trustees was fixed at the number of eighteen, and the power to elect them was vested in the Presbytery of Cedar Rapids, or in the synod of Iowa North, if the said synod shall a.s.sume such power with the consent of said Presbytery. The first election was appointed to take place in the fall of the year 1876.

Mr. Daniel Coe had pa.s.sed from earth in the interval between December 23, 1866, when he deeded the eighty acres of land in Cedar Rapids to Parsons Seminary, and this date in 1875, when these new relations with the seminary were entered into. He left a daughter, an only child, who had become the wife of Mr. J. E. Jewell. This daughter, Mr. Coe's sole heir at law, with her husband, entered in a very friendly manner and measure into the new plans of the inst.i.tution, and n.o.bly agreed to permit the school to avail itself under certain conditions well understood and agreed to, of the advantages accruing from the revenues of the property.

On the 21st of September, 1875, it was announced at a meeting of the trustees of Coe Collegiate Inst.i.tute that correspondence had been conducted with the Rev. R. A. Condit with a view to his being made princ.i.p.al of the school. Mr. Condit was then elected to that office.

This event marks the entrance into the work of Coe College of a personality of rare value in himself and of rare value to the inst.i.tution of learning which he served most faithfully for a period of thirty years after his appointment in 1875. Robert Aaron Condit was a man of sweet spirit and gentle demeanor; he was a Christian and a scholar. No one ever doubted his piety or his moral integrity. The students who for a whole generation pa.s.sed under his care all loved him because he loved them, and was himself so lovable. His influence upon them was mild, but effective, and we venture to say without fear of contradiction, that all the alumni of Coe College who knew him as their preceptor recognize the fact with grat.i.tude that they are better persons for having known him. In the weak and struggling days of Coe Collegiate Inst.i.tute before it emerged into its present larger, stronger growth, as Coe College, Robert Condit was a factor peculiarly fitted for the task providentially laid upon him, and his full value to the college can scarcely be over-estimated or even stated sufficiently.

On the 8th of March, 1876, Prof. J. W. McLaury was employed to a.s.sist Mr. Condit in the school, his salary being raised by voluntary subscriptions. Mr. McLaury's services, though valuable, were not long retained by the inst.i.tution.

At the meeting of the board held December 28, 1876, the report of the election of the trustees by the Presbytery October 4, 1876, was made, as directed by the charter. And at the same meeting the following officers of the board were chosen: Hon. George Greene, president; Thomas M. Sinclair, vice president; D. W. C. Rowley, secretary; George W. Winn, treasurer. It was at this meeting that the present writer took his seat with his brethren for the first time as an officially accredited member of the board. And it is a matter of grateful, tender recollection to him, that he has remained to this day in unbroken relation with the inst.i.tution in all possible varieties of official position and duties upon its manifold committees. And it is a solemn recollection with him that he alone remains on the board of all those who have served with him for thirty-four years.

He can well remember the tone and atmosphere of the meetings of the board, which he was then called upon to attend. It was truly a day of small things. The meetings were frequent and they were often lengthy, and we must truly say they were usually dreary, and we went from them with depressed hearts. For the questions for discussion were mostly, not how to promote high christian learning, but how to pay the debts of Parsons Seminary. And the problem was, how to pay something with nothing. There were notes at two of the leading banks of the city, notes which were increasing fearfully by the compounding of interest at ten per cent, and there were notes held by individuals who had loaned money to the seminary, there were mechanic's liens of sums unpaid in the erection of the building put up in 1867-8, and to meet these obligations there was nothing in sight. For all moneys that found their way into the treasury were needed, and more than needed, to pay current bills to teachers, heating and lighting bills and such minor fees. We remember that our treasurer was once garnisheed by the brother of one of our teachers for the payment of his sister's salary, and some sort of compromise settlement was effected.

We have not a thought or word of disparagement concerning any member of the board at that time. But it would have required men of heroic mold and prophetic vision to face those problems. The president of the board, the Hon. George Greene, a name never to be mentioned in this city without a tribute of respect, was deeply immersed in his own private interests and was compelled to be absent from home a great part of the time. Soon after the date of which we speak, he insisted upon pressing his resignation as president of the board. Other prominent business and professional men on the board were also engrossed in large personal interests. The ministers on the board, however valuable though they may have been for counsel concerning educational questions, were quite helpless in grappling with the financial problems which from necessity were uppermost.

The Rev. James Knox had pa.s.sed from earth October 10, 1875, after having contributed valuable services to the college during the eleven years of his pastorate in this city. We here insert the following tribute to Mr. Knox, which was presented at a meeting of the board of trustees March 8, 1876, and was adopted, all the members present standing:

"In the providence of G.o.d the Rev. James Knox, former vice president of this board, having been removed by death we take this opportunity to record our testimony to his exceeding worth as a man and his wisdom and faithfulness as a minister of the gospel, and to his great devotion and usefulness to this inst.i.tution, having been connected with it from its earliest days, and having given to it his best strength and ability for many years, and his very latest prayers. We feel that his place cannot easily be filled and that in him the college has lost one of its truest and best friends."

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN OLD GRAVE AT SPRINGVILLE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: REV. J. B. ALBROOK, D. D.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PROF. HARRIETTE J. COOK]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MRS. MARGARET McKELL KING]

There was one notable exception to all these. One personality stands out from the midst of his brethren and to him more than to any other element at this critical period of the history of Coe College do we attribute the fact that we have a college today, and one with such promise and potency. We refer to Mr. Thomas M. Sinclair. Mr. Sinclair had come to Cedar Rapids in 1871 a young man not quite thirty years of age. He was pursuing a large manufacturing business, that of pork packing, with rare energy and intelligence, and with great success. He was making money, and his great desire and single aim was to use this money with a keen sense of responsibility to G.o.d and usefulness to his fellow men. He was a man of rare christian character, one among ten thousand. It may truly be said of him that he walked with G.o.d. Coming into this young country from the older world, he took a most keenly active interest in all things that pertained to its welfare, and it was a fortunate thing for Coe College that he came to Cedar Rapids at such a time as he did. The cause of christian education was one of his most treasured conceptions of opportunity, and he identified himself with the representative of that cause which he providentially found to his hand in this struggling inst.i.tution.

Seeing the imperative need of relief from debt which Coe Collegiate Inst.i.tute manifested, he determined in the n.o.bility of his heart that he would pay out of his own pocket such obligations, princ.i.p.al and interest, as lay against the inst.i.tution, although they amounted to several thousand dollars. And this he gladly did in all such cases as he could not induce those who owned these obligations to cancel them themselves. And thus it came about one happy day that he could declare the college was actually free from all such inc.u.mbrances. Then he and several of his colleagues, inspired with new hope and courage, and determined to launch the inst.i.tution upon broader and deeper waters, went before the synod of Iowa North, which met at Waterloo, Iowa, in October, 1880, and asked the synod to a.s.sume the care and control of the Inst.i.tute, free from debt, and possessed of a building, and of eighty acres of land in the city of Cedar Rapids. The synod accepted the proposition, and steps were taken at once to frame articles of incorporation of a new organization to be called Coe College. The articles were filed for record on the 16th day of April, 1881. Proper deeds were drawn and filed for record which conveyed to Coe College all the properties owned by Cedar Rapids Collegiate Inst.i.tute, Parsons Seminary, and Coe Collegiate Inst.i.tute, and thus the line of inheritance and descent was duly established. In these negotiations relating to the transference of the property through the hands of Mr.

and Mrs. Jewell, negotiations which required great care in the handling, the valuable services of Mr. A. V. Eastman should be mentioned. Mr. Eastman served the college most valuably for several years at this period as its secretary. He subsequently removed from Cedar Rapids to St. Paul, Minn., and still later to St. Charles, La., where he died most suddenly several years ago.

We have now emerged with our history from the intricacies of a somewhat tortuous channel, and we have pa.s.sed out from shoals and shallows to enter upon clearer, deeper, broader waters. Henceforth we are to pursue the story of the inst.i.tution known as Coe College, which, with devious fortunes, but with perceptibly increasing volume, has been filling its place and doing its work under the charter prepared in 1881. Certain changes have been made to this charter, more or less important, but Coe College is the same inst.i.tution, conducted by the same incorporation from 1881 to the present time.

The first item which we are called upon to record at this period of the history of our college, is the lamentable death of Mr. Thomas M.

Sinclair, which occurred on the 24th day of March, 1881. The circ.u.mstances were peculiarly startling. By an accident he fell through an open hatchway in his own packing house and never recovered consciousness, although he continued to breathe for several hours. We can never forget our emotions over this event. It was truly an inscrutable Providence. Mr. Sinclair was at that time a young man, full of vigor and energy. He was a pillar of strength upon whom many leaned.

He had done so much to bring the college up to this point of its new beginning that both he and we were looking forward with desire and delight to what might be accomplished through his co-operation. But it was willed otherwise. We cannot interpret the event, but may we not even now at this comparatively far removed time from its occurrence use it in memory of him for the greater glory of G.o.d and increase of the college. "He being dead, yet speaketh."

Dr. Stephen Phelps, then the pastor of the Presbyterian church at Vinton, had been very prominently connected with the college ever since its reconstruction as Coe Collegiate Inst.i.tute in 1875. And now, when it became Coe College, under the care of the synod, he was invited to become its president. He was by nature and grace a pastor greatly beloved by his people, and very useful in the community at Vinton. It was a great request to make of him to ask him to lay down his pastoral office and undertake the new and untried work of a college president.

And this was made especially significant because he was asked to preside not over an inst.i.tution already well endowed, richly equipped with buildings, and possessed of the prestige of a generation, but over an inst.i.tution still in the process of formation, without any endowment or equipment or faculty or history. He paused to consider his duty, and decided to come to the college and with the help of G.o.d to undertake the task.

He was a man of many gifts; an eloquent preacher and lovable pastor who attracted young people to him, and a man of consecration and singleness of aim. His pure spirit and untiring energy were rewarded with much success in spite of the many difficulties which resulted from the limitations of the new situation. He remained in the presidency of the college six years, when he resigned his office to go back to his loved work in the pastorate, to which he felt called of G.o.d. He became the pastor of the Presbyterian church at Council Bluffs, and has subsequently served other churches, until at the present time he is in charge of the church at Bellevue, Nebraska, where he lives enjoying the respect and affection of all who know him. He will ever be cherished as the first president of Coe College.

Another figure that rises very prominently and pleasantly before us, as we go back to this period of our history, is that of the first treasurer of Coe College, Mr. John C. Broeksmit. Mr. Broeksmit became the treasurer of Coe Collegiate Inst.i.tute in 1878, and pa.s.sed on into the new administration in 1881, and continued in the exercise of his duties as treasurer until he was made treasurer emeritus in 1903, when Mr. John M. Dinwiddie, our present very efficient treasurer, a.s.sumed the duties of the office which Mr. Broeksmit laid down. In the formative period of our college history it was very important that the charge of our slender funds should be placed in hands which were trustworthy, not only because of honesty, but also because of business ability and experience. Mr. Broeksmit possessed ideal qualities for a treasurer. As auditor of the B., C. R. & N. R. R. he was accustomed to the handling and careful accounting of the funds of that corporation, and he brought his knowledge, judgment, and integrity to bear upon the financial affairs of the college. We always felt secure in placing these affairs in his hands, and we were not disappointed. Besides his services as treasurer, he also rendered valuable services as a trustee, always faithful in attendance, and giving his full and entire interest to the matters in hand; wise in counsel, kind and genial in manner, and friendly in att.i.tude, he was a peculiarly attractive co-laborer. He should be written down as one who loved his fellow men.

His decease in March, 1907, at the age of 82, was universally lamented.

We note the fact that Williston Hall was completed as a boarding hall and dormitory for young ladies in 1881-1882, and the college building, which had been occupied more or less since September, 1868, for school room purposes, was enlarged in 1884 by an addition which simply duplicated the original building.

In 1882 the Rev. E. H. Avery, D. D., who had succeeded Dr. Phelps in the pastoral charge at Vinton when Dr. Phelps came to Cedar Rapids to be president of Coe College, came into the board of trustees, and was elected president of the board. He remained in this office until 1899, when he removed to California where he subsequently died. Dr. Avery's long administration of seventeen years was marked by his qualities of cool, calm judgment, enlightened understanding, and zealous attention to educational interests. He was punctual in attendance at the many meetings of the board, and of the executive committee, coming down from Vinton many times at much sacrifice of personal comfort and the laying aside of his pastoral work, and during that long and eventful period, marked by so many changes from 1882-1899, it was fortunate that we had so wise and safe a president of our board as Eugene H. Avery.

On the 13th of May, 1887, the Rev. James Marshall, D. D., was elected president of the College to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Dr. Phelps. Dr. Marshall was an alumnus of Yale University and had spent several years in New York City in city missionary work. He entered upon the duties of his office in September, 1887. He brought with him to these duties a mind matured and well rounded, a culture produced by wide reading and considerable foreign travel and residence, and an intelligent appreciation of college work. He had a strong sense of the value of discipline in college life. He was much a.s.sisted by his cultured wife, whose attractive personality won for her a valued place in the hearts of the students. Mrs. Marshall died in Cedar Rapids after a brief illness in November, 1892, leaving her husband sadly alone, for there were no children in the household. Dr. Marshall labored on bravely in his work until September, 1896, when, just at the opening of the college year, he was stricken down with pneumonia, and his death occurred after a few days amidst circ.u.mstances of peculiar solitude.

His funeral services were conducted at the First Presbyterian church of this city, September 13, 1896, and the address on that occasion was given by Dr. J. Milton Greene, then of Ft. Dodge, Iowa, now of Havana, Cuba, and a life long friend of the deceased. Dr. Marshall is the only one of the presidents of our college who has departed this life, and he died literally in the harness. In summing up his life and work we avail ourselves of the words which it was our privilege to report to the board at their meeting October 13, 1896:

"He was a man of power, the power that is born of the possession of a high ideal and consecrated purpose and unusual faculty to organize, and an unflagging zeal to execute and perform. He never spared himself. He forgot himself, but he never forgot the college. His works do follow him. These works which remain with us are the strong and united faculty which he organized, and which he inspired with his own high ideals, the n.o.ble standard of scholars.h.i.+p to which he elevated the curriculum, the beautiful campus, which is a wonder of improvement when we contrast it with what it was when his hands first touched it, and the example of industry and energy which his life has furnished. It seems pathetic that he should have pa.s.sed away without seeing the fulfillment of the hopes he so dearly cherished, and the plans be so wisely formulated. But it is a common thing in this world that one should sow and another reap.

One conceives the building of the house, but leaves it to another to build it. Yet no one ever thinks that the former lives in vain."

The college pursued its work in the year 1896-7 without a president, and it is a happiness to note the fact that owing to the harmonious cooperation of a devoted faculty and a sympathetic body of students, the year pa.s.sed with much smoothness and prosperity.

On the 5th of August, 1897, the Rev. Samuel B. McCormick, D. D., was called to the presidency of the college from the pastoral charge of the Presbyterian church of Omaha, Neb. He entered upon the duties of his office with the opening of the college year 1897. He soon made it manifest that a man of great vigor was directing its affairs. He went at his work with a spirit almost fierce, and he kept at it with a persistency that compelled things to come his way. His energy was contagious, and his colleagues in the faculty and on the board of trustees felt it from the day he came among us until the day he left.

The pace he kept was not always pleasurable, but it was always fruitful. It was during the seven years of his administration that great growth of the college was experienced in the size of the faculty, the number of the student body and increase of college buildings. The financial campaign that was undertaken to secure the $25,000 promised by Mr. Ralph Vorhees, of New Jersey, on condition of our raising $125,000 additional, was successfully conducted when Dr. McCormick was president. It was he who brought to Coe College the Rev. H. H. Maynard as field secretary, and the two men worked together with congenial vehemence and brought things to pa.s.s. Among the things which were brought to pa.s.s was the present college gymnasium a very useful and attractive a.s.set.

In the summer of 1904 Doctor McCormick was invited back to his old home in western Pennsylvania to become the chancellor of the Western University of Pennsylvania, located at Pittsburg, and which is now called the University of Pittsburg. This invitation was attractive to him chiefly because it seemed evidently to offer him unusual opportunity of enlarged usefulness in the educational field to which he had devoted his life. Yet it plainly caused him a struggle to sever his connection with Coe College, and with Cedar Rapids as a city. For in the seven years of his life here, he had become strongly attached to his friends and to the community which were strongly attached to him.

He also left this portion of our country, the Mississippi Valley which was to his mind so full of hope and promise, with great reluctance. Yet it was clear to him that he ought to go, and we parted from him with much regret September 15, 1904.

Marshall Hall and the Athletic Field House were erected in the summer of 1900, the latter the gift of Mr. C. B. Soutter. The College Gymnasium was completed in 1904.

During the year following the departure of Doctor McCormick the duties of the presidency were discharged by Dr. Stephen W. Stookey. Dr.

Stookey was an alumnus of Coe of the cla.s.s of 1884, the first cla.s.s to be graduated after Coe became a college. He was always from the beginning greatly attached to the college, and after teaching a while in the schools of Manchester, Iowa, he returned to his alma mater in 1892 to become professor of the natural sciences. From that time onward he filled a place of very distinguished usefulness in the inst.i.tution, commanding the high respect of his fellow workers in the faculty, the student body, and the board of trustees, until 1908 when he left Coe to a.s.sume the office of the presidency of Bellevue College, Nebraska, a position which he still occupies very much to the benefit of that school of learning.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BAPTIST CHURCH, CENTRAL CITY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD BARN BUILT IN THE '50s AT CENTRAL CITY Now Used as a Store and Post Office]

At this point of our story we note the fact that at the October meeting of the board of trustees in 1899, Mr. C. B. Soutter was made the president of the board. Mr. Soutter had been a resident of Cedar Rapids since 1881 when he came from New York city to fill the very responsible place in the business house of T. M. Sinclair & Company made vacant by the death of Mr. Sinclair. The duties of the management of the large packing house were very onerous and responsible, yet Mr. Soutter was able, besides fulfilling them, to give much of his valuable time to his duties as a trustee of the college, to which he was called in 1883. He had already, therefore, for many years, shown marked interest in college work and adaptation for it by taste and culture when in 1899 he was felt to be the logical successor to Dr. Avery in the presidency. He entered at once with zeal and intelligence upon his new and enlarged duties. He was unintermitting in his attention to them until he resigned his office in October, 1907, and, greatly to the regret of his brethren, withdrew from the board of trustees.

On the 23rd of December, 1904, Dr. William Wilberforce Smith was chosen president of the college to succeed Doctor McCormick. Doctor Smith was not a clergyman as his predecessors had been and as. .h.i.therto has been usual with American colleges in their selection of a president. He had studied at Princeton Theological Seminary, and had been graduated therefrom, but he had never been ordained to the ministry. He had followed the vocation of a teacher, and was called to the presidency of Coe from the Berkely School in New York city, a school of high grade for boys. He entered upon his duties as president of Coe College at the opening of the college year 1905, and remained with the college for three years. He is now occupying the very honorable position of head of the School of Commerce and Finance in the James Millikin University, Decatur, Illinois.

His administration was marked by three notable events, all of which indicate stages of great progress in the history of the college: First, the successful launching of the plans to put the college on the list of the accepted colleges of the Carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching. This took place near the close of the year 1908. Second, the attainment of the Science Hall, given by Mr. Carnegie at the cost to him of $63,500 upon the condition that the college raise $45,000 for its maintenance. Third, the successful completion of a financial campaign whereby a conditional grant of $50,000 was obtained from the General Board of Education [John D. Rockefeller Foundation] on the condition that the college pay all its debts and raise in various funds the sum of $200,000 additional for endowment and buildings. This campaign increased the a.s.sets of the college by $293,000.

It was during this campaign that the services of the Rev. Dr. H. H.

Maynard, field secretary of the college, were so peculiarly strenuous and so uniquely valuable. Dr. Maynard merits most honorable mention for his bold conceptions and his heroic execution of them, wherein the word "fail" was expunged from his dictionary. Dr. Maynard left Coe College in the summer of 1908 and has become the vice president and field secretary of the University of Omaha, Nebraska.

In the year 1908-9 which followed the resignation of Dr. Smith, the college was governed by a commission of four members of the faculty, who distributed among themselves the duties of administration. The result was a smooth and prosperous year, although at the end of it all parties concerned were looking very wishfully towards a filling of the vacant office of the presidency. At length, on the 7th of September, 1909, Rev. Dr. John Abner Marquis, pastor of the Presbyterian church at Beaver, Pa., was chosen to be the head of the college. After due deliberation he decided to accept the call, and on the 12th of October, 1909, he was presented to the students and friends of the college as the president-elect. He returned to Beaver to sever his relations with the church there, with the Presbytery and synod, and he came in December and entered upon his duties. On the 13th of June, 1910, in connection with the exercises of commencement week, Doctor Marquis was formally inaugurated president of Coe College. This was the first time in which formal exercises of this character were observed in connection with setting a president over the inst.i.tution, and the occasion was greeted accordingly with peculiar pleasure, and large use was made of it to perfect a relations.h.i.+p which it is believed augurs great things to the advantage of the college. Doctor Marquis has been so short a time in his office that it would be too soon to speak of what he has done, but it is not too soon to say that in the brief period in which he has been president of the college, he has already awakened the fondest hopes and most steadfast convictions that under his administration the inst.i.tution over which he presides is destined to move forward to a future which will far surpa.s.s any measure of size and value that it ever attained in the past.

On the same week in last June in the midst of the commencement season which witnessed the inauguration of Doctor Marquis, ground was broken on the college campus by Mr. Robert S. Sinclair for a chapel in memory of his father, Mr. Thomas M. Sinclair. This memorial chapel was prepared for almost thirty years ago very soon after Mr. Sinclair's death, but the execution of the purpose has been long delayed. But now at last we see our thoughts and wishes about to be realized in the erection of a building which shall from its beauty and the purposes which it is destined to fulfill be a worthy monument to keep in perpetual remembrance a man, who, in his life-time, did so much to make it possible for us to have a college at all.

We have now accomplished the purpose for which we set out. We have, to the best of our ability, traced the history of Coe College from its beginnings to the present time. We have followed the Inst.i.tution from its fountain head in the heart and home of the Rev. Williston Jones, when a handful of young men gathered in his parlor for such elementary instruction as could be given by the zealous pastor and his wife, down to the present day, when more than three-hundred students, young men and maidens, gather in the halls of buildings erected and equipped for college purposes, and one of these buildings at least prepared and provided along the most progressive modern lines, the equal of any in the land. Today the faculty of thirty-two persons conducts the teaching of a curriculum which embraces every department of learning that is recognized as belonging to a liberal education. And these teachers have been prepared for their work by special training and selection.

The endowment also has grown from the paltry sum of $1,500, furnished in 1853 by Daniel Coe, to the sum of $450,000, and the total amount of money invested in the plant known as Coe College must exceed $750,000, which is surely no mean aggregate.

In the course of our history, we have seen a feeble rivulet sink at least twice in the sands only to reappear with new volume and freshness further down the bed of the stream. And we see it now a river of such dimension that it cannot disappear again. We have seen the work of the heroic men who have n.o.bly spent upon the college in the days when it sorely needed their help. Such men were not wanting in the days of emergency but were sent from G.o.d. They could not have known as we now can plainly see what they were doing. They wrought in faith what it is now given us to possess in sight. They sowed in weakness what we now reap in power. Surely the lesson is plain and impressive; surely the teaching of this historical sketch is to the purport that we with our larger resources should enrich the inst.i.tution which they sustained and promoted in their poverty.

They could not see how much worth their while it was to give and labor for Cedar Rapids Collegiate Inst.i.tute, for Parsons Seminary, for Coe Collegiate Inst.i.tute, for the inst.i.tution was then but a tender, feeble shoot, whose future development was an uncertainty. We now can plainly see that it is well worth our while to give and labor for Coe College, for it is now one of the most potent and promising of all the colleges in this Mississippi valley. And every intelligent mind who has any powers of observation and has any experience of college work, knows full well that as colleges grow and prosper they need more financial help. It would be the extreme of selfishness and folly to take the view that Coe College is now strong enough and rich enough to advance on its present a.s.sets to meet its future.

Its needs are greater than ever. But it presents itself not as a beggar or a suppliant, but as a splendid opportunity for investment. It presents itself as the finest possible place to locate something to be spent in buildings, equipment, and endowment whereby in the course of the years, and we may even say the centuries to come, this money can go on yielding the richest conceivable dividends in the preparation for life and leaders.h.i.+p of those of our choicest young men and women who shall come hither from near and far to enjoy the privileges of a college education. And thus as we close, our history becomes really an appeal.