Page:A Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury.pdf/189

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ADDRESS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH.
175

you; tell me how you are, and how about the prospects and everything connected with the University of the South. God bless you, my friend!

Yours,
M. F. Maury.

To the same.

My dear Bishop, Observatory, Sept. 15th, 1860.

Last Thursday Mrs. Maury and myself, with two of the children, returned from a visit to Hasbrouck and Niagara Falls, where we found your letter of the 3rd to help make our hearts glad. It was Mrs. M.'s first sight of the great cataract.

Take care of your health, my dear friend, for you are one of the men that your fellow-citizens cannot spare just now. I am glad to see you giving signs of returning health, but am sorry to recognise in these the marks of a health by no means completely restored.

I had fixed upon the 15th October for England, but your Corner-stone will put it off, I reckon, till the 20th. I feel as though I must be present when the foundations of this great University are to be laid. It is an institution in the success of which I feel the most lively interest. If I possess influence or weight with the public, it is a talent loaned, and this is precisely one of the occasions on which I ought to put it out.

So if you think my coming and my speech will help you on in your good and noble work, here I am—count on me, my friend.

If I leave here on Monday morning; can I be with you in time on Wednesday?

Yours truly,
M. F. Maury.

Maury's address at the laying of the corner-stone of the University of the South, on the Sewanee Mountains in East Tennessee, was delivered at the request of Bishop Otey on Nov. 30th. 1860.