xt7ghx15n565_125 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7ghx15n565/data/mets.xml https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7ghx15n565/data/0000ua001.dao.xml unknown 9.56 Cubic Feet 33 boxes archival material 0000ua001 English University of Kentucky Property rights reside with the University of Kentucky. The University of Kentucky holds the copyright for materials created in the course of business by University of Kentucky employees. Copyright for all other materials has not been assigned to the University of Kentucky. For information about permission to reproduce or publish, please contact the Special Collections Research Center.  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. James K. Patterson papers Programs, Patterson Memorial Dedication text Programs, Patterson Memorial Dedication 2024 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7ghx15n565/data/0000ua001/Box_12/Folder_10/Multipage12278.pdf 1933-1934 1934 1933-1934 section false xt7ghx15n565_125 xt7ghx15n565 jjamez ifiennehg fiaiiemnn

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SPONSORED BY TI-I'li UNIVERSITY OF KICN'I‘I‘CKY
:\L[T.\L\"l ASSOCIA'I'ION

LAFAYETTE HOTEL
LEXINGTON. KENTUCKY
MARCH 25. 193?:

 

  

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l' R I-ZS’II) I’VT ()I" 'I III' l,'\'I\‘IiI{SI'I'\' OF KENTUCKY

THE SPIRIT OF
IAMES KENNEDY PATTERSON

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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

DEDICATION

JAMES KENNEDY PATTERSON
MEMORIAL STATUE

UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

FRIDAY, JUNE 1, 1934

 

  

 

 

 

 

I)El)l(l;\'l'l()N
01* THE
JAMES KENNEDY l’:\'l"l‘ERS()N

MEMORIAL S'l‘.-\'|‘[Jli

 

 

 

  

    

    

THE PATTERSON MEMORIAL COMMI’PI‘EE

ALEXANDER BONNYMAN, Chairman

CHARLES N. MANNING, Secretary-Treasurer

PRESIDENT FRANK L. l\’l(IVEY, Chairman of EXCt‘lllthf (lonnnittee
MRS. FRANK 1.. ADAMS (Mabel H. Pollitt)

MISS MARGARET 1. KING

RODMAN \VILEY

DEAN T. T. JONES

PROFESSOR E. W. RANNELI 5

CHARLES R. BROCK was Chairman until his death in M28

PROFESSOR VVAIJI‘IZR K. PA'rrERSON mm a member until hiS
death in 1932

CABLEGRAM 'ro PRESIDENT McVEY:
“Paris, France, May 3], l934. Regret not with you for
unveiling Of monument to my beloved l'riend, President Pat-

terson. CongratulationS and greetings to you and Committee.

“:\I,l€x;\Nl)liR BoNNrMAN.”

PROGRAM COMM I'I'TI‘ZE

PROFESSOR R. l). McIN'rYRE, Chairman
PROFESSOR E. A. BUREAU

DOCTOR H. H. DOWNINO

 

 

  

 

 

PROGRAM

l’k()l~'l{SS()R (Licokmc RotataR'rs, Presiding

ill\'t)(:lli()l1 . . . . . . DOCTOR Emu-1R ELLflVUR’l'HSNUDDY

Professor of (Christian Duttt‘ine, 'l'ransrlutnia (2011ch

Presentation to the University of Kentucky
01' the James Kennedy Patterson Menin-
rial Statue . . . . . . . . MR. CHARLES N. MANNING

Set'retar) -'l‘reasurer ()I~ the Memorial (lonnnittee

Unveilingufththatue . . . . . ELINURMANNIM;[sues

Art'eptam‘e (if the Statue fur the

University nl' Ix'enttu‘ky . . PRl-ZSIIHCN l' FRANK LIiRoNn Mt:\"m'

lntmduetion of Dr. Augustus Lukeman, St’llilHOl‘

of the Menmrial Statue.

Hedit'amry Address . . 'l‘tn-t HONORABLE SENATOR A. O. S'I’ANIJW

MH'IIICI' (étn'ernm‘ and Senator ()f the (itmnnnnwealth of Kentucky

Benediction . . . . . . . . DOCTOR SNontn'

 

 

 

   
  
    
  
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

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THE INVOCATION

DR. ELMICR Euswokm SMnnn’

UR Heavenly Father, amidst the beauty and quiet of this
0 open sanctuary of thine, we invoke Thy blessing upon our
service. We thank Thee for our national heritage, wrought
out through the faith and sacrifice of the leaders whom Thou
raised up to guide our nation in the days that are past. We
bless Thee for the pioneers who in courage and devotion laid
the foundations of our own commonwealth and into the fruits
of whose labors we today enter. Above all, we thank Thee
for men and women of the past into Whose hearts thou didst
put the great ideal of education for all the people. May we
conserve our noble heritage that comes to us from so many
sources and pass it on to coming generations, enriched by our
own contribution. Especially do we thank Thee for this
University and for him whose name we memorialize today.
We are pleased to acknowledge our everlasting obligation to
him for the courage, devotion, administrative skill and high
ideals of education that marked his whole life. We speak not
only for ourselves, but for the great host which no man can
number, whose lives have been influenced for good by this
great man.

Prosper this University today, we pray Thee, in the whole
round of its varied and useful enterprises. May he who
administers its affairs, and they who serve under his leader-
ship, enjoy thy guidance and support in the heavy burdens
that fall to their lot in these difficult times. Awaken our
citizenship to the incomparable value of education—the life
of our commonwealth.

Bless all who have had a part in this memorial—the artist
who by his genius has embodied so beautifully in bronze the
personality whom we honor today, the contributors who by
their means have made this memorial possible, and all on this
program who by their contributions are to bring this enter—
prise to a happy close.

We face the future with confidence, our Heavenly Father.
thoroughly persuaded that what Thou hast begun in those
who lived before us Thou wilt bring to successful completion

 

  

  

    

 

through us and those who are to live after us. Accept, we
pray Thee, this afternoon our devotion and our service in the
name of Christ our Lord, Amen.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY THE CHAIRMAN

We have met to honor and to perpetuate the memory of a
man who is dear to those of us gathered here and who is
honored by a host of citizens of Kentucky. Many who know
somewhat intimately the early history of the University like
to think of him as its father. After the loss of his son, he
said that the University had since been to him a son, and
upon it he lavished his affections and worked for it with all
of his energy and great ability. Between him and many a
student there developed a relationship that was like unto that
of a beneficent father and an affectionate son, a relationship
that greatly enriched the lives of those students.

He dreamed of a state university conceived in the fullest
meaning of the term. He longed to see its full fruition, but
it was not to be, for he was compelled to spend his time in
laying the foundations, which time and again had to be
defended against attacks of bitter enemies, and once had
to be rebuilt after being almost demolished. His was an un-
conquerable spirit that would fight alone for what he thought
was right, and against odds that would have driven lesser
souls to surrender.

At the end of forty-one years of service he left not only a
solid foundation, but he saw growth that must have cheered
his soul in his last days in his home upon the campus which
he had occupied for forty years.

Alumni and faculty members of the days of President
Patterson have a feeling of great gratification that this en-
during memorial is being dedicated to him, and I am sure
all others present join with us in this expression of admiration
and affection.

Mr. Charles N. Manning, Secretary and Treasurer of the
Patterson Memorial Statue Committee and President of the
Security Trust Company, the Executor and Trustee under
the will of President Patterson, was one of those students
whose lives were touched and inspired by the life of President
Patterson. He has a large part in this work of love that is

 

  

 

 mu.“ ~.-. A »

 

 

 

 

being consummated today and it is highly fitting that he
should have been chosen to present the statue. I take pleasure
in presenting Mr. Manning, who will present the James
Kennedy Patterson Memorial Statue to the University of
Kentucky, after which it will be unveiled by Mr. Manning’s
granddaughter, little Miss Elinor Manning Isaacs.

PRESENTATION OF THE STATUE

Mk. CHARLES N. MANMM;

Mr. Chairman, President McVey, Dr. Lukeman, Members
of the Faculty, Officers and Friends of the University of
Kentucky: 1 bring you greeting and felicitation from the
Patterson Memorial Committee.

Ten years ago, almost to the minute, a group of men and
women who were connected with or friends of this University
assembled near this spot and with words of admiration, appre—
ciation and affection dedicated the residence in which James
Kennedy Patterson had lived for many years, and in which
he had died, as a shrine to his memory. The tablet affixed to
its wall recites that from 1869 to 1910 he was the President
of this institution and bears the quotation from Virgil:
“Haec olim meminisse juvabit"—hereafter it will be a delight
to remember these things.

And indeed it is a delight, Mr. Chairman, to realize that
the fame of this great man has increased with the flight of
years and with the growth of this University, of which it may
be truly said he was the father, for which he labored so long
and so zealously, upon which he bestowed his pride and affec—
tion while living, and to which he gave virtually his entire
estate at his death.

The foundations which he laid were so broad and strong
that his successors have been able to build upon them a greater
institution than the means at his command permitted him
to erect; and the greatness of him upon whom his mantle
has fallen is attested not alone by the additions which he has
made to the achievements of his distinguished predecessor,
important as they are, but likewise by his earnest and con—
stant efforts to honor his memory and to preserve and make
vital the traditions which he has bequeathed. And doubtless

 

 

 

  

  

    

other friends and defenders of popular education throughout
Kentucky, in this moment of its distress and peril, remember—
ing the battles fought and won in its behalf by this indomit—
able Scotsman in earlier days, would join with the head of
this institution in a paraphrase of Wordsworth’s apostrophe
to Milton and exclaim: “Patterson, thou shouldst be living at
this hour; Kentucky has need of thee!”

For many years it has been the dream and aspiration of
many of the alumni of the University of Kentucky, the
former pupils and steadfast friends and admirers of James
Kennedy Patterson, that a statue to his memory might be
erected on this campus. The subject had been discussed prior
to the death of Dr. Patterson, and in his will he bequeathed
one thousand dollars to aid in the project. When the “Greater
Kentucky” campaign was inaugurated, it was stipulated that
5 per cent of the subscriptions should be allocated to that
purpose, and shortly after the death of Dr. Patterson, chielly
due to the initiative and persistence of Walter K. Patterson,
whose admiration and affection for his distinguished elder
brother knew no bounds, the Patterson Memorial Committee
was formed to solicit, collect, conserve and apply funds in
the consummation “so devoutly wishec.” The Honorable
Charles R. Brock, a native of Laurel County, Kentucky, a
pupil and devoted friend of Dr. Patterson and an alumnus
of this institution, then a distinguished lawyer of Denver,
Colorado, who had conceived and first publicly mentioned a
memorial statue to James Kennedy Patterson on the campus
of the University of Kentucky, was the first chairman of the
committee and rendered untiring service to it until his death.
besides making a generous cash contribution. Associated
with him on the committee were Miss Mabel H. Pollitt (now
Mrs. Frank L. Adams), Professor Walter K. Patterson, Dr.
Frank L. McVey, Dean T. T. Jones, Honorable Rodman Wiley,
and this speaker. After the death of. Mr. Brock, Mr. Alexan-
der Bonnyman, of Knoxville, Tennessee, who had been one
of the earliest pupils and a life-long friend of the former
President, was induced to accept the chairmanship of the
committee. His energy and business talents, as well as his
personal generosity, greatly facilitated and expedited the
work of the committee, and it is deeply regretted that one of
his frequent European trips has prevented his presence here

 

 

  

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
    

today and his participation in these exercises. After the
death of Walter K. Patterson, Miss Margaret I. King and
Professor E. W. Rannells were added to the committee, and
they have by their wise counsel and cheerful cooperation
greatly aided in the completion of its labors. Dr. Frank L.
McVey, President of the University, was chairman of the
Executive Committee, and his sympathy, his taste, and his
wisdom informed and guided the committee in all its tasks.
It is no less a pleasure than a duty to express our grateful
acknowledgment of his unfailing patience, tact and interest.

The will of Professor Walter K. Patterson, whose opinions
and wishes during his life were naturally very influential with
the committee, directed his executor to add five thousand
dollars to the fund for the monument whenever it should
amount to fifteen thousand dollars.

After his death, in correspondence and personal interviews
, with Dr. Augustus Lukeman, one of the most gifted and most
famous of living sculptors, the committee ascertained that,
through the generosity of certain friends of his, it would be
possible, without further delay, to augment the funds in the
hands of the committee to the required sum of fifteen thou—
sand dollars, whereby the bequest of Professor Walter K.
Patterson would become immediately available and the statue
might be promptly erected. And so, on June 21, 1933 a con—
tract was made by the committee with Dr. Lukeman for the
statue. Mr. Maury J. Crutcher was appointed supervisor of
construction.

How well the committee and those associated with them
and the sculptor have performed their task, you may shortly
judge; for it is neither my province nor my purpose to
attempt to express the significance or the inspiration, nor yet
an appreciation, of the life of him whom this statue com-
memorates. That privilege has been given, that duty assigned
to one who is, of all men living, perhaps best qualified by
acquaintance, by learning, by association and cooperation,
as well as by feeling and eloquence, to discharge it. None
better than he, few so well as he, can

“Hammer the golden day until it lies
A glimmering plate, to fill with memories.”

 

....

 

 

  

 

It is my part and my great privilege and pleasure, Mr.
President, on behalf of the Patterson Memorial Committee
and of all who have contributed of their time, their labor or
their means to the fruition of this day, to present to the Uni—
versity of Kentucky, as a token of their admiration, appre—
ciation, affection, gratitude and pride, and as a symbol of
those unseen things which are eternal, this statue of that
great scholar, great teacher, great statesman, great man,
President for more than forty years of this great institution,
which we hope will ever stand as a memorial to the useful
and consecrated life of James Kennedy Patterson.

(The audience standing, the American [lugs veiling llie statue
were withdrawn.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'l‘m: CHAIRMAN: The University of Kentucky is indeed for—
tunate to have a man to continue the work of President
Patterson who has the highest conception of the functions of
a university in the State, and whose high scholarship and
rare gift of executive ability have inspired the confidence of
his faculty and constituency and have enabled him to guide
the University in a remarkable development during his in-
cumbency. We trust him in these troublous times to lead in

 

    

 

 

  

  

    

 

    

the struggle through which the institution is passing as did
President Patterson in the days that tried his spirit.

I have the honor to present President McVey, who will
accept the Memorial Statue on behalf of the University.

ACCEPTANCE OF THE PATTERSON STATUE FOR
THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUKY

BY l’lucsmlcN'l' FRANK ll. i\'I(.‘VICY

It has been a good many years since the proposal to erect
the memorial to President Patterson was first made. Through
the interest of many alumni and friends, together with the
gift made by Professor Walter Patterson, and the work of
the chairman of the committee, Mr. Alexander Bonnyman,
this beautiful statue has become an actuality. It is with
pleasure that I accept it on behalf of the University of Ken-
tucky. There are three reasons to be given to those who made
this beautiful gift possible: first, because it is an expression
of appreciation, generosity and love of a large number of
men and women; second, because it is a beautiful expression
of the sculptor’s art; and third, because it carries the spirit of
James Kennedy Patterson to all beholding it, and will serve
as a constant reminder of what he did for the University, and
in consequence will bring to the University staff, student
body, and alumni a new understanding of what the University
is and of the service he rendered.

INTRODUCTION OF THE SCULPTOR OF
THE MEMORIAL STATUE

'I‘IH‘: CHAIRMAN: The man who can put into enduring form
not only the physical outline of a human being but can make
it seem as though the spirit were inhabiting and shining
through the form, possesses genius that contributes to the
perpetuation of the noblest qualities of man.

The sculptor of the memorial statue of President Patterson
has a long list of notable creations to his credit which I shall
not attempt to enumerate. He is known to Kentuckians
through two other pieces of work—a bas—relief of Daniel
Boone at Paris and a portrait bust of Jefferson Davis at

 

  

 

Transylvania College. I have the pleasure of presenting Dr.
Augustus Lukeman, whom we are delighted to have with us.

(Dr. Lukeinan rose and acknowledged the introduction with
a modest bow; then, extending his right arm toward the statue.
said: ”This is my speech")

'1‘th CHAIRMAN: Among the friends of the University there
has been none more constant and loyal than he who will
deliver the dedicatory address. He has manifested his friend-
ship both as a private citizen and as Governor of the
Commonwealth.

Senator Stanley was a student in the University and was
another of those upon whom a lasting and benefieent influence
was exerted by President Patterson that left in him a life-long
admiration and affection for the President. Very fittingly
did the University bestow upon Senator Stanley the Honorary
Degree of Doctor of Laws in recognition of his attainments
and of his public services to the State. No more appropriate
selection could have been made of a speaker to deliver the
dedicatory address.

I take great pleasure in presenting Honorable A. 0. Stanley.

DEDICATORY ADDRESS

THE HONORAHLl-Z A. O. S'I'ANtJ-zr

Former Governor and United States Senator
of the Commonwealth of Kentucky

Mr. Chairman, Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: An
honor it is and a coveted privilege to be permitted today by
your gracious leave to pay a deserved tribute to the great
President of this University.

Monuments—monuments after all are for the living, not
the dead, and he whose semblance is cunningly wrought
before you by the sculptor’s art needs no such assurance of
an enduring fame. Twice ten thousand aspiring youths, of
whose plastic lives he was at once the architect and the
inspiration, have eternally inscribed upon throbbing hearts
and upon the tablets of love and memory the inefl‘aceable
story of his nobility and his worth, and that proud and tender
tradition, handed down from father to son, shall endure so

..

 

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long as yonder bronze shall defy the wasting tooth of time.
For him there is no need of “storied urn or animated bust.”
The appropriate and eternal monument to the memory of
James K. Patterson is this University. Its green and undu-
lating campus was acquired by his keen foresight. Its um-
brageous trees were planted by his tender hands and watered
by his loving care. The foundations of these imposing walls
were set by his skill, and by his untiring energy, his transcen-
dent genius and his indomitable will were laid, one stone
upon another.

Were I asked “Where is the monument to James K. Patter-
son ?”, with one hand I would point to this University and with
the other to the accomplished manhood of the Commonwealth
of Kentucky.

On the 19th of June, 1842, a penniless emigrant, Andrew
Patterson, with his good wife, Janet, and a family of small
children—the eldest, James, hopelessly crippled—landed in
the harbor of New York. For long weary months in the mills
of New England and New York in vain he sought for employ—
ment in the only trade he knew, that of “block cutter.” Then
the poor family are swept westward toward the thinly peopled
frontiers of the new world.

President Patterson himself has given us a graphic and
pathetic picture of the hard, hard life of Andrew Patterson
and his family out there in an Indiana clearing. Says Presi-
dent Patterson:

“My father, whose health was never robust, knew little
or nothing about farming. Scottish villages and calico
printing establishments do not furnish the best training
for a man who at forty-two years of age is expected to
take up a remote uncleared farm and make a living
thereon. * * *

“Hence it was that more and more upon the energy,
untiring industry and practical economy of my mother
depended the upbringing of the family. * * *

“My mother was anxious not simply to keep her family
respectable but to keep them just a little better than her
neighbors. The making and the mending, the cooking
and the dairy work, the washing and the ironing, the
direction of much of the farm work, all fell to her lot.

 

 

 

  

  

   

For weeks at a time during busy seasons of the year she
was up until midnight, snatching a few hours of sleep
when she could. She rarely expressed the regret that I
knew she must often feel at having left ‘her ain bonnie
hoose in Alexandria.’ The majority of the inhabitants
were quite illiterate. * * * My father could go and enjoy
them and laugh with them and at them. But not she.
Even had she felt the inclination, which she did not, the
round of household duties would have prevented her.
She missed the companionship of Scottish folk, she miss-
ed the village Kirk, but she never complained.”

And so in the desolation of a western wilderness, her infirm
spouse, her children and her God “became the ocean to the
river of her thought.” Ah! my countrymen, that picture
recalls the Corsican mother bearing her martial son upon a
couch emblazoned with the story of Aeneas and breathing
into his aspiring soul an ambition that in after years did
shake the world; the noble Virginia mother with her manly
son at her knee, imbuing his plastic youth with that invincible
love of truth and duty that afterwards made him the beloved
and revered Father of his Country. Did you ever stop to think
that behind all this world’s immortals there stands such a
mother?

I remember thirty long years ago and more, when a young
congressman, I used to wander at night through the long
avenues of the most beautiful capital in the world and to stand
in the great circles where the wealth and genius of the nation
has been devoted to the perpetuation of the memory of her
deathless dead. There sits the jurist in his robes, and yonder
stands a statesman in the pose in which, in an elder and better
day, he was wont “the applause of listening senate to com-
mand;” and here the warrior and his horse instinct with fire,
catching the scent of battle from afar. And then I thought
that I could descry in the misty moonlight in the silence of the
night the shy, shrinking figure, modest as a nun, of some
grand and forgotten mother whose agony, whose labor and
whose sacrificial love had given her darling boy to his country
and to immortality.

As a senator I gave my support to the right of woman to a
full participation in the political activities of this country.

 

 

 

 

  

   

  

But you know, my friends, sometimes I can hardly repress a
commiserating smile when some ultra and pampered advocate
of feminism tells me about a statute that will open at last to
women an avenue for real usefulness, and all the time she
is fondling a Pomeranian pup. I tell you that woman’s
supernal power is the gift of Him whose loving kindness en-
dureth forever. In her heart and her soul God is enthroned;
her fathomless and sacrificial love is the holiest thing known
to men or angels, save alone the divine passion which filled
that broken heart pierced for your iniquities and mine two
thousand years ago upon the black brow of Golgatha. “God
could not be everywhere so he made mothers.”

I see this mother, many miles from the nearest school and
without a dime to pay the miserable stipend for her children’s
tuition even had the school been near. “My mother,” said
he, “suplemented the lack of schools by her own activities.
She taught the elder ones to read the Scriptures, to learn the
Shorter Catechism, and to memorize the Metrical Version of
the Psalms.”

Ah! go back, go back, 0, my friends, you who loved and
honored him as I did, and picture the maimed little lad who
in thirteen years had never been inside a school house, by
penury and humble birth at once oppressed; he amazes me,
I know not which the more, by his indomitable courage or his
insatiate hunger for knowledge. This little lad felt no self
pity, no sensitiveness about his physical condition. He never
repined, he never despaired, and on the puncheon floor of a
cabin in an Indiana clearing “he hitched his wagon to a star”
and onward and upward he pursued “the even tenor of his
way,” until he became President of a great University. And
yet, as I look today over that long, thorny, hard ascent it, is
literally sun-kissed by the radiance of his heroic spirit.

In his brave heart bubbled the crystal waters of Lowell’s

Fountain :

“Ceaseless aspiring
Ceaseless content
Darkness or sunshine
Thy element;
Glorious fountain
Let my heart be
Fresh, changeful, constant
Upward, like thee.”

 

 

 

 

  

 

  

And so, says his biographer, he searched for facts with the
eagerness of a bloodhound, marshalled them with the care of
a shepherd. Books wherever he could find them were literally
devoured. He traveled five miles to find a copy of Rollins’
Ancient History, and when the book had been sold he went
ten miles more and returned in triumph with four of the
volumes. The kindness of friends and the charity of kindred
permitted him at last to finish his course at Hanover College.
We see him graduated with the highest honors. The sweet
little mother is there, of course, and when they asked her if
she was not proud, in her Scottish accent and piety she replied,
“No prou, but thankfu.” The untaught teacher at seventeen
had entered the great profession which he was destined to
adorn.

I will tell you a little story. In these days he became
rapidly rich. He received fifty dollars for teaching four
months and paid a dollar a week board, and here is how he
made his budget. He says, “I discovered a cooking stove of
the newest type with the accompanying utensils for $17.50.
My mother had gone with my father to a neighboring county
to attend a sacramental service of an associate Presbyterian
Church, and upon her return she was greatly surprised to see
the cooking stove with the utensils already set up for use.”
And then the man who built a university declared that that
was one of the greatest triumphs of his life. Ah! poor, rich,
happy Cornelia, you have found your jewels; those bright
utensils more precious were to that mother’s heart than if
they had been wrought from hammered gold.

James K. Patterson did with his might what his hands
found to do. Every school was succeeded by a better one.
We find him the principal of the Presbyterian Academy at
Greenville, and passing rich with six hundred dollars a year.
“He had a ‘nigger’ to black his boots and go his errands and
take his messages in the comfortable home of Edward Rum—
sey ;” and they threw in a sweetheart, to boot.

And then he was Principal of the Preparatory Department
of Stewart College at Clarksville, Tennessee. In 1861 he was
elected Principal of the Transylvania Academy. Afterwards
he was a professor in Kentucky University, the successor of
Transylvania University.

 

 

 

 

  

The period from 1867 until 1875 is the most uneventful
period in the long and checkered career of James K. Patterson,
and to my mind it is the most happy and the most serene part
of his beautiful and noble life. Surrounded by a loving wife,
his young children and his books, it was nevertheless a period
of prodigious intellectual activity. That period of contem—
plation afforded him, as it afforded Plato and Mohammed and
Christ and all the immortals, that seclusion so essential to
contemplation, to grave, serious, continued thought. Then it
was that James K. Patterson “in the still air of delightful
studies” learned to “weigh and to consider” and so developed
the mighty man who presently shall emerge from his Cloister
like a winged butterfly from its chrysalis.

Sir Francis Bacon, when about the age of our young pro-
fessor, declared in a letter to his uncle, Lord Burleigh—and
Bacon was the greatest of English scholars—“I have taken all
knowledge for my province;” and James K. Patterson seems
at this time to have been fired by a like ambition. His
capacious mind was “an intellectual ocean whose waves touch—
ed all the shores of thought.” In the phrase of Lord Bacon,
books, books were literally “chewed and digested”; the shelves
of his library are filled with many “quaint and curious
volumes of forgotten lore,” tomes of history, the Scotch bards
prior to Burns, the sagas of the Saxons, obstruse treatises on
almost every conceivable subject and in many languages.
Unaided, he masters Sanskrit, and delves into higher mathe-
matics. Joyously and eagerly he goes to his studies like a
bee to the blossom, and, as the bee transforms the sweet of all
the flowers into its own honey, so this man assimilated the
wisdom of the sages of all the ages until they became a part,
an integral part of his intellectual being. The most intense,
the most severe concentration was to him not so much a labor
as an irresistible impulse. Says Lord Byron, “There are quick
spirits who can tire of naught but rest.” Such was Patterson.
History made him wise, mathematics subtle, philosophy pro—
found, and all the natural sciences revealed to him the hidden
forces and mysteries of nature. His perfect mastery of the
classics afforded him a vocabulary at once copious and ornate
and as polished as Parian marble.

Such was the man who, in 1878, was the President of
the A. & M. College of Kentucky. And such a college as it

 

   
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
 

  

  

 

was! It had a name, a charter, a yearly income of $9,900 and
nothing else. Says President Patterson:

“It must be borne in mind that when detached from
Kentucky University this College had nothing. It had
no farm for experimental or other purposes, no buildings,
no machinery, no geological or mineralogical cabinets, no
chemical or philosophical apparatus, no museums, no
farming or garden implements, no stock—absolutely
nothing.”

And upon this bare rock the aspiring optimist proposed to
build a mighty university. The people of the good city of
Lexington and Fayette County—God bless them l—responded
eagerly with heart and purse because they knew the character
and the capacity of that man. The contagion spread over the
Whole state. The people became thrilled with the thought of
a “State University,” an institution not circumscribed by any
bounds of section or creed, a temple of learning,

“Whose gates were open wide
And all who would might enter in
And no one was denied.”

In 1880 the Legislature appropriated one-half cent on the
hundred dollars to the maintenance of the University. The
attendance doubled. New ground was purchased, and the ring
of the mason’s trowel and of the carpenter’s hammer delight-
ed the soul of the young president. And then the storm cloud
broke. The other colleges of the State took fright at the
presence of this mighty man and the growth of this insti—
tution. Every conceiva