Polk Family Papers Box 9 Document 13

- 5 (Letter to Bishop Elliott from Bishop Polk January 31st, 1857)

hope of inducing to give three perhaps four times that sum, indeed it is agreed on all hands if the persons chiefly concerned in this movement will push the matter, now it is warm, any amount of money that may be reasnnably asked for will be forthcoming. I had a long conversation with J.no. Preston of So. Ca. the other evening in regard to it. He fully endorsed it and accepts it as a scheme worth of the efforts of us all and will without doubt aid it liverally. He says it is the thing the south should take up and carry through upon the broadest scale and that there is no measuring its influence for good on the interest of the whole country. He has just returned from Germany where he has been to place his boys at Gottingen, and gave me some useful hints as to the organization and making of European Universities. Two points he would have us especially guard against Ist putting up expensive buildings (e. g. College and Smithosonian Institute) and at making the faculties dependant of fees. Both which we had already determined against. This last in I find universally regarded as of the first importance to make the Faculties independent absolutely, is indispensable to ensuring discipline.

I hope you will be able to make out this scrawl and at all events that you will let me hear from you on reply to so much as you may decipher.

How are Mrs. Elliott and the young fry. I hope very well. Please present my kind and respecful regards to her and remember me affectionately to the boys.

Mrs. Polk who I thought might follow me in a month or six weeks, is still in Pha. I sent back Fanny to bear her

- 6 (Letter to Bishop Elliott from Bishop Polk January 31st, 1857)

company. Mrs. P thinks her eyes improved very much, but she is not yet relieved entirely. I hope from what I hear she may have one of her eyes at least restored. Her general health has been very much improved. So that on the whole we hope to be requited for the separation. Say to your wife I advise her to take good care of her eyes, if not for her own at least for your sake. This widowhood is an awful business, they say and I believe it, there is no place so desolate as that where there is no lady, except that where one has been.

Very truly and affectionately Yours in Christ Leonidas Polk

The Rt. Rev. S. Elliott

P. S. Say to Haby, my young friend, I expect him the be very diligent and successful in his studies as we shall be wanting him for a professor or President of the University or some other dignity connected with it, when he gets old enough, especially as we have concluded to be done with the Yankee boys altogether.