Among the routine correspondence reflecting White's ministerial duties in Berlin are reports from Cornell that administrative affairs had reached a crisis in his absence. White announced his intention to resign the university presidency rather than leave his Berlin post, and a letter to Gilman on July 8 and one from Tyler on September 21 indicated his search for a man for the presidency that he could happily endorse. Letters from the trustees urged him to return, and he eventually agreed to return to Ithaca before the beginning of fall term in 1881. In a letter on August 6 Fuertes sketched a handsome stone arch bridge that he proposed to erect across Cascadilla Gorge; on September 8 Julius Chambers reported the successful chartering of a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Cornell; and on October 30 Russel explained the sources of newspaper allegations of irreligion at the university. Many correspondents discussed the fall elections, and a former student predicted that Garfield would win and appoint White his Secretary of State. A Boston woman expressed concern for the Indians in a letter of November 17, and suggested that Carl Schurz was not the man to deal with problems of personal liberty and American citizenship.