Papers covering preparations for the first commencement at Cornell include, among the notes of acceptance or regret, one from James Abram Garfield, declining to speak but hoping to attend. The Whites spent July and August on the North Shore of Massachusetts, and there were frequent reports of Ithaca news from Ezra Cornell, Daniel Willard Fiske, William Channing Russel, and Goldwin Smith. In the autumn White received letters from Folwell, Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury, Mrs. Horace Mann, and Bayard Taylor on educational matters and many others in response to an attack on Mr. Cornell in the New York World. On November 15 trustee William Kelly discussed Cornell's handling of the land grant scrip and the unfair story about it in the Rochester Union. Administration of the university in its second year fills the remainder of the reel, culminating in a number of resignations accepted by the trustees in June. An interesting report on forest conservation is dated November 29, and a witty note from Lowell was written December 12.