i
SK7 We LS
etc
highest positions of trust in the land
under a most trying ordeal. | :
“ We are fortunate to-night in having
Frank Butterworth, the greatest foot-
ball coach Yale has ever had, with us
and he will, I am sure, gratify our great
desire to hear about Yale athletics, in
the second session of this evening.
However, I just want to touch on one
more point in the Yale character as
exemplified in the doings of our ath-
letic teams during the past year, and
that is ‘““Yale Courtesy.”
“Ror two years there had been a cool-
ness with Harvard. It was finally
taken off the ice, and the wire removed,
and when the cork popped on_ the
baseball field, out bubbled “Yale Cour-
tesy.” What was the result; the word
was passed “Don’t dishearten them
right at the start,” and so, like gentle-
men, our ball nine permitted Harvard
to win both games. Princeton being
in the same class, the same courtesy
was extended and we gave them both
games. Then we all went to Pough-
keepsie, again the word was passed
“Don’t dishearten them right at the
start.’ Harvard, handicapped by the
almost prohibitive duty on foreign
strokes, was valiantly struggling with
two kinds of the domestic article. Cor-
nell, with the impetuosity of youth,
rushed right ahead, and showed a mis-
erable lack of all common decency.
All the while we were coaching Har-
vard, hoping to pull her through to the
end, and have her at least be able to
say that her crew could row four miles,
but it was no go.
“Then we all went to Cambridge for
the football game and you all know the
result. “Don’t dishearten her right at
the start,’ but we certainly forgot our
courtesy, and did dishearten her at the
finish, and then there was “H” to pay,
and Harvard took them off. You may
have found them in the soup.
“In the meantime, Princeton had mis-
interpreted our courtesy on the base-
ball field in letting her win and came
up to New Haven. I could now prob-
ably make Butterworth ashamed of ever
having thought he could speak about
football, if I wanted to go on, but I
don’t want to. He’ll tell you all about
it. We have the tiger’s skin back of us
here and it is mounted too and reg-
istered.
“What is left of the evening is now
before you, and you may revel to your
heart’s content in the intellectual and
other treats which are to follow. Let
us leave behind, then, the material part
of the session, and board an open
trolley for Olympus; many of the gods
have become impatient.
“In the name of the Essex County
Yale Alumni Association, I now bid
you all, guests and members, graduate
and undergraduate, most heartily wel-
come, and propose the first bumper to
the first toast of every such gathering
as ours, ‘‘Yale.”
Prof. William Lyon Phelps, ’87, re-
sponded to the toast, “Yale.’”’ He said:
PROFESSOR PHELPS’S RESPONSE.
“Before beginning my remarks, I
wish to thank you all for the honor
you have done me in inviting me to
speak to the toast “Yale” and to speak
at Orange. It is always an honor to
speak for Yale anywhere, and it is an
especial honor to speak in such a hot-
bed of enthusiasm as Orange, though
judging by the liquid refreshment which
prevails here to-night, the name of the
town might well be changed to Grape-
fruit. The recent boycott on Yale has
thus far produced only two positive
results. First, it has given the profes-
sors something to talk about at alumni
meetings. This has proved a veritable
godsend. Nothing is more difficult
than to make a good after-dinner
speech, and nothing excites more con-
sternation in the mind’ of a member of
the Faculty than the immediate pros-
pect of having to make one. If you
doubt this fact, please scrutinize the
face of the gentleman who is to follow
me on the toast list, and while he is
speaking, examine the victim who is to
be his successor. You will not need a
personal introduction to either of these
gentlemen to recognize them. They
may easily be distinguished in this fes-
tive gathering by the extraordinary
solemnity of their faces. Thus the boy-
cott, by giving the professors a definite
subject to talk about, has accomplished
one beneficial result.
“The second result is equally fortu-
nate. The attack has bound together
in fraternal affection Yale University
and the City of New Haven. This was
whispered to me by a friend, and he
pointed for proof of it to the affection-
ate spirit manifested toward Yale at the
last meeting of New Haven’s city fath-
ers. Heretofore the relation existing
between the city and the College has
not been one of demonstrative friend-
ship. To see the board of councilmen
of the City of New Haven exhibiting
a warm friendship for Yale is a some-
what remarkable fact, and we have the
boycott to thank for it.
“While speaking of the boycott, let
me commend as fervently as I can the
golden silence of our honored and be-
loved President Dwight. The Voice
got a rise out of President Eliot and
it took a fall out of President Patton.
From President Dwight it has received
exactly what it deserves, calm, com-
plete, colossal contempt. The Voice is
well named.
terea nihil.’ I have always been told
that “speech is silver and silence is
golden.” The audible silence of the
President is certainly golden, and the
Voice is like free silver, for the more
we have of it the greater it depreciates
in value. To change the metaphor,
those people who have been clamoring
for dollar gas have at last got it.
While speaking of the President, allow
me to say that I cannot express in
words my affection and admiration for
him. -He is the head of the whole
organization, and like a true soldier |
stand by my captain. I am through
and through an administration man. I
believe in him. Outsiders cannot know
with what affectionate consideration he
has treated young members of the
Faculty like myself, but even if 1 owed
no personal debt to him, I should ad-
mire him for his young-hearted Yale
enthusiasm. His enthusiasm seems to
increase rather than diminish with
years, and I for one am glad of it.
“Another curious result of the recent
attacks on Yale has been the advertise-
ment that Harvard has received as a
conservator of morals. Now I do not
wish to say anything disrespectful of.
Harvard. I have been a student, a Fel-
low, and an Instructor at Harvard, and
no one can feel more admiration or
respect for Harvard University than |]
do. But, until recently, it had never
occurred to me that morality was Har-
vard’s long suit, and its present eleva-
~ Outside of the linguistic teachers at
tion by our prohibition friends to the
pinnacle of morality has a humor all
its own. A Harvard professor remark-
ed the other day that if the Voice was
as much mistaken about Yale badness
as it was about Harvard goodness, Yale
must be a veritable Paradise.
A DIFFERENT SORT OF ATTACK.
“At home I have a large Irish setter
who has many acquaintances among
undergraduates and recent alumni.
When he walks along the street he is
occasionally assailed by small but bois-
terous dogs. To these he pays no
attention, but pursues the even tenor of
his way in silence. If a very large dog
attacks him, however, he immediately
gives him what Mr. Depew has called
‘a thundering good licking.’ We can
all afford to be silent when curs attack
us, but a large dog at times may require
some immediate attention. Now-Gov-
ernor Chamberlain, in the slang of
to-day, may be described as a ‘very
warm dog, though there. are ‘other
dogs just as warm.’ Governor Cham-
berlain is a man of recognized ability,
moral earnestness and personal force,
and in his recent attack on Yale I have
no doubt that he meant every word he
said. He has made a definite, specific
attack upon Yale's English Depart-
ment, and although criticism from
friends is always welcome, I believe
that Governor Chamberlain is totally
and profoundly mistaken. Speaking as
the tail of the English Department, or
perhaps the residuum of the English
Department, I wish to say a few words
in its defense. First, as to the stand-
ing of its professors. Professor Beers
is one of the most intimate and faithful
friends I have in the world. Words
fail to express how much I owe to him.
But although I am so much attached to
him that I should probably stand by
him anyway, whether he were right or:
wrong—for, regardless of the justice of
the case, I always stand by a friend
when he is attacked—in the present case
I am certain Professor Beers in no way
deserves the attack that has been made
upon him. He has been for years a
source of literary inspiration to the
very best men who graduate from Yale,
and if you will ask any of these men
for their personal testimony, they will
tell you themselves how much he has
It is indeed “‘vox et prae- |
done for them. He is furthermore a
writer of extraordinary skill, and were
it not that he has been handicapped by
innumerable demands on his time and
energy, he would undoubtedly now be
occupying the place which he fully
deserves to occupy—a place in the front
rank of the writers of to-day. Profes-
sor Lounsbury is known the world over
for his equipment as a scholar, and
especially for his work in Chaucer
studies. Professor Cook is one of the
foremost scholars in English philology
in the world to-day. He has done a
great deal for linguistic studies at Yale.
His especial work, however, is in con-
nection with the Graduate school, a
work which he is eminently fitted for,
both by nature and by training. He
has done an immense amount of fruit-
ful labor at Yale, the results of which
do not immediately appear upon the
surface. The most important and bene-
ficial kind of work is not always that
which adorns the first page of a sensa-
tional newspaper. These three men,
Beers, Lounsbury and Cook, are the
professors of Yale’s English Depart-
ment, and it is a trio that would be hard
to surpass. They fortunately are men
of totally different personalities, and
for that very reason students who work
under them get a variety of impressions.
GROWTH IN THE STUDY OF ENGLISH.
“There has been a steady and con-
sistent growth in the study of English
at Yale during the fifteen years that I
have been nersonally familiar with the
‘institution, and although severe criti-
cisms of our work are always welcome
and will always receive attention, it
appears to me that Gov. Chamberlain
selected precisely the wrong time to
make his attack. We are not doing
anything revolutionary or startling, but
we are making constant progress. It is
not true that to-day Harvard excels
Yale in the variety or in the quality of
the courses offered in English Litera-
ture. I challenge any man to compare
the catalogues of the two Universities
for this year and see if my statement is
not true. The fact is that Yale holds
a quite different theory in the teaching
of English from that held by Harvard.
Harvard, nine-tenths of the energy and
time of her English Faculty is given
to the correcting of students’ composi-
tions. We have two strong and grow-
ing teachers of Rhetoric; but we do
not believe in devoting more time to
composition than we devote to litera-
ture, because we think that the latter is
as more important as ideas are more
important than the expression of them.
We believe that if a student is a wide
reader and a man of ideas, he is more
apt to be a good writer than if he has
learned the method of writing and has
nothing in particular to say. Further-
more, we do not believe in putting so
frightful a burden on our English
instructors. When I was at Harvard, I
had to read and correct seven hundred
themes a week, and sooner than do that
kind of thing again I would rather be
a motorman. I say this with the great-
est respect for Harvard, with the great-
est admiration for her English Faculty,
who are nearly all my intimate friends,
and with the greatest feeling of grati-
tude for what I myself learned from
these Harvard professors.
YALE IN CURRENT LITERATURE.
“Furthermore, there is at present a
remarkable growth of literary life
among the undergraduates at Yale.
Philistinism has been the bane of Yale
undergraduate life. Harvard students
have been in the past better informed
on, and more interested in, literary mat-
ters than their brothers at Yale. The
literary traditions at Harvard have been
infinitely stronger than those at Yale.
But we are waking up. Our College
magazines show this plainly, and it is
especially shown by the formation of a
large number of purely literary clubs
among the undergraduates. Further-
more, and this I regard as an extremely
significant fact, Yale students are be-
ginning to make an impression in the
world of letters outside the colleges.
Last Summer Mr. Emerson Taylor, a
graduate of the Class of Ninety-Five,
and at present a member of our Gradu-
ate School, had a story in Harper's
Monthly. Mr. Gouverneur Morris, a
member of the present Senior class, had
a story in the Century at about the same
time. Yesterday I took up the current
number of the Atlantic Monthly, and I
was delighted to find an article in it by
Mr. H. W. Fisher, of the Class of
Ninety-Eight. All honor to these three
men! They are not only helping them-
selves, but they are doing an inesti-
mable service to the College.
EFFECT ON MORALS.
“T cannot dismiss the subject of the
literary life of Yale without speaking of
the extremely beneficial effect it is hav-
ing on undergraduate morals. I have
always believed that when a student or
any other man beomes thoroughly
interested in good literature, and loves
to read standard books, he is safe irom
many temptations of the world, the
flesh, and the devil. The reason why
many men yield to base temptations is
because they have no intellectual re-
sources; and I believe that the great
interest that is now being taken by
Yale students in literary matters is hav-
ing and is bound to have a decidedly
beneficial effect on the moral life of the
University.
“Now a word about athletics. The
Yale Faculty believes that the manage-
ment of athletics should rest entirely
in the hands of the students. We be-
lieve in strict supervision of the under-
graduates’ studies, but we do not be-
lieve in interfering with athletics. We
especially dislike athletic committees
composed in whole or in part of mem-
bers of the Faculty, because we believe
they do a great deal more harm than
good. We believe this not only theo-
retically, but chiefly because of the ex-
perience that Harvard, Cornell, and
other unversities have had in this mat-
ter. A very prominent graduate of
Harvard, a man identified for a number
of years with Harvard’s athletic inter-
ests, and a man who is personally
known to many of you, told me recently
that Profesor Ames had done more
injury to Harvard’s athletics than any
other agency had done in the past ten
years. I thoroughly believe that criti-
cism is just; and yet there is no doubt
that Professor Ames has tried to do the.
very best he could.
AS TO ENTHUSIASM.
“Finally, let me say that I do not
agree with Governor Chamberlain in
his strictures on Yale enthusiasm. We
do not, of course, believe that no im-
provement in intellectual and moral
affairs is possible at Yale. But L[,
for one, am not at present in a criti-
cal mood. I have said that I admired
the President for his Yale enthusiasm,
and I wish that every College graduate
had as much of it. as he has. I want
every one of you to love the old Uni-
versity with your whole heart. I want
you to feel toward the College as you
feel toward your own father and mother.
You ought to feel so brimful of enthusi-
asm that whenever you hear the word
“Vale” or see the word “Yale” in print,
your hearts will beat faster. 1 cannot
express what the word “Yale” means to
me. I do not know that I could be
happy anywhere else. I had rather be
a door-keeper in the house of my God
than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.
When I think what Yale has done for
me in the past fifteen years, when |
think of the kindness that my elders
have shown toward my efforts, and
when I think what the President, the
Corporation, and the Faculty are doing
for Yale, I am sure my life earnestly
devoted to its service is not more than
the University ought to ask and not
more than I ought to give.”
Prof. Phelps’s speech was received
with great enthusiasm.
NOBLESSE OBLIGE.
Before calling on the next speaker to
respond for Harvard, Mr. Francis J.
Swayze, Harvard ’79, the President
requested the Glee Club to sing “Fair
Harvard,” and although the song is
not ordinarily on their repertoire, they
succeeded admirably. Mr. Swayze’s
remarks were somewhat as follows:
“The French have an expression
which sums up a thought as perhaps
the French can do better than any
other modern nation, Noblesse oblige.
It is the sentiment of obligation to
do nothing mean or base, nothing
beneath us; a sentiment which has
more than once deterred men from
wrong and outrage and crime, with a
greater force than could be exerted by
