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About Yale Alumni Magazine | View Entire Issue (July 12, 1898)
7 ATL § ATCO AND WW ey THE ALUMNI DINNER. The Note of Patriotism Frequently Sounded—Minister Woodford Present—Some of the Speeches, . President Dwight opened the speak- ing at the Alumni dinner by calling at- tention to the evidence before all of the need of a new hall. The smoky, sweltering crowd, two hundred of them on their feet, appreciated the point. The President said that if there was not a new College hall by the bi-cen- tennial, the Yale spirit has departed. He inierred from what he heard of the afternoon before and from what he heard the night before, that the spirit was still here. The President urged all to take hold of the Bi-centennial. When the President proposed as the first sentiment of the afternoon “The President of the United States,’ of course all the hall was tumultuous sound, When the President called the audience to their feet and proposed the Yale cheer for the President, Mr. Cur- tiss started the Brek-ek-ek-ex, which was given with a whoop, and which was followed by the hip-hip-hooray led by Samuel Scoville. Hon. Charles Andrews, ex-Chief Jus- tice of the New York Court of Appeals, said: To me, the scene at the Chapel this morning was an inspiring one. The sight of six hundred young men just entering into the activities of life with all their possibilities of thought and action, was of the extremest 1n- terest. The speaker thought it of prime importance that the great advantages of an institution like Yale should be kept open for the average man. Genius needed only opportunity. The wealth of greatest privilege should be showered upon the average man. ‘The speaker declared that what he had seen that day was in line with what the country had witnessed for the last few weeks and negatived the claim of a decadence of national spirit and virtue. Gen. Stewart L. Woodford, who was very enthusiastically received, was in- troduced as the man who had been en- gaged in building castles in Spain. The General had found the distin- guishing trait of the Yale man, that when he starts out to do a thing he does it. “Yale gets there—except when she rows Cornell on the Thames. I suppose I say that because for forty years I have been a trustee of Cornell. If our College at Ithaca is forging ahead in any direction, it is because it had Andrew D. White for a president, who has made another Yale, Yale re- born, in the State of New York.. I would gladly speak of my experiences in Spain for ten weeks, if the State De- partment had not decided that I was still the minister to Spain. In that case I must prove my office by showing that I can be the still minister to Spain. If I deserve a tithe of the honor that has come to me, it is because I was work- ing under the direction of a chief at Washington who was determined to go to every honorable length to the end that peace might be preserved, and who, now that war has come, is bent on striking such blows as will quickly bring again peace.” BISHOP BREWSTER RESPONDS. Rev. Chauncey Bunce Brewster, ’68, Bishop Coadjutor, who received his de- gree of Doctor of Divinity that after- noon, had at first some little fun with the letters of his new diploma. He re- ferred to his last visit to one of the ships of the Navy and his interest in examining the reports made on the condition in which the sailors who had been given shore leave had returned to the boat. Beside one name he saw the lettecs C. S., and was told that meant clean and sober. Against another name he saw the imposing letters D. D. The translation of this degree for the sea- man was drunk and dirty. Bishop Brewster spoke of the im- pression made on his mind by the sight of forty young men in army blue going into Battell Chapel that morning to re- ceive their diplomas from the Univer- sity of Yale. It proved again to him that the manhood of Yale was built of the stuff of honor and simplicity and courage and that the life of Yale was full of the best spirit of the nation. The sight of those young men in the Chapel that morning made him feel that old Yale was still young Yale, that her blood was as ever ready to leap to the call of a nation rising to a noble anger’s height. Bishop Brewster said _ that when he looked to the future, with its altogether new and untried problems, he counted on seeing the men who were educated at this University rise to its opportunities, face its danvers with a sober courage and meet its problems with the spirit of educated manhood. Col. Jacob L. Greene, president of the Mutual Life Insurance Company, of Hartford, who had received his de- gree that morning as M.A., was next called out by President Dwight. He spoke as follows: Col. Greene’s Specch. Mr. Chairman, none of the ordinary and conventional expressions of appre- ciation and acknowledgment can con- vey the grateful sense with which one whose daily labors call him too much apart from the ways of scholarship, and into the currents of secular activities, comes to receive adoption from this great nourishing mother of men, and to be named with the name of her great family, whose members, trained in her ways, filled with her inspira- tions, grounded in her learning and exercised into wisdom by her disci- pline, have in every part of this land, through all its history, and in every vocation of high manhood, borne the fruit of their birthright to their mother’s high praise. For, the recogni- tion of the sane and thoughtful of one’s generation always comes as a sign of hope that at least some of his lines of sight have been clear; that some of his attempts, however slight, have been conceived in truth of purpose, and that he has at least been in sympathy with the builders of their time. To every watchful man trying to bear his part in these pregnant days, it is being made, how clear, that all our past is but the seed of a near opening future; that all its good to us is but the substance of broader duty for us, the bud of blos- somings, yet undreamed; that the glad- ness of his toil must be the prevision of that he may never see; its abundant reward must be the growing harvest for those to whom he will never be known; the glory of it must be the knowledge that every true effort of his will be always repeated by true men in all the coming ages, and so may rise in ever widening cycles of better and more fruitful operation. Therefore the call of the mother’s voice and the touch of her approving hand bring him the reviving sense the laborer has, who lifts himself for a moment from his toil, straightens the bowed back, fills his cramped lungs with the sweet air, feels his pulses all unbound, and lets the broad, benignant light flood his eyes and soul. He is oriented anew; and his new fellowship gives him the elbow- touch of those who march in disciplined strength to the new conquests of man over himself. THE WORD TO GO FORWARD. For this is what we are seeing to- day. The spirit of a new time is call- ing in the hearts of our soberest and strongest, and pointing to the yet un- defined work this people must do for the whole brotherhood of humanity. They have heard the unexpected word to “go forward” out of our long self- content, to issues whose divinely ordered event is all unseen; though “in to-day already walks to-morrow.” It is reported of one of Hobson’s heroes that as they were parting on their desperate errand, being asked of his hope of return, he replied: “I guess we stand a fair show of getting out; but they can’t stop us going in.” No word yet uttered better speaks the pres- ent spirit and attitude of the hitherto unwilling American people toward the new and surprising duties of the hour with its unknown burden of labor, waiting, and may be of suffering. And it was not the speech of rashness, vain- glory, or of headlong venture. Rather was it the simple recognition of the plain facts: a work to be done, one’s own qualification therefor creating duty, the uncertainty of the issue, but the cer- tainty that it must be undertaken and carried to the uttermost of single- hearted strength and skill. But if we, as a people, are being called to a new mission of instruction and leadership, is there no new re- sponsibility upon us for our own con- ditions? Are we realizing our ideals, the visions our fathers had? If we are to show new ways to men, are all our ways the best we can show them? If we call men to follow us, who are lead- ing us? If we call them to high self- mastery, who, in our half vexed, half amused, half ashamed complaisance, are our masters: the true leaders, the in- structors and inspirers of men, or the traders in their ignorances, indolences, vices, and infirmities? How completely fit have we made our own civilization and its methods to regenerate and revi- vify the old and worn-out fields? We need to address ourselves to our civic duties with a new comprehension and a quickened conscience and a sober resolve. For it is no longer the heri- tage of freedom for ourselves alone which we are left to carelessly enjoy; but a heritage of new labors to a new freedom for others. We, standing at the divine disposal, are, apparently, be- ing called, not to conquest nor to em- pire for the sake of empire or of gain, but to the ministers and guardians of a new life for unblest peoples; and the light of the rising of our protecting power breaks in Dewey’s gun-fire on the eastern edge of a world that waits. And to whom may it look for light and leading, for knowledge, for wisdom, for spiritual truth in life and the living power of it, if not to the men nurtured by all the treasures of these things, at this venerable foundation, by this faith- ful alma mater, whereby she makes her meek ones the strong inheritors of the earth that is to be, and that can be, under God, only at the willing hands of such as they? HON. H. C. ROBINSON SPEAKS. When the Hon. Henry C. Robinson, 53, of Hartford, was brought to his feet by the President, he was told that he could speak on anything except the Class of Fifty-Three; to which he re- plied by saying that the President had taken from him the best and most in- spiring theme. The inadequacy and discomfort of Alumni Hall, the speaker said, were continually thrown at every Yale man or friend of Yale. Yale could answer as did the man with a cold, to whom his friends sympathetically said: .“That .1s .a< very bad cough.” “Yes,” he replied, “it is a very bad one, but it is the best I have got.” Mr. Robinson devoted some time to developing the idea for the benefit of the graduating class, that virtue was its own reward. This he did by repeating the composition of a little girl on this theme. It described a poor young man in love with the daughter of a rich candy merchant, who refused him her hand on account of his poverty. To him in his despondency the tempter came and said “Here is $25. Go down street and get drunk.” The young man took the money and went down street. At the door of the saloon he turned around, stamped his foot and said to the tempter: “I will not go in. Take back your cursed gold.” And then he went home and before he had walked a block he picked up on the sidewalk a purse containing a million dollars. And then he went.to the candy mer- chant, and he said ‘‘Take my daughter” and they lived happily ever afterward. “My friend, General Woodford, thinks that Cornell beat Yale because he has been a trustee up there for forty years. He hasn’t got ahold of the right end of this at all. There is a fatal combination against Yale when she rows the crew from Ithaca. On the diamond or on the football field or on the track, the blue may yet be invincible, but when Yale runs up against the red and white of Cornell on the blue waters of the Thames, she meets a combination that nothing in the heavens or on the earth or in the waters under the earth can vanquish.” Minister Woodford, by his demeanor, seemed willing to accept the amend- ment. Mr. Robinson dwelt on the record of Yale in every patriotic crisis of the nation. In the Revolution, of a total of less than a thousand graduates, two hundred and fifty of her sons were in the war. She sent eight hundred of her sons to the Rebellion. That day forty young dragoons had come to her for their degrees and in the Light Ar- tillery of Connecticut; Troop A of New York, the Rough Riders and every- where, her sons were wearing her coun- try’s uniform. Mr. Robinson spoke of the scars of the Civil War, but asked who could now find any trace of them. No engineer was keen enough to dis- cover that mythical Mason and Dixon line. The Vermont man Dewey and the Georgia man Hobson were the heroes of the day. Mr. Chariton T. Lewis, following Mr. Robinson, said: Speech of Mr. Lewis. I feel helpless before this occasion. Who can worthily express the senti- ments it suggests? These rare meet- ings, stepping stones with vast chasms between, on the rugged way of Iife, kindle feelings too broad and deep for public words. Hence commonly the overburdened heart seeks refuge in trifles, and all that is uttered here is but the ripples and foam on the surface of a fathomless sea. “The shallows mur- mur, but the deeps are dumb.’ Nor can I at all agree with my classmate, who has just said that these meetings belong to the young men of Yale. These gatherings belong rather to us, their elders, in a sense which they can- not yet appreciate; and are ours more and more as our numbers grow smaller, and as the multitude of those fallen silent by the way, and whom we meet most peculiarly here, is recruited from among us. From yet another utterance, which you greeted with loud approval a moment ago, | must beg indulgence partly to dissent; that which so elo- quently attempted to characterize the Yale spirit. To me the supreme dis- tinguishing note of this Yale com- munity, in contrast with human society at large, is something other and better than even that get-there-ativeness which my friend so impressively de- scribed. It is that here a man is, so to speak, weighed without his clothes; that, for all purposes of esteem, influ- ence and achievement in the Univer- sity, he is himself alone, and the trap- pings of wealth, rank, birth, the ac- cidents of life and circumstances, go for as near nothing as is possible anywhere on earth. When young men — come together here, it is much as if a new race were created and started in a new world, each member with his own faculties and capacities, and with nothing besides. In such a _ society wisdom and strength come to the front; the high places are filled by merit. I know not any community’ in which, so completely as at Yale, it is realized in life, that “The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, The man’s the gold, for a’ that.” God grant the day be far distant when the fixed law that worth makes the man shall be changed or modified in old Yale! This reflection is forced on us now by the familiar fact that the great political community, our common country which we love, is not controlled by the same principle. In political strife the high places of power are reached, less by those fittest to fill them, than by those most dexterous to win them. The abil- ity to manage a canvass, to control cau- cuses, conventions and elections, is not always, nor commonly, the same as the | ability to govern and guide a nation. Hence where politics flourish, states- manship too often languishes; it is as if the martinet drill-master were set to do the work of Napoleon or of Grant. A REVOLUTION NEEDED. The elements of greatness everywhere are wisdom, strength and opportunity; and the happiest organized commun- ity is that in which, as in the Uni- versity, wisdom and strength are always assured of their opportunity for dis- play and exercise in its service. But the essential failure of our democracy hitherto, and its supreme danger for the coming on of time, is that oppor- tunity is so far closed to the best wis- dom and strength; that its representa- tive places are so largely filled by the cunning and passion which but ape these great qualities; that politicians wield the weapons and sway the forces of statesmen. The prime need of the republic is a revolution which shall open the way of fitness to all leadership, and close the way to unfitness; which shall link opportunity inseparably to wisdom and strength. How can this revolution be wrought? How can the Yale spirit be extended through the public life of the nation?
