ht Paes ee ee
376 :
;
TALE ALUMNI
WEEKLY
The Department of Music comes in for
stroiig endorsement, and again attention
is called to the absolute necessity of a
permanent endowment.
Space does not permit the enumera-
tion of many more points in connection
with this annual report, which is placed
in the hands of the graduates. A very
warm tribute is paid to the generosity
and fidelity of the late Professor Marsh.
THE RESIGNATION.
The President makes official record
of his letter resigning from his position
and refers as follows to the efforts,
individual and collective, which were
made to induce him to stay in office
through the Bi-centennial: 7
“The President gave the most re-
spectful and serious consideration to
the wishes of the Corporation, but he |
found himself unable to accede to them
—believing, as he did, that it was de-
sirable for the new President, whose
work was to be in the earliest part of
the twentieth century, to have one or
two years of official life before the time
of its beginning,—years in which he
might take his outlook upon the wide
sphere of effort and progress opening
before him, and might form his plans
with the best wisdom for the realization
of great results.”
The President modestly refused to in-
sert the resolutions accepting his report.
REPORT FOR SIX MONTHS OF 1899.
A supplementary report covers the
eventful last half year. On the elec-
tion of the new President, the outgoing
President makes the following official
record:
“The Corporation, at its meeting on
the twenty-fifth of May, made choice
of Professor Arthur T. Hadley as the
successor in office of the present Presi-
dent, and he will enter upon the dis-
charge of his duties on the day after
Commencement.
Professor Hadley will begin his new
work at a most auspicious time in the
history of the University—a time when
all the inspirations of the past and the
future seem to unite together for his
encouragement, and when the promise
of greater things than have yet been
realized may well bring to him with
itself an ever-continuing energy and a
confident hope. May it be his. good
fortune to find the graduates and the
friends of Yale ready always to pro-
vide for its largest wants, and thus to
aid him and his associates in the work
of making the University worthy of the
third century of its life.’ :
To the two officers who have re-
signed the past year the President pays
a very warm and grateful tribute. As
some of the ideas of his report are in-
corporated in the minutes of the Cor-
poration printed elsewhere, they will
not be fully repeated here.
The President truly savs that it will
be a difficult task to find anyone to
equal the retiring Secretary in his wide
and extended, as well as minute knowl-
edge of all pertaining to Yale life and
history, or in his accuracy in the pre-
sentation of all facts and detail, or in
his facile and successful performance
of every duty undertaken, or in his
whole-souled loyalty to the Institution.
After commenting on the very able
work of the Treasurer, the President
cites the fact that “the funds and re-
sources of the University have doubled
within the eleven years of Mr. Farnam’s
Treasurership; and his investments
have been so judicious and successful
that, as has been already stated on an
earlier page, the annual income derived
from the funds taken together amounts,
at present, to somewhat more than five
per cent.”
In regard to both these men, the Presi-
dent expresses his own sense of per-
sonal gratitude for their relations to
him and for their co-operation with him
in all his work.
Of the two Dwight administrations,
the report says:
“The present President, the fifth in
the succession, ventures to hope that
the friends of Yale, in their review of
these last thirteen years, may feel that
he has wrought not unworthily of those
who preceded him. There could be for
him, certainly, no happier fortune than
to be assured that his work has, in
some true sense and measure, fitly
completed—for the hundred years—that
which was begun so grandly by his an-
cestor. It will always be a pleasant
thought to him—if he may have this as-
surance—that the beginning and the
ending were, by the favor of God, given
to the two men, of the same family and
bearing the same name, as their allot-
ment of work in and for the College
and University.”
The report closes thus: ss
“With words of grateful recognition
of the kindness manifested towards him
by the members of the Corporation and
the other:officers of the University, and
of the friendship of the graduates to
which they have given most generous
testimony, the President closes this last
Report of the years of his administra-
tion. As he leaves his office, his de-
sire and prayer are that the Divine
blessing may ever rest upon this home
of learning, which was consecrated by
the fathers to the Christian faith.”
Be AS gid
THE BACCALAUREATE.
President Dwight’s Last Sermon in
Chapel to Seniors.
[Being extracts from the address delivered Sunday,
June 26, in Battell Chapel, to members of the grad-
_uating classes. Text—Pss. Ixv., 8; “ Thou makest
the outgoings of the morning and evening to re
joice."’]
I give you my testimony to-day, as
you and I are leaving the University
together, and ask you to take it with
you. The Summer day is the emblem
of life, and the most beautiful light of
the Summer day, as we all know, is
that of the later afternoon.
Let me turn your thought again to
the way in which life moves forward.
Why is it that you look with strongest
desire to the future, and not to the
past—to new experiences which you
have not tried and of which you must
be, at this hour, largely ignorant, rather
than to a renewal, or continuance, if
it were possible, of the old ones known
so well? It is because, as has been
already intimated, you are, in a cer-
tain measure, a changed personality.
As you turn your thought backward,
to-day, even to the beginning of your
career here in this place, no doubt you
are saying to yourself, How different
I am from what I was. How much
-~ more I have in my manhood than I had
when I moved into these happy years.
We all feel thus, as life moves on its
way.
But when and how did the change
come, my friend? You cannot, as you
think over the time that is gone, dis-
cover any day or any month within
which you suddenly became conscious
of the newness. There was no date at
which you said to yourself, I was a
child or a beginner yesterday, but now
the great transformation has come and
I am a man or manly. No—the old
gave way to the new as the dawn passes
into the morning, or the earliest hours
into those which are beyond them.
The movement was so gradual, so nat-
ural, so peaceful, that you did not real-
ize it at the time; you became con-
scious of it only afterwards, and as you
saw and felt the results.
And with the constant, yet silent
movement, the enjoyments and satis-
factions of the earlier season—those
which were characteristic of it and be-
longed wholly to it—passed away as
naturally and as peacefully as did the
season itself. They did not cause a
break in your life when they left it, or
leave a vacancy behind them. They
simply retired, as the hours do when
their work is accomplished, and opened
the way for what was farther on and
more. Or, as we may more fitly say,
they passec as the successive moments
pass, the new coming in while the old
were withdrawing, and the man waking
up to the experience of the new almost
without being aware of what was taking
‘place for him and within him.
The progress of 1:'>, again, is one in
this regard. You were content in your
boyhood with the things that pertained
to it, but you have outgrown them
now. Outgrown them—that is the true
expression, which answers to the fact.
It is a growth—a continual, ever widen-
ing and enlarging, life-like development;
—and you are more than you were.
But the passing of the old things is a
mere incidental of the growth. They
die away, as it were, and lose them-
selves in the new, and thus the blessing
of the life’s experience abides through
the changes. It becomes greater as the
man is more.
Our testimony is like yours. The
men in this University brotherhood, or
in this company present here to-day,
who have moved on beyond the age of
twenty to fifty, or perchance to seventy,
tell the same story. We uot only find
ourselves to-day to be more than we
were. when we had reached our man-
hood, and were eager in our thoughts
of what it was bringing to us. But we
have seen the things which filled our
desires and satisfied us—which made
up life for us—at twenty or twenty-five
losing themselves gradually in what was
more and greater,—giving place, as no
longer needed, to the larger experiences -
and gifts of good which were fitted to
the later time.
There is nothing more wonderful,
nothing more delightful, in human
experience, as it seems to me, than this.
I know not how it is, but as I look
backward I find that I have lost noth-
ing. Lost nothing? Yes. I have lost
certain old enjoyments, certain old
possessions, the memory of which is a
sweet vision for me. But, when I am
thinking of life, I have lost nothing. I
have gained almost beyond my old
dreams; and all along the line of the
years I find that what was coming in
was so constantly filling, and more than
filling the place of what was going
out,—and was accomplishing this result
so silently, so easily, so completely,—
that, at every stage of the progress, the
one thought called for and rising in the
mind was that of present blessing.
AT SEVENTY.
The man leaves his working place at
seventy with a satisfaction and pleasure
akin, or perchance equal, to that with
which at thirty he entered upon its
duties. How strange it seems, for the
two things are opposites to each other.
But even, more strange, to the man’s
own thought, is the ever-moving pro-
cess of the transformation within him-
self, and within the years, which has
made the result possible. And _ still
more strange is the silence of the move-
ment—the revelation of what has been
realized coming to the man only in
some marked experience of life, or in
his deeper thinking of. himself.
THE LATE AFTERNOON.
The hours go by a little farther to
the later afternoon; and what then?
The man has changed once more and,
as the record of life’s work is more
nearly completed, the satisfaction in it
is that it is finished—the manly work is
dene and—if it be so—well done. There
may be, indeed, no more hopes con-
nected with it or no more realization
possible within it. But the anxieties
and questionings have gone with the
realizations and the -hopes into the one
great result—and the man moves on.
You and I, young gentlemen, are
leaving the College life together at this
time. We are alike, and well we may
be, in our feeling—though we are
separated by our years. There are
regretful feelings as we part from the
old life, for it has had in it delightful
experiences of many sorts, and a happy
work the fulfillment of which has placed
us among the company of educated
men. But—if we have done the work
well, and if the experiences have
wrought the best results for our truest
life,—there may fitly be a feeling of
joy, not for you only, but for me also,
that one period of our living is ended,
and worthily and happily ended. The
Summer day moves onward in the after-
noon, as in the morning. The strength
and glory of the later hours are not a
lessening of these that pertain to the
earlier ones.
We of the older generation, as the
vigor of life remains for us, look not
only backward, but forward. We have
a pleasure—a very rich one—in what is
behind us. But we have a joy, as well
as yourselves,—more restful an! more
peaceful than yours and that of men
who are twenty years in advance of you,
but resting on as true foundations,—as
we turn our thoughts forward. We are
still to be thoughtful men, still working
in the spheres of mental activity, adding
to. our knowledge, doing kindly service
to others, entering more deeply into
the joys of friendship and affection, giv-
ing our word of loving counsel or
encouragement to those who follow on
the way a little after us, living, as we
trust, lives that are worthy of our man-
hood in the latest stage of its growth.
It is no grevious thing to be passing
into the later afternoon. It is to rejoice
in the fullness of one’s powers, in the
rewards of past years, in newly dpening
opportunities of a new character, in the
peacefulness of the hour itself. The
hopes of youth are not with us, indeed,
or the achievements of the mature years,
but we have a blessing which, as it fol-
lows upon these that have already been
enjoyed, is fitted for the time and has
a richness peculiar to itself.
THE PROOF OF GOD.
I have thus called your minds to cer-
tain things connected with the progress
of our life and the changes accompany-
ing it, which seem to me to make the
words “the morning and the evening
rejoice’ most fitting in their applica-
tion as I have used them. But the
Psalmist says “Thou makest the outgo-
ings to rejoice’—and I have one more
principal thought to offer to vou, which
I beg you to take into your serious
thinking. My thought is this:—How
wonderful this growth and change of
the years and the life in them in all
these aspects, are, as indicating that we
are under a Divine Father’s care and
education. The proof of God—of the
loving God whom the Christian teach-
ing makes known to us—is to be found
in the individual man’s history and experi-
ence. Whatever other evidences there
may be, and however great their force,
to my own mind the most impressive
one of all, and the one which is all-
satisfying in its power if a man will
really give it its weight of testimony,
is to be found within the man himself.
It is no mere development as of a plant,
this growth of which we have spoken.
It is a wonderfully ordered movement
of an intelligent life, which carries in
itself every indication of an ordering by
a mind of higher intelligence which is
itself under the guidance of love. No
father in his plan of education for his
son gives clearer proof of thoughtful
affection, or more striking manifesta-
tions of his desire that the progress
should be ever upward to greater and
richer experiences. The plan of life
in itself is the plan of a father.
But how is it as we look at _ the
other things, which accompany the de-
velopment of the plan? You, gentle-
men, are yet in your youth, and you
have not had many opportunities to
study these things in your own history.
But you can all, even at your age, see
one thing that I have mentioned—the
strange and beautiful way in which the
satisfying joys of one period of life,
rich in fullness for their own time, pass
away without a jar, or a break, or the
awakening of a sense of loss—silently
and imperceptibly almost—into what is
adapted to a new period and is satisfy-
ing to its larger desires and needs.
Surely, there is nothing mure like a
father’s love than this—nothing that
shows more fully loving thoughtfulness
as for a child’s happy growth through
all the years.
I urge this evidence upon your
personal meditation now and hereafter.
You will appreciate its weight and value
more and more, just in proportion as
your life, in the passing of the years,
moves through and beyond the changes
and the experiences to which I have
referred. The testimony of the life-
time for the thoughtful, serious man of
seventy is, and must be, that a father’s
love has made the outgoings of the
morning and the evening for him to
rejoice, and thus that the author of the
life which has such a beautiful morning
and evening is a Divine Father, who
intelligently cares for His children.
GREAT CRISES.
But there is a special thing which, if
you study your own lives, you will see
as you go forward in the years. Pos-
sibly, some of you have seen something
of it already. It is among the most
remarkable and noteworthy things i:
our experience, which every man ca!
observe for himself. I refer to th:
wonderful way in which life seems t
‘be ordered for us in great crises or ir
matters having a special bearing on ow
welfare. Sometimes this ordering, as
would call it, comes suddenly, and in
surprising way, after a long period ¢
questioning and perplexity on our par
Sometimes,: it comes by means of
strange and unlooked-for combinatic