370,
YALH ALUMNI WHEHEKLY
in order to take it down we had to put
another book upon the floor that we
might reach to it. That very book
which we chose, on account of its size
and its thickness, being a large quarto,
in its English edition, was Dwight’s
‘System of Theology. You can wun-
derstand, gentlemen, now, the extra-
ordinary gratification I feel, that the
same name which guided my infant
footsteps in their first pursuit of learn-
ing, should now crown the labors of
my manhood with the degree of Doc-
tor of Divinity. I want to say in one
word how glad I feel and how proud
I feel to be the citizen of an Ameri-
can university. I have not had my
choice, but I am sure that I should
have wished adoption into American
rights and privileges through no other
hands nor through any other avenue,
so much as I should have wished it
through the avenue of a degree from
the University of Yale.
THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES.
“T am a graduate of a medieval Uni-
versity (if I may call it so, as its
foundation was just outside of the mid-
dle ages), the University of Edinburgh.
The University of Edinburgh celebrated
her tri-centennial in the year 1883, and
I think it was in 1892, or thereabouts,
that the University of Harvard cele-
brated her 250th anniversary.. So you
see, gentlemen, though I find very often
Americans complain of the short history
behind them, we are only some fifty
years older than the oldest American
University. I think it is a very remarka-
ble fact. The establishment of univer-
sities in Great Britain stopped with the
University of Edinburgh. Our race
ceased to be a_ university-producing
race on that side of the Atlantic. But
the Americans, almost the moment I
might say, certainly the century, that
that ceased on the other side of the
Atlantic, took up the task here and
from that time till this you have been
producing the great Anglo-Saxon uni-
versities. More than that, you are
to-day showing us upon our side of
the water an example in the enlarge-
ment and the equipment of a university,
which we are benefiting by. In the
enlargement of the organization, in the
equipment of the university, I do not
hesitate to say, though I say -it with
some shame, the American nation,
these United States, are far beyond my
own nation of Great Britain. It is to
America we have come for ideas and
examples of how a University should
be equipped and should be organized.
“Now, I do not find myself very far
PROF. GEORGE ADAM SMITH.
Given the degree of D.D. by Yale at Commencement.
away from home in such a condition
as the present. As I look around upon
this great collection of educated men,
the alumni of a great university, I see
no single face that looks foreign. And
when, as I have been during the last
two or three months, I am introduced
to a vast number of American people,
I find not only that your faces are our
faces, and your build our build, that
your names are our names, everywhere
I go; and I say more, that I have not
found anybody yet, who has been in-
troduced to me, but has some Scotch
descent to tell me of, and I am proud
to say, to boast of it. I met a gentle-
man in Chicago three years ago, having
an accent which was neither of Eastern
America nor of Western America. nor
of Great Britain nor even of Ireland
who said to me that he was of Scotch
descent. Your name, sir, I asked. He
quickly replied ‘Schneider.’ It was,
wish
according to the old story of which you
already know, I daresay, by another
mother.
ATHLETICS.
“T am proud to belong to Yale, not
only for her eminence in learning, but
for her eminence in athletics. In mak-
ing my last trip, I brought over here
an old dictionary, a number of parch-
ments, stich as the Apostle Paul might
have used, and I brought what he
would have brought over if the sport
had been invented in his day, a bag
of golf clubs. Gentlemen, after playing
a very large number of games on your
greens and suffering a large propor-
tion of defeats, | am tempted to say
that if golf had to wait to be invented
in America, it never would have been
invented. I do not think the land and
the climate quite suit themselves to the
purpose, I have had reason to admire
the courage and skill of the men of
America in the way that they play golf,
and in the mercilessness with which,
mere amateurs as they are at the art,
they have beaten me, the descendant
of forty generations of golf players. I
have been beaten right and left, and I
am going home to look forward to
the near approach of the day when
America shall send over to our shores
the coming golf champion of the
world. I do not think, gentlemen, that
need be so long a time, but now that
I am a graduate of Yale I hope that
man, when he comes, and I am quite sure
and truly believe that that man when
he comes, the golf champion of the
world, will be a graduate of Yale and
a member of your golf club.
THE QUALITY OF YALE MEN.
“Now I want to conclude with just
one more serious word. It was my
great honor and privilege to be invited
by the University of Yale to deliver
the Lyman Beecher lectures here in the
Spring, and I need not say that I en-
joyed that privilege and was grateful
for the attention and kindness I re-
ceived while delivering them. But,
gentlemen, I value far more that which
did not find its way into the news-
papers, but was a true form of work,
that I thad the privilege of being
enabled to do among you, and that was
meeting some three or four hundred of
your undergraduates belonging to all
four years, on Sunday evening, on
Monday evening, on Tuesday evening
and on Wednesday evening, while I
was delivering the lectures, and just
after, and giving them frank talks on
the subject which all men who are true
men must put before others, the sub-
jects of purity, righteousness and
religion. And, besides that, I had the
chance of talking to some thirty-five or
forty of these men in private; and I
want to tell the older classes, that have
come to attend the anniversaries of their
graduation, that they can have no idea,
as I have, who have mingled with these
men and have talked with them face to
face, of thé great worth of the young
life that is beating through the halls of
Yale at this present time. I know how
great and good the men have been that
have issued from these halls in times
past; but I am quite sure that those
in Yale at the present time are, most
of them, men who are committed to
the side of righteousness already, and
who, when they go forward into the
public life of this great United States,
this great empire, will bring to bear
upon the problems that lie before you.
a desire above all to devote in the spirit
of Christ the culture with which their
Alma Mater has endowed them, and de-
vote it to the service of the common-
weal and of mankind, across the whole
of the speedily widening empire which
God in his Providence is giving us,
not only in this, but in other conti-
nents; and it is out of the sense of all
that, that I feel my pride and joy in be-
ing a graduate of Yale to-day, and I say,
God bless Yale, and send her men out
into the world to be ministers of God
and of their fellow men in the highest
interests of mankind.”
“I earnestly desire,” said President
Dwight, “that the audience will not
diminish in numbers.
from two or three more gentlemen
whom you will all be interested to hear
from on this occasion, and one of them
you will certainly, every one of you,
to hear with reference to the
future. TI want to ask, as our next
We are to hear.
speaker, Judge Adams of New Jersey,
to say a few words to us, for he is a
person whom I have always listened to
with the greatest pleasure.”
Judge Adams.
“Mr. President,’ responded Judge
Adams, “if I shall seem to be a little
shy, it is because this is my first ap-
pearance on this particular stage.
When I was in college, we used to re-
gard an elevation to this eminence as
an indication that a man was approach-
ing his final days. The fact that I am
here to-day, I think, is indirectly at-
tributable to my distinguished friend,
Attorney-General Griggs. I have
HON. F. J. KINGSBURY, YALE 746.
Given degree of LL.D. by Yale at Commencement.
learned that he has left the hall, proba-
bly to avoid any responsibility, but it
is a fact that a few years ago he gave
me a job at doctoring the laws of New
Jersey. Yale evidently heard of this
and concluded that it was time that I
should have a license and become a
regular practitioner.
“Two things are uppermost in my
mind to-day. One is the gratification
of greeting again, ere yet he lays down
his honorable burden, one of the oldest
and best of my friends, the President of
Yale. The other is the pleasing antici-
pation that, during many long and pros-
perous years to come, the fame and
fortunes of Yale will be associated,
even more intimately than they have
been in the more than fifty years that
have gone, with the name of Hadley.
I hear a voice that some of you do not
hear. My first sight of Yale College
was at the Commencement season of
the Class of 1856. I remember then
hearing a bright young fellow from
Peekskill, by the name of Depew, give
utterance to some valuable sentiments
upon the literary life. Unon the even-
ing of that day, I enjoyed the hospitality
—I was little more than a kid myself—
but I enjoyed the hospitality of Prof.
Hadley. I did not know that at that
very moment, in that very house, there
was a cradle that held a President of
Yale. Two years later. Prof... Hadley
examined me for college, and what was
rather singular, he examined me, not in
Greek, but in arithmetic. I remember
with what skilful and kindly hands he
extracted from me whatever views I
then entertained as to the extraction of
the square and cube roots. I was ad-
mitted, and during the freshman year
I enjoyed his instruction. To have
read, as we did, Homer’s description
of the shield of Achilles, under Prof.
James Hadley, was in itself a very large
part of a liberal education. I have
never forgotten that splendid poetry,
and absolute truthfulness compels me
to add that I have never read it since.
A WELCOME TO HADLEY.
“Now, on behalf of the Class of
Sixty-Two, for I know they will let me
speak for them, I welcome to the head-
ship of Yale, the son, a well-tried son,
of our teacher and our friend. It is
delightful to be here and enter once
more the little world of Yale, to be
again, if only for a single day, a denizen
of this home of our youth, this abode
of memory, this magic isle, where
treachery and violence beat in vain
against the enchantments of the ideal
life.
“Tf I may make a confession, I was
more at home in Yale College than I
am in Yale University. In those days
of small things, I used to enfold Mother
Yale and press her to my bosom; but
now I feel myself inadaquate to execute
the embrace to which my affections
prompt me. I know how many depart-
ments there are. I know how useful
they are. I know how their lines have
- gone out through all the earth and their
words to the end of the world; but my
heart is with the Academic Departmesit.
I feel a little as my ever-to-be-remem-
bered classmate Bill Gandy felt about
the nine muses on Sophomore biennial.
There was a boat club in our Class
called the Tholia, and the club and the
Tholia boat were very dear to all, and
when William was asked to give the
names of the nine muses, he said:
‘Tholia and nine others.’
“It was the boast of the Emperor
Augustus that he found Rome of brick
and left it of marble. I should express
my experience somewhat differently and
say that I left Yale of brick and found
it of marble, and yet there is a sense
in which I may say that I find it of
brick. Some noble Lacedemonian, I
forget who it ‘was, said pointing to his
soldiers, ‘These are the walls of Sparta.’
So as I look on this assembly of good
fellows, and I include of course the
President and Fellows, I say, ‘These are
the walls of Yale, and every man is
a brick.’ And, Mr. President, if there
seems to be at first sight any danger
of Mother Yale growing out of the
knowledge of her sons, I have at my
command a very agreeable way of pro-
tecting myself against this difficulty. I
have a big boy in college. I have a
little fellow at home who is coming
along fast. I intend that the children
shall be father and guide to the man.
I shall see with their eyes. I shall hear
with their ears. In their experience I[
shall renew and amend my own. ‘They
will lead me back to the maternal knee
and reintroduce me to Mother Yale.”
The President asked Dr. McClintock
to say a few words and he answered
as follows:
“Mr. President and gentlemen: The
hour is so late that I have a capital
good excuse for saying only a very few
words. Otherwise I should complain
of the conduct of the President in call-
nig on me, because I am no speaker.
As a Columbia man I wish to reiterate
the good words that the representatives
of the other colleges have said here
concerning Yale. You all know that
you never have a better time than when
you go to New York. You generally
want to go there again. Besides being
a Columbia man, I am a Yale man, and
now I am a Yale graduate. I have
taken more time to graduate than any
other man here, I think. It is forty-
two years since I left Yale, and now I
get my degree, thanks to the President
and the Corporation.
“The degree is to me something
which I regard as the very highest
honor that I have ever had in my life.
I have been honored similarly by my
own college, but I have regarded that
as an evidence of personal friendship,
of personal partiality. ‘This honor from
Yale makes me believe that perhaps
there is something in it after all. The
Class of Fifty-Nine, gentlemen, may not
be quite so distinguished as the Class
of Forty-Nine or Fifty-Three, but it
was a pretty good Class, and for a little
while [I was a member of the Class—
about six months. I got more college
life in that six months than I got in all
the rest of my life put together. For
one. thing, my Class elected me as
chess championship of the Class against
the Freshmen. I was a Sophomore at
that time. Of course, I expected to
‘beat, and there was a great deal of ex-
citement about it in old Alumni Hall,
but I didn’t win, and I have heard peo-
ple say that that was the reason [I left
Yate.
“Seriously, Mr. President, I wish only
to express my most profound gratitude
for the honor done me to-day.”
Introduction of Prof. Hadley.
In introducing President-elect Had-
ley the President said:
“About a year and a half ago I was
waited upon by a life insurance agent
and after talking with me for some time
he said: ‘I would like to inquire your
age,’ and I said: ‘How old do you sup-
pose me to be?’ and he said, ‘About
sixty-five, and then, without waiting for
an answer, he said, ‘I was born in 1829.
I do not complain of Divine Providence
on that account. I was there at that