236
our nation in Great Britain. Of the
service which he rendered in that period
of his life, it is for others to speak more
fittingly than I can, and at another time
than this. But those years bore testi-
mony, we may fitly say to one another
even at this hour, in an impressive man-
ner of the highest manliness and gentle-
manliness in our best national life, and
in this way no less truly than in others,
he was an honor to his countrymen and
deserves for his work their most grate-
ful remembrance. Certainly he merits
such remembrance in our academic
brotherhood and in this circle of friend-
ship. The man who has rendered such
service has honored us all, and has given
to our individual lives and to the com-
mon life something which is an addition
to our possessions. We are more than
we should have been had no such work
been accomplished, and had no _ such
influence come upon us.
AS A TEACHER.
He seemed to me in his work as a
teacher to be one who laid hold upon
great principles rather than upon minute
details. The latter were not unimpor-
tant in his view, but the former were
the great essentials, and to them he
would have his students turn their most
eager and earnest thought. For this
reason, as well as for others, he seemed
to me to have a peculiar stimulating
force for all who listened to his words.
He showed himself always and every-
-where to be thoroughly equipped with
the learning of his profession, but his
chief desire was that the young men
before him should become possessed of
what was broadest and most fundamen-
tal—that they should be mentally awak-
ened in the sphere of their own science,
and thus be enabled to use their trained
powers with the utmost efficiency, and
in the wisest way, with reference to any
call which might be made for their
exercise. For this reason it was, as well
as because of the clearness of his state-
ments and the felicity of his language
in the expression of his thoughts, that
he became an attractive guide for those
who were in the first stages of their
legal studies, as truly and fully as for
those who had moved farther onward
in their course and had seen more of -
the open field. For this reason also, as
well as because of his high ideals, he
led his students to elevated conceptions
of the professional life upon which they
were about to enter, and thus quickened
them to the appreciation of manliness,
while he was impelling them to enthusi-
astic devotion to their work. He pre-
sented to them the dignity and worth
of manly living and, at the same time,
he gave them new thoughts and new
knowledge.
THE MEANING OF THE LIFE TO OTHERS.
This gift to us, and all these other
things which have been spoken of as
connected with our friend’s personality,
are among the good results of his career
as related to ourselves. We enter into
other men’s labors. No less truly do
we share, in our measure, in the life-
work and the life-influence of those with
whom we have been associated and who
have passed on into another sphere of
living before us. The inheritance which
we possess, and in which we rejoice,
has come to us from generations and
has entered into our present personality
and experience. The life within us,
precious and central to our souls as it is,
THE
ACADEMIC SLOUCH,
(Reference being to a hat), has
a style of its own, no mat-
ter what its hues and age.
That is true of most any-
thing a College man puts
on his head. So many
College men wear Knox.
Hats |
end
X ATS ALUMNI “Were
is in part the life of other men, of the
past or the present, who in a way they
knew not of and in accordance with a
measure which we do not fully under-
stand, have entered by their influence
within the doors of our inmost selves.
So we move onward and upward in our
living until in some future day of blessed
retrospect and outlook “the sower and
the reaper,” as the words of Jesus are,
“shall rejoice together.”
The good things which have come to
us from our friend’s life are centered
in the life itself and its work—in these as
I have recalled them to my own mind and
yours, and as some of you may perchance
recall them more fully and _ vividly
than I have been able to do. Ina peculiar
sense this life and work of his have
passed, so far as the University brother-
hood is concerned, into its life. They
are to abide here as a part of the rich
inheritance from the by-gone time, and
are to have their silent influence for
good in the experience of many men of
the future years who may have little
thought or knowledge of the source
from which the blessing came. But
that it came will be a cause of thank-
fulness. .
THE COMPLETENESS OF THE LIFE.
The life has now reached its end. My
thought of it in these passing days has
been and is of its completeness. If we
think of the years only, it has moved on
through them with fullness of powers
and of enjoyment almost to the utmost
limit of age. There has been no oncom-
ing of infirmity or darkening of the
mental vision, but the brightness and
vigor of manhood have continued until
the last illness, the messenger from be-
yond, came to summon the spirit to a
new world. What could have been hap-
pier or more complete? What better
could we wish for ourselves than to pass
onward so joyfully beyond the three-
score years and ten, and far on towards
the fourscore years, and to keep within
ourselves the youthful spirit until the
But life does not consist or have its
significance in its years. Let us think
of it in its progress and development.
Our friend had the privilege of birth
and childhood in a home of culture and
refinement, with influences and inspira-
tions about him which sent him forward
happily, as well as successfully, toward
the season of youth and early manhood.
He had the blessing of education and of
the higher education—a blessing which
is beyond almost any other that the
world can give, and which no man who
has known it in his experience can ever
cease to appreciate or to be grateful for
with a soul-stirring gratitude. He had
a favorable entrance into an honorable
profession and a prosperous life-work
in the line of its studies and duties.
He gained the esteem of men near to
him and remote from him, and reputa-
tion of a most worthy and satisfying
character. He was called, as the years
of ripest maturity came, to positions of
high distinction and wide-reaching use-
fulness. He knew the best life of his
own nation, and the best life also of a
most cultured nation beyond the sea.
He had the richest of earthly happiness
from early manhood to the latest age—
that which belongs to the home life.
He knew the blessedness of giving and
receiving in that life—a blessedness that
grows with the years. He was ready
and willing to pass on to the future and
its revelation of greater and grander
things as the end drew near. The
Father’s voice called him, and we see
him no more.
Surely, the life in its every aspect—as
in its years—was complete, and we may
well look upon it, at its ending, with
gratitude to God for the vision as it
reveals itself before our minds.
THE GREAT FUTURE.
And now the great future is beyond.
What is its life and what its work? We
cannot tell, for the veil that hides the
reality is not lifted from our eyes. But
the life here which is rounded out to its
. fullness, and knows at the close of the
years no diminution of its force and
energy, gives to us its own word of
suggestion and teaching. This word is
of continued activity, of a larger sphere
of thought and action, of higher themes
for the mind to dwell upon, of richer
experiences in which the soul may re-
joice. The man has been, with all his
growth and what we call his maturity,
in a period of education, in which he
has found himself, after coming into
possession of everything that has been
gained, only fitted for the reception of
more and reaching out after what is
yet greater and better. The end is like
the earlier days. There is the same
eagerness of desire—the same outgoing
towards what has not yet been attained—
the same deep sense of the greatness —
of the man as compared with what has
already come to him—the same feeling
deeply seated in the soul that it is itself
more than the world in which it has
been living. The pointing of the inner
life is toward what is beyond and above
the grander life whose possibilities
and whose years are unmeasured.
Such must be our thought, as we bid
farewell to our honored and beloved
friend. He has passed from our sight
to clearer vision, to wider andwlarger
thought, to knowledge above our ‘highest
reach, to possibilities of outlook and
-attainment beyond the dream of our
imagination. May we not count the
passing ona happy thing—the hap-
piest thing in the soul’s experience
May not our farewell word have fitly
intermingled with its sorrowful sense
of loss for ourselves an element of joy
as we think of the completed years here
turning for him into the opening years
of the hereafter. And may not we all—
even those of the innermost circle of
love and friendship—take into the mind
the peaceful and victorious thought of
a brighter day when there shall be a
reunion of loving souls for an endless
life of love. May we not comfort our-
selves with the most precious and de-
lightful words which Jesus spoke to His
disciples .on the last evening of His
life with them—the hour of parting from
His chosen friends—“In my Father’s
house are many mansions. If it were
not so, I would have told you. I go
to prepare a place for you. I will come
again and receive you to myself.” Yes
—this was His word, with all its full-
ness of meaning—“To myself.”
A Sketch of His Life.
The Hon. Edward J. Phelps, Kent
Professor of Law at Yale, died Friday
afternoon, March 9, at his home in New
Haven, after an illness of about two
months. He contracted a very severe
cold at the beginning of the Winter term
and the cold rapidly developed to pneu-
monia which affected both lungs. A
wonderfully strong constitution carried
him through the attack, and hope was be-
ginning to be felt for his recovery, when
symptoms of an abscess of the lungs
appeared on March 2. In his weakened
condition Prof. Phelps was unable to
rally and sank gradually to the end.
Edward John Phelps was born. July
11, 1822, at Middlebury, Vt, and was
the son of Samuel Shethar Phelps, Yale
1811, a member of the Vermont Supreme
Court and later United States Senator
from Vermont. After graduating from
Middlebury College in 1840 he studied
one year at the Yale Law School and
took two years in the law office of
Mr. Horatio Seymour, of Utica, New
York. He was admitted to the Ver-
mont bar in 1843. He began at once
the practice of law in his native town,
but two years later removed to Bur-
lington, Vt., continuing his practice there
with unusual success. His first public
appointment was in 1851 when he was
given the post of Second Comptroller
of. the United States Treasury under
President Fillmore, which he held until
1853. In 1870 he was a delegate to the
Vermont Constitutional Convention, and
seven years later presided over the cere-
monies of the centennial celebration of
the Battle of Bennington. In 1880 the
American Bar Association made him its
President and in the same year he ran
for Governor of Vermont on the Demo-
cratic ticket, but was defeated. In‘ 1881
Yale offered Mr. Phelps the Kent Pro-
fessorship of Law in the Academic De-
partment, which he accepted and held
until his death, taking only temporary
absences during his terms of public ser-
vice abroad.
In 1885 President Cleveland appointed
Prof. Phelps Minister Plenipotentiary to
England, succeeding James Russell
Lowell. He filled the position with
conspicuous success and bore its honors
with great grace and dignity. He was
one of the United States counsel in the
Behring Sea arbitration.
On his return from his work as minis-
ter to England he took up his College
work at Yale, delivering two lectures
a week on Jurisprudence and Law in
the Academical Department, where the
work of the Kent Chair of Law lies.
He also delivered two. lectures at the
JUST —
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Law School on Equity and International
Law. His lectures were very popular
with the students.
Prof. Phelps held the degree of LL.D.
from three institutions, Middlebury Col-
lege, University of Vermont and Har-
vard, and the degree of M.A. from Yale.
The latter was conferred in 1881.
Among his published writings were, a
“Sketch of the Life and Character of
Charles Linsley,” a “Memoir of the Hon.
Isaac F. Redfield,” an address on “Chief
Justice Marshall and the Constitutional
Law of His Time,” and a series of
articles in the Nineteenth Century on
the “Constitution of the United States.”’
In early manhood, Prof. Phelps mar-
ried Miss Mary Haight of Burlington,
Vt., who survives him with two chil-
dren, Mrs. Horatio Loomis of Burling-
ton and Charles P. Phelps, Yale ’83 of
Boston.
LAW SCHOOL RESOLUTIONS.
The following resolutions were adopted
by the students of the Law School at
a mass meeting held Monday, March 12:
Whereas, It has pleased God to re-
move from the post he has so fully
occupied, Professor Edward John
Phelps, the students in the Yale Law
School desire to record their sense of
the loss which they have sustained by
his decease, and of the still heavier loss
sustained by those who were nearest and
dearest to him, and therefore be it
Resolved, That it is but paying a grate-
ful tribute to his memory to say that
this event calls us to mourn for one who
was in. every way worthy of our respect
and regard, a teacher whose kindly
instruction, as clear as it was profound,
will ever be among the most cherished
recollections of our Law School work,—
a citizen whose upright and noble life
say ever afford an inspiration to us,
and,
Resolved, That the heartfelt sympathy
of his pupils in the Yale Law School
be extended to the members of his
family in their affliction and that a copy
of these resolutions be transmitted to
Mrs. Phelps in token of our affectionate
respect for a good man and great teacher
gone to his rest.
George Zahm, 1900, Henry H. Towns-
hend, Committee.
Professor Phelps, the Teacher.
{Hartford Courant.]
A great lawyer, he was also a great
teacher. He carried his weight of learn-
ing lightly, his lectures were models of
lucidity; even the dullest pupils profited
by them perforce. In every new class
that passed through his lecture-room he
mustered out a new company of devoted
admirers and friends. We _ doubt
whether any other teacher in the Uni-
versity, young or old, was more be-
loved. His life was pure, his heart full
of kindness, his manners charming, his
face benignant. His “boys” all over
the country will see it to-day as they
read the news. The University to which
he so loyally gave of his best will hold
him in proud and loving remembrance.
