portion of the overseers, the trustees, and alumni, every instructor,
every teacher, every tutor, almost every person in any way connected
with this college, from the treasurer to the janitor, and the woman
who took care of the rooms, have all passed away. I can reckon my own
surviving classmates on my fingers, and I stand here to-day like an old
tree among the younger growth, from whose trunk the bark and leaves
have fallen, and whose roots are drying in the soil. Then I could
stand where the roads divide that lead to Mere Point and Maquoit, and
hear the roar of the Atlantic in one ear and that of the falls of the
Androscoggin in the other. To-day I have not heard a word, except the
two words “Bowdoin College.”
But there is no decrepitude of the spirit. Moons may wax and wane,
flowers may bloom and wither, but the associations that link the
student to his intellectual birthplace are eternal.
There is an original tendency in the human mind which is the foundation
of the desire for property. We all naturally crave something that is
our own. What lover of nature wants to be where everybody has been? It
is an instinctive tendency. We want our own land, however limited; our
own house, however humble; our own books, however few in number. Who,
I pray you, wants to “wear his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck
at,” or be a member of a fraternity that is like an unfenced common for
every slimy thing to creep and to crawl over? It is this instinctive
feeling which has from the beginning been at the foundation of all
fraternities of every description, and they have striven to realize
this idea, though they have not always accomplished it. This principle
of limitation strengthens by concentrating every association and every
feeling of the human mind, just as the expansive gases derive their
terrific power from compression, and liquids, by concentration, gain in
pungency what they lose in bulk. It is this which imparts such magic
power to the college tie, because the college tie brings and binds
together, at a period when friendships are most ardent and sincere,
and feelings are most plastic, those who have separated themselves to
intermeddle with all knowledge, and unites them in the pursuit of all
that can honor God, develop the intellect, or benefit mankind.
It introduces them at once into a fraternity composed, not merely
of their own classmates and contemporaries, but of all the gifted
and the good who still live in their works, and by whose labors they
profit. The longer a man lives, the broader his views, and the more he
experiences of men and things, the more he feels his obligation to his
Alma Mater, to the nourishment he drew from her bosom, to the formative
influences with which she surrounded him. Brethren, it was here we were
intellectually born and bred.
“’Twas here our life of life began,
The spirit felt its dormant power.
’Twas here the youth became the man,
The bud became the flower.”
The longer a man lives the more sensible he becomes of this obligation,
and though it is impossible to repress a feeling of sadness when we
visit the rooms and tread the floors where those swift-winged hours
flew, and where we decipher the almost obliterated inscriptions, the
names on the walls, names of those most dear to us, of those whose step
kept time and whose hearts throbbed in unison with ours,
“Who the same pang and pleasure felt,
At the same shrine of worship knelt,
And knew the same celestial glow
That young and burning spirits know
In the bright dreaming days of youth,
Ere visions have been chilled by truth,
And feelings gushed without control
Of those cold fetters fashioned by
That wayward king, society.”
And yet these considerations are modified by the reflection that they
have nobly used the training that they here received, and are exerting
influences that survive them, and have sown seed that shall be the
increment of future harvests.
I feel grateful that a lengthened life and an intimate acquaintance
with the history and former faculty and the students of this college
have enabled me to appreciate the progress of this institution for
the last fifty years. For more than forty years circumstances have so
ordered it that I have been brought into most intimate relations with
the faculty and students of Bowdoin College. They have loved me and I
have loved them. I have been brought into contact with these young men
at a period in their moral and mental development when a youth will
tell his whole heart, all his best plans, aspirations, and difficulties
to an older person who he feels understands him and whom he knows he
can trust; and in the light of this experience, I do not hesitate to
say that this college never stood so high in moral and intellectual
work as it does this day. In 1838 I listened to the farewell address
of President Allen to the faculty and students of this college and the
inhabitants of this town, in which he declared that this college was
a seething tub of iniquity, and he could not in conscience advise any
parent to send a child here. Mr. President, do you think you could in
conscience make such a declaration? And whatever may be thought, I say
whatever may be thought of the good judgment of the reverend gentleman,
it cannot be denied that he had good grounds for his assertion.
There were at that time a great many pious and devoted students in
college, as many, probably, in proportion to the number, as have ever
been since. They had a praying circle, and the college church kept up
their religious meetings and attended them promptly. They lived, the
greater portion of them, devoted and consistent lives, and from time to
time they received the influence of the Divine Spirit, and many strong
men were brought to Christ and fitted for usefulness; but in general
they had the fire all to themselves and it warmed no one else. The
good went with the good, and the bad with the bad. There was a line of
demarcation between them. I did what I could to break it, came very
near shipwreck, and shall carry the scars of it to my grave, but I am
glad I made the attempt. Those were not the methods which the changing
times required. The Christian Association which has superseded them,
built on a broader basis, meets the requirements of to-day, and does
more to promote the morality of the college. Things have broadened
since I was a boy. Why, when I was a young man, it was thought that a
person couldn’t be converted till he was married and settled in life.
Another thing which has added strength to this college and been
fruitful in respect to morality is the attention that has been paid
of late to athletic exercises. This outlet for superfluous energy has
more to do with the good order and subordination of the institution
than most people are wont to imagine. Boys that in my day would have
been playing cards in their room for a hot supper and fixings at the
Tontine, are now pulling an oar or playing baseball or lawn-tennis, and
the germs of mischief ooze out in copious drops of perspiration. And
when night comes, instead of reveling in shirt-tail processions, making
night hideous, they are contented to sit down with their books or go to
bed.
It has always been a vexed problem how to give students exercise.
Every man of common sense knows that students, in order to accomplish
anything, must have exercise. Andover built a large building, bought
tools and stock, hired a skilled foreman, and was going to set
the students to work. They wasted so much lumber and brought the
institution so heavily in debt that they were obliged to sell out and
turn the building into a house for Professor Stone.
I recall the military drill here. It was all very well for a while. But
all couldn’t be officers. Nobody was content to be dragooned by an
army officer. But lawn-tennis, baseball, football, and the gymnasium
fill the bill. The students are proud of their gymnasium, and I know
from personal experience that, during the last eight years, those who
have excelled in athletic exercises have also excelled in rank.
Now I believe that this college has taken a new departure, and I
believe there is a future for it from the fact that the alumni take
more interest in the college than they used to take, and because there
are so many poor students connected with it. Poor students are the
salvation of a college. I know young men who worked their way through
college who are to-day its benefactors. I worked my way through college
with a narrow axe, and when I was hard up for money, I used to set the
college fence afire and burn it up, and the treasurer would hire me to
build another one. Let the young man who has to help himself thank God,
keep his powder dry, and take to his bosom the old motto: “_Per angusta
ad augusta._”
AT CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE, JUNE 28, 1894
My love, Mr. President, for this college was inherited. I drew it in
with my mother’s milk, and was taught it at my father’s knees. He was
one of its first trustees, proposed its first president, and sold
the lands the proceeds of which, after almost interminable delays,
built Massachusetts Hall. Judge Freeman of the trustees, a most
excellent and influential man and ardently attached to the college,
was naturally very cautious, and that trait was now much increased
by age; it seemed on account of his influence as if a building would
never be erected. It was at length moved at a meeting of the Boards
that my father be appointed and empowered to sell the college lands.
He accepted the trust on condition that they would put Judge Parker
of Massachusetts with him to draw the writings. This being done, he
said, “Gentleman, these lands will all be sold within a year.” Judge
Freeman, stroking his face, as was his habit when excited, exclaimed:
“They will ruin us. They will ruin us.” “I,” observed another of the
trustees, “want to be ruined; I had rather die at once than moulder
away by dry rot.” The lands were sold within the specified time, a
building was then erected, and President McKeen inaugurated. Seldom
has the hand of Divine Providence been more clearly manifested than in
the origin and growth of this college. From its inception it secured
in its presidents, professors, trustees, and overseers men who had the
interests of morality and sound learning more at heart than their own
ease or emolument. The abilities of its teachers and their reputation
would have at any time procured for them more eligible positions if
ease, compensation, and reputation had alone been consulted. They
were self-denying men; they loved the college and labored and denied
themselves for its good.
I was absent from college but three years when I returned and settled
at Harpswell. I had a great deal to do with the college, was in
intimate relations with the professors and their families, and had
opportunity to appreciate their real worth. They were not merely
residents of the community, but useful citizens and a public blessing.
The high school owes its origin in a great degree to Professor Smyth.
All the neighboring ministers were under more or less obligation to
them. They attended funerals, supplied destitute churches, and in the
weekly religious meetings of the village were a power for good. I have
worked weeks with Professor Smyth, setting out trees on the campus
which he bought and paid for. Professor Upham gave the greater part
of his property to the college. He for two years supplied the pulpit
of the Congregational church at Harpswell, and but for his efforts it
would not have been in existence now. In the last term of my senior
year he came to Andover and told me if I did not go to Harpswell, God
would curse me as long as I lived. I do not know what the Lord would
have done, but I have found that obedience is sweet and not servitude.
Those worthy men inspired the students with like sentiments. Every
class made great sacrifices to purchase valuable standard works for
their society libraries. The literary spirit was by no means in
abeyance in those days. The best minds in college took as much interest
in preparing themselves for debates and other parts in the two
societies as they did for a Junior and Senior Exhibition. The students
dammed the glen at Paradise Spring and made a pond. They also terraced
the sides of the glen and constructed seats of turf, and addresses
and poems were delivered there to most appreciative audiences. Sam
Silsbee flung Albion Andrew into Paradise Pond, and he was so fat
that he floated like a bladder. Sam was not aware that he was laying
sacrilegious hands upon the future governor of Massachusetts any more
than I was aware that Melville Fuller would be Chief Justice of the
United States, when with care on his young brow and the fire of a
great purpose in his eye, I marked him laying the foundation of future
renown. Were there not poets in those days who possessed the vision and
the faculty divine? Did not President Allen have a hat that was woven
of grass that grew on Mount Parnassus? Did not John B. Soule compose a
Latin ode upon a moth that flew into a candle which in the opinion of
the class compared favorably with those of Horace? And has he not since
that time by more elaborate efforts proved that the child is father of
the man? How can I ignore a most pathetic effusion, on the death of
an unfortunate cat that was crushed beneath a woodpile, written in the
style of President Allen?
“Poor puss, and wast thou to death squeezed
Beneath the weighty pile?
How must thy life have been outsneezed
The agonizing while!
And, pussy, didst thou found it hard
To part from kittens young?
For if thou’dst not a feeling heart,
Thou hadst a feline one.
Now, pussy, since thou art up-used,
From door thee I’ll outthrow,
Thy body from thy mind unscrewed,
To bleach beneath the snow.
By hill and valley, dale and stream,
The rats shall frisk and frolic,
Crying ’Hurrah, we’ll lick the cream
Since pussy’s got the colic.’”
During the latter part of President Allen’s administration discipline
was lax; intemperance prevailed to a fearful extent in college as it
did in the community. There were no railroads, and people came to
Commencement and remained in Brunswick till the close. It was then
customary for the graduating class to set tables in the rooms in which
were liquors and other refreshments, and entertain their relatives
and friends. At one time there was a room in North College in which
a table was set with liquors and other refreshments, and straw was
put upon the floor, and over the door a sign bearing the inscription,
“Entertainment for Man and Beast.” But even at that time there was a
body of students composing the college church or Praying Circle, as it
was termed, the greater number of whom were persons of the most decided
religious character. They held meetings and taught Sabbath-schools
in different parts of the town, and were in sympathy with every good
work; but between them and the majority of the other students there was
a line of demarcation. Each party travelled their own road, and they
had little to do with one another. But after 1838 there was a change;
a deep religious interest began and continued, the herald of a better
day. Since that day Christian associations have exerted a salutary
influence, and, like the Gulf Stream sending its warm current through
the cold waters of the Atlantic, have imparted a more genial tone to
the intercourse of the students. Athletic exercises have likewise
laid a strong hand upon much of the time formerly devoted to more
questionable recreations. Although the present furor in these sports
has its dangers and the matter is liable to abuse, yet they fill the
bill as nothing else ever did, and when pruned of their excrescences
will become a power for good. Young men of real stamina, however full
of blue veins and vitriol and however enamoured of baseball, football,
and boating, and hurried to extremes for the moment, will yet recall
and heed the words of Cicero who represents Milo of Crotona, the
greatest athlete of ancient times, who could kill an ox with a blow of
his fist, shedding idiotic tears as in his old age he looked upon his
flabby skin and shrunken muscles, and wept because he could no longer
contend and conquer in the Olympic games. Milo had muscle and nothing
else. May it never be said of Bowdoin students that they have muscle
and nothing else, and certainly not that they are destitute of it.
Great was the change when President Woods succeeded President Allen.
Never will the upper classes of that year forget the day of his
inauguration. When he took his stand upon the platform to deliver
his address, he laid upon the table before him a manuscript as thick
as a three-inch plank. A riband was passed through it, dividing it
into equal parts. But he never looked at it from the beginning to the
close, except that, when halfway through, he opened at the riband but
made no use of it. For more than two hours, without the hesitation of
a moment or the lapse of a word, he held that audience spellbound.
I have never known the man who could produce the impression--and a
permanent one--upon a wild boy that he could. There are many living,
distinguished and beloved, and many here present who will never forget
their obligations to Leonard Woods.
For a poor boy smitten with the love of knowledge to work his way
through college was once a formidable task. The only methods of doing
it were keeping school in the long winter vacation, manual labor as
they went along, or hiring money with the result of being burdened with
debt at graduation. The Education Society could do but little, and
there were no scholarships as at present. I walked seventy-five miles
over the frozen ground after Christmas to the Penobscot to keep school,
and back again through the mud in March, because I was too poor to
ride; and I had to hire a watch in Brunswick to keep school with.
The commonwealth justly expects much from the students and alumni who
enjoy the advantages both literary and pecuniary now accorded.
“Ye are marked men, ye men of Dalecarlia.”
The associations of this day come home with peculiar force to the
minds of those who have been familiar with the history and watched the
progress of this college from the day it was a mere shrub, with bare
shade sufficient to cover its own roots, to this glad hour when they
rejoice that they are permitted to look upon it as a massive tree, on
whose broad foliage the sunlight loves to linger and the dew lieth all
night on its branches. Withered hands are lifted in benediction: the
tremulous accents of age join the universal jubilee. They will depart
cheered by the assurance that when the dial plate shall be taken off
from this great clockwork of the universe, and in eternity we behold
its secret wheels and springs, it will be found that those who, at this
seat of science, have separated themselves that they might intermeddle
with all knowledge, its officers and its benefactors, have lived,
labored, endured, not for themselves, but for their country and their
God.
LOVE
[Delivered at “Donation Party,” Harpswell, September 18, 1894]
Love, my friends and neighbors, is something that defies definition and
resents analysis. It is not possible to communicate the perception of
it to one who has never experienced it. It must be felt in order to be
known. It is likewise the most permanent of all the qualities of the
mind. Anger, however violent, expires with the occasion that called it
forth. Grief, however bitter and heart-rending, time will remove, and
it will blunt the sting of sorrow. But love is inexhaustible and grows
by what it feeds upon. Here is the father of a young family. He is
returning at night from his work. As he approaches the door, a little
one who can just go alone espies him. With cries of delight he runs to
meet his parent, till, out of breath and strength, he falls exhausted
into his father’s outstretched arms. The happy parent raises the
little one and kisses him. When he has kissed that child a dozen times,
does he not want to kiss him a dozen times more? Thus affection grows
by what it feeds upon and is inexhaustible. It will do or endure more
for the welfare of its object than any other faculty. You may hire a
man to labor for you, you may force him to obey you, but not to love
you. No power on earth can do that. On the other hand, does he love
you, that love will cause him to do more for you than all other motives
put together, and the more he does the more will he delight to do,
because love tells nothing is lost that a good friend gets.
[Illustration: ELIJAH KELLOGG AT EIGHTY. 1893.]
There are people before me to-night whom I began to love forty years
ago. Do I love them less? Is the affection worn out? No; it is worn in.
Then it was in the bark, but now it has got into the heart of the tree.
Here, also, are the children and grandchildren of those who are not,
for God has taken them, and the affection I bore their parents clings
to the children. It is not worn out, because love is stronger than
death. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.
Or if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it
would utterly be contemned. It is love that makes home, love that makes
friends in the world, love that makes heaven, for God is love.
What has brought all these friends together to-night? They did not
come to get, but to give, not with their hands shut up, but with both
hearts and hands wide open. They have come to gratify their feelings of
neighborly friendship and affection; for if they did not thus gratify
those feelings, they would not enjoy what they had left. Ought I not
to be grateful to be the recipient of so much good-will, kindness, and
neighborly affection? I trust it will be an encouragement to render me
more faithful to your souls’ best interests, to work for you and seek
your good; to pray that God, who loves the cheerful giver, will reward
and bless you.
There were never two persons in this world who loved each other but
wanted and loved to eat together, and there were never two enemies who
did. There were never two persons who loved each other, loved God,
but who loved and wanted to pray together. We have eaten together; we
have enjoyed each other’s society; recalled the feelings of other and
happier days, before toil had stiffened our limbs, sorrow entered our
hearts, or tears trembled on our eyelids; now let us pray together
before we separate.
THE DELUDED HERMIT
[Delivered at “Donation Party,” October 1, 1895]
In the ancient days, after the early Christian fathers who succeeded
the Apostles had departed, religion degenerated into superstition.
There arose under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church a class
of hermits, anchorites, and devotees who thought that heaven and
holiness were to be obtained by torturing and denying the flesh; that
by secluding themselves from society, by fastings and watchings, they
might escape temptation and sin and live nearer to God and merit the
divine favor.