[Speech of Oliver Wendell Holmes as President of the day, at the annual
dinner of the Harvard Alumni Association, in Cambridge, July 19, 1860,
inaugurating the practice of public speaking at the "Harvard Dinners."
That year also took place the inauguration of President C. Felton, an
event to which the speaker alludes in his graceful reference to the
"goodly armful of scholarship, experience and fidelity" once more
filling the "old chair of office."]
BROTHERS, BY THE SIDE OF HER WHO IS MOTHER OF US ALL, AND FRIENDS,
WHOM SHE WELCOMES AS HER OWN CHILDREN:--The older sons of our
common parent who should have greeted you from this chair of office,
being for different reasons absent, it has become my duty to half fill
the place of these honored, but truant, children to the best of my
ability--a most grateful office, so far as the expression of kind
feeling is concerned; an undesired duty, if I look to the comparisons
you must draw between the government of the association existing _de
jure_, and its government _de facto_. Your President [Robert C.
Winthrop] so graces every assembly which he visits, by his presence, his
dignity, his suavity, his art of ruling, whether it be the council of a
nation, the legislature of a State, or the lively democracy of a
dinner-table, that when he enters a meeting like this, it seems as if
the chairs stood back of their own will to let him pass to the head of
the board, and the table itself, that most intelligent of quadrupeds,
the half reasoning mahogany, tipped him a spontaneous welcome to its
highest seat, and of itself rapped the assembly to order. [Applause.]
Your first Vice-President [Charles Francis Adams], whose name and
growing fame you know so much better than his bodily presentment, has
not been able to gratify your eyes and ears by showing you the
lineaments and stirring you with the tones inherited from men who made
their country or shaped its destinies. [Applause.] You and I have no
choice therefore, and I must submit to stand in this place of eminence
as a speaker, instead of sitting a happy listener with my friends and
classmates on the broader platform beneath. Through my lips must flow
the gracious welcome of this auspicious day, which brings us all
together in this family temple under the benignant smile of our
household divinities, around the ancient altar fragrant with the incense
of our grateful memories.
This festival is always a joyous occasion. It resembles a scattered
family without making any distinction except that which age establishes,
an aristocracy of silver hairs which all inherit in their turn, and none
is too eager to anticipate. In the great world outside there are and
must be differences of lot and position; one has been fortunate,
another, toiling as nobly perhaps, has fallen in with adverse currents;
one has become famous, his name stares in great letters from the
hand-bills of the drama of his generation; another lurks in small type
among the supernumeraries. But here we stand in one unbroken row of
brotherhood. No symbol establishes a hierarchy that divides one from
another; every name which has passed into our golden book, the triennial
catalogue, is illuminated and emblazoned in our remembrance and
affection with the purple and sunshine of our common Mother's hallowed
past and hopeful future.
We have at this time a twofold reason for welcoming the return of our
day of festive meeting. The old chair of office, against whose uneasy
knobs have rested so many well-compacted spines, whose uncushioned arms
have embraced so many stately forms, over whose inheritance of cares and
toils have ached so many ample brows, is filled once more with a goodly
armful of scholarship, experience and fidelity. The President never
dies. Our precious Mother must not be left too long a widow, for the
most urgent of reasons. We talk so much about her maternity that we are
apt to overlook the fact that a responsible _Father_ is as necessary to
the good name of a well-ordered college as to that of a well-regulated
household. As children of the College, our thoughts naturally centre on
the fact that she has this day put off the weeds of her nominal
widowhood, and stands before us radiant in the adornment of her new
espousals. You will not murmur, that, without debating questions of
precedence, we turn our eyes upon the new head of the family, to whom
our younger brothers are to look as their guide and counsellor as we
hope and trust through many long and prosperous years.
Brothers of the Association of the Alumini! Our own existence as a
society is so bound up with that of the College whose seal is upon our
foreheads, that every blessing we invoke on our parent's head returns
like the dew from Heaven upon our own. So closely is the welfare of our
beloved Mother knitted to that of her chief counsellor and official
consort, that in honoring him we honor her under whose roof we are
gathered, at whose breast we have been nurtured, whose fair fame is our
glory, whose prosperity is our success, whose lease of long life is the
charter of our own perpetuity.
I propose the health of the President of Harvard University: We greet
our brother as the happy father of a long line of future alumni.
* * * * *