I am glad you are to have a birthday tomorrow. I feel sure that it will
be a happy birthday. Your children and grandchildren will see to it that
the day is properly celebrated.
It is a great pleasure to look back on the days spent in St. Johnsbury
when your influence meant so much to us. You can never know how strongly
your personality and your life influenced the boys and girls in the
Academy, especially those of us who were away from home. Many of the
things which you said to us, the time or occasion of saying them and
the place too are very vividly recalled after thirty years. You in St.
Johnsbury, four or five professors at Dartmouth and perhaps a half dozen
other men, make up a small group of men who have given me most in the
way of stimulation and encouragement. To express adequately my gratitude
is impossible, but out of a full heart I do thank you and am glad of
this opportunity to extend my best wishes to you for continued health
and happiness.
Yours very sincerely,
DAVID N. BLAKELY, '85.
You have been living in my life all these long years since the old St.
Johnsbury Academy days.
That wonderful kindness with which you looked upon all our shortcomings
has been the great example of kindness I have looked to all these days.
That wonderful equality of judgment with which you decided all our
cases, has always remained unquestioned in my heart.
And that which most of all has influenced my life has been that
wonderful quietness with which you have possessed your soul.
I am more grateful to you every day I live and more thankful for the
years spent under your influence.
We are all to be congratulated because of this birthday. May you have
many, many more and may you know better every year how much we all love
you.
Yours most sincerely,
MARY DREW, '87.
Believing that the only real satisfaction to a teacher after all is the
knowledge that somewhere down the years there sounds an echo of his
effort, I am venturing to add my word of appreciation to you on your
birthday.
There in your office and classroom I received, as have hundreds of
others, the inspiration--the vision, if you will, of what life
means--and there are no memories more hallowed than those of the
associations at St. Johnsbury Academy. Year after year for thirty years
I've watched the groups of young men and women leave the institution but
never without a keener appreciation of what the years had meant to us.
Not for the first time do I say that whatever little success I may have
had with young people is due in large measure to the help received at
your hand, and with all my heart I thank you for your firm and gentle
guidance, your paternal influence over us all, and most of all for your
exemplary Christian character that never failed.
The best wish I can offer you today on your seventy-fifth birthday is
that you may realize more and more what a mighty power for good you have
been and are in the lives of an army of men and women today who once
fell under your influence.
Very sincerely,
CAROLINE S. WOODRUFF, '84.
I wonder how many of us you can remember and whether any of our failings
are still in your mind?
You only had me for a short time, but such as it was it completed my
school work.
In fact it was my only schooling away from home. I am therefore able to
recall vividly many impressions made on my mind during the time I was
under your charge. I formed the impression that you were absolutely fair
and honest with your scholars and that you expected no higher standard
of conduct from them than you were practising every day. I can see you
as you were then and wonder why, with such an example, we did not do
better.
I do not say this because it is your seventy-fifth birthday but because
it is true and I wish you to know that I realized it.
Seventy-five years of upright living comes to but very few and is a
crown of glory more valuable than great wealth or political advancement
and I most sincerely congratulate you on having achieved this end. May
your remaining days be filled with content and happiness and may the
expressions of appreciation and love that you are sure to receive at
this time, bring to you a partial reward for all you have done in the
past for your fellows.
Sincerely and lovingly yours,
G. H. PROUTY.
Patey and I were speaking and writing some time ago about the
seventy-fifth birthday. As the boys would say, "That is some birthday,"
and it is fitting that more than ordinary notice should be taken
of it. I expressed a belief that expressions of loyalty and grateful
remembrance were more to you than material things would be. I hope the
expression will be as spontaneous at this time as it has been from year
to year all through your service. I have never known in any other case
such a continued and universal loyalty as the students of St. Johnsbury
Academy have given to you. By reflex action it has been inspiring to me
and cultivated in me the same desire to serve my pupils which you have
shown.
With best wishes,
FRANKLIN A. DAKIN.
Words are after all poor substitutes for the genuine feelings of the
heart but I know you will be able to brush aside the words and get at
the sentiment back of them.
In three more days from this date you will be rounding out seventy-five
years of a very useful life.
I am sure you will let an old pupil and one who has received so much
inspiration and good cheer from your life tell you so at this time.
Your boys and girls are in many lands but they are still your boys and
girls. Never have I seen a man retain the affection and esteem of those
who have come under his influence to a greater extent than you have.
May the good Lord continue to bless you and yours is the sincere wish
of your former pupil and friend,