It is a changed college world since Nat. Willis's Philip Slingsby was
the hero of many a maiden's dream, and the stories of Willis reflected
the modest gayety of the society of his time. Nahant was then a summer
resort of importance, and had not become, as one of its denizens said in
later years, only "cold Boston." Willis's heroes, like Byron's, were
largely himself, and it was but a thin veil that covered in them persons
familiar in the society that he knew, and incidents drawn from his own
experience.
He was the college hero of his time. But his Scripture poems, which had
great vogue and were printed in all the "classbooks" and "readers," and
his "Burial of Arnold," a young and brilliant Senior at Yale, and his
bright and blithe "Saturday Afternoon," are quite passed out of current
knowledge. They are not the kind of verse which is produced in college
now. Their Byronic sentimentality is not to the taste of the college
club and Greek Letter Society man of to-day; and Charles Coldstream, who
looks on listlessly at the college athletic games, leaves enthusiasm to
"the Fresh," and has "really never read those things of Willis's."
Yet the dominant emotions of Commencement this year were very much what
they were when Philip Slingsby dared the waltz, and even the more
emancipated belles shuddered a little as they slid into the charmed
circle. Youth and hope and the passion which "is not all a dream" are
forever renewed, and if the fashion changes, the substance remains. In
the crowded church at Commencement this year, with the gay dresses and
the flowers and the music and the soft summer air breathing in at the
open doors and windows, there are still palpitating bosoms, and a color
that comes and goes, and glances that meet and mingle--"read the
language of those wandering eye-beams--the heart knoweth."
It was "Nat. Willis" yesterday, in a high-collared coat and an ample
cravat such as Brummel wore, and even D'Orsay. It is a quaint and a
droll costume, as you see it in those old _Fraser_ pictures of English
authors "'tis sixty years since." But in that guise it is you, sir, of
to-day, and if your oration is spoken to one auditor, in all that lovely
throng in the gallery, whose heart answers "pity Zekle" to your pitapat,
do you think that the divine Una's grandmother was never young, and that
the droll high-collared coats did not cover hearts as sensitive and
hopes as high as the faultless summer attire of Nameless, Jun., class of
'90? The actors change, but the spectacle is the same. Even the members
of the reverend and venerable the corporation, those bald and
white-haired worthies who seem vaguely always to have been sitting
unchanged in the front pews, like those austere senators of Rome of whom
the tradition tells us that they sat motionless although the invader
came--even they are living monuments, and on their hearts, as on
tablets, the story of the wandering eye-beams is engraved.
There is not one of the young heroes of the Commencement hour whom those
elders do not scan with knowledge. These wise young judges carry no
secrets which the elders do not share. Is it a strange world that of
Willis and his Philip Slingsby? It is the world of the moment and of
this Commencement.
But there is something else in Commencement besides this romance of
feeling and tradition. It is the celebration of the intellectual life.
The eloquence, indeed, is sometimes rather copious. An oration in the
morning before one literary society; in the afternoon before another;
and a sermon in the evening before the Missionary Association, is good
measure heaped up and running over. There is some jealousy also even in
academic groves. In the older day, if the Melpomene had its oration in
the morning and the Euterpe in the afternoon, and you read on the
following Sunday, scrawled on the blank page of the hymn-book in the
pew, "Words, words, words, oration of Cicero," and "Genius, eloquence,
common-sense, oration of Demosthenes," you knew that you read the
comment upon the rival orator of a Melpomenean or a Euterpean, as the
case might be. But if the orator was not always wise or eloquent, there
were also discourses which have profoundly influenced the lives of those
who heard or read them, giving a direction and inspiring a fidelity
which, like Wordsworth's thoughts of his past years, breed perpetual
benediction.
It is a recollection blended of many feelings, that which the recurring
Commencement brings to the alumnus. But the deep and permanent charm is
the consciousness of the infinite worth and consolation of letters.
Theoretically the college course was a series of years devoted to making
acquaintance with the treasures of human genius. Possibly there was in
fact some divergence from the theory. But that was the opportunity. The
gates were set ajar, and if the neophyte did not choose to enter, he
lost--as the teacher said to his pupil who went fishing rather than to
hear Webster's eulogy on Adams and Jefferson--he lost what he can never
regain.
Is there some fatality which makes the pen that treats of Commencement
hortatory and didactic? Is there some secret charm which still allies
the college to the pulpit, so that to talk about it is presently to
begin to preach? The Easy Chair asks because it feels that it is about
to take the sacerdotal tone, and remind the youth who is leaving or
entering college that, like every other epoch in life, college is an
opportunity. It is what you make it. Fate, as the older times would have
said--life, as we prefer to say--gives us a chance. But the improvement
of it we give ourselves. The tragedy of the refrain, "Too late, too
late; ye cannot enter now," is that of the man who, in our simple
phrase, wasted his college years. The tender spell of Whittier's "Maud
Muller" lies in its saddest words of tongue or pen. But the memory of
what might have been is so profoundly pathetic because it might not have
been, and we were the arbiters of fate and did not choose to turn
upward.
Kind sir of the college, who lend to the preacher of the moment your
listening ear, the preacher himself may be a wearisome chaplain, but you
are the young judge of the summer afternoon, smelling the meadows sweet
with hay, and stopping at the cool spring where Maud Muller hands you
the refreshing draught. Do you follow the allegory, and see in that maid
what really she is? To you she is a maiden who rakes the hay; to Numa
she was Egeria by the other fountain. It is a sweet illusion, for the
maid is not Egeria nor Maud Muller, but under those gentle forms she is
the nymph of opportunity. Woo her and win her, and all the happiness
that might have been will be yours.
There is nothing more touching than the inability of the chooser to
comprehend the choice. Why did not the judge yield to the soft
persuasion of that simple loveliness? Why did he not embrace the
opportunity, and fold his happiness to his heart? Well, sir, that is
always the question. But if he did not know that in that fair figure
opportunity stood before him, you do know it. Don't be satisfied to hum
"in court an old love tune." You remember the legend of the Sibyl's
books. Was it interpreted to you in the class-room? Do you interpret it
to yourself?
The most inspiring tradition in every college is not that of the boat or
the ball, of copious gold and flowing wine, of Milo or Sardanapalus or
Midas; it is not that of the "dig" or the "prig," of Dryasdust or
Casaubon; but it is that of the youth, by whatever name he was called in
your college, who did not, like the judge, "closing his heart," ride
on--who knew that four such years as yours in college would never
return, and that they offered him the golden keys which, polished by his
labor, would open the heaped treasures of genius in all ages and lands.
It is he who in taking the keys did not grudge the labor, and to whose
life those treasures have been wide open.
No, the inspiring personal tradition of college was not the pleasant
Philip Slingsby; it was rather Philip Sidney, who rode with the best
and was a man in every manly enterprise, but who had so used his
opportunities in study and affairs that Hubert Languet, most
accomplished of scholars, called him friend, and William of Orange
called him master.