ADDRESS OF MELVIN O. ADAMS, ESQ., PRESENTING THE NEW DARTMOUTH HALL IN BEHALF OF THE ALUMNI

The clouds of our common calamity have rolled away.

Up the historic steps, footworn by many generations, we come like loyal pilgrims to worship at this shrine forever theirs, but more than ever ours.

The cause of Indian education in its relation to the colonial life and its political effect upon them and those beyond our border in this perspective, looks dim in his radiant presence.

Samson Occum and Whitaker, adding their new world's fervor to Whitefield's wonderful quality, in the whirlwind English campaign which caught in the swirl the king himself, present a picture full of color; but nearer to us and larger than they, sits ever this same man who splashed that canvas a thousand leagues away with these pigments that thus endure.

The family school, seeking now the larger scope of the academy and looking beyond the life of the individual to the perpetuity which comes from grant under the royal prerogative; that wonderful muniment of our title, the charter itself, a classic then and now, by the final master stroke 'in the simple postscript of the letter written to Governor Wentworth with a serenity of diplomacy unexcelled by Franklin or Jefferson, which caused it to be issued not to an academy but to a college—all these bring into still bolder relief him of whom I speak.

Here in privation, in labor of head and heart and hand, sprang forth to the world in the person of Eleazar Wheelock that which has been named and known as the Dartmouth spirit.

And now the enkindling begins. The torch borne only by an individual goes from hand to hand in a group; the man is merged in plan and organization so that when the century ends, the College as we now know it is full statured among its fellows.

The, torrent of, Webster's eloquence tearing away the specious obstruction of a university which attacked the integrity of the College charter had, as we know and tell each other again and again, its source in these springs.

Those were the days when the constitution had cubic dimensions; and the decision, that left us a college as we began, and not a university, which under the providence of God we never intend to be, helps to more firmly anchor that sacred instrument which now and then seems to swing uneasily at its moorings.

We men of today, until the morning of Feb. 18, 1904, had never looked straight in the eye the responsibility of a College crisis. We had sung her praise and had cheered her presidents and professors and victors.

When in the evening all was over and only the embers gave out the few flutterings of the expiring breath of old Dartmouth Hall, when chapel and task-room,rollicking corridor and exacting clock, the bell with its rare belfry shell, all had gone—would then the spirit of the alumni hear again and give heed to the voice crying in the wilderness, and with the old vision, return once more .to put it back in its accustomed place ?

This day and this hour and this concourse bring the answer. In losing Dartmouth Hall, the alumni of Dartmouth College have found themselves.

Set in the similitude of the old, adapted like it to become the throbbing center of the same but a larger college life, and retaining all the glorious traditions, this building fills the eye, answers the heart, and warrants rich prophesy for the future.

Already the procession of those bearing gifts has begun. The outside clock, aided by the electric light within, will count all shining hours reminding us of the spiritual sunshine and nobleness of nature which shone in President Smith, in whose memory it is placed by his son.

The bell, as it rings, speaks for the class of 1905. Within the lecture room which now occupies the area of the old chapel, the men who graduate tomorrow place a tall and ancient time piece; for the gongs are cast of the metal of the old College bell, and the case is made of the wood preserved from the one of two historic trees--the old pine, the seedling sister of that other tree laid low for the adventurous canoe of John Ledyard, the first freshman to disappear up the river in term time, and who later transformed his paddle into his helm of discovery which guided him with Captain Cook and John Paul Jones around the globe.

And now in behalf of the alumni, to you, official representative of the Board, in the words of the charter, "Our trusty and well beloved president," I give and commit this building. As it is cast in the mould of the old, so let not that mould be broken.