THE CLASS OF 1878 AT DARTMOUTH REVIEWED IN 1928

This review if it may be so designated, is not of the military order, wherein the officers and privates, all in bright uniforms, some displaying badges of distinguished service, move bravely on across the field in step with martial music. Such a review of the Class of 1878 would have interest for us, whether held when the ranks were full, perhaps twenty-five years after the march began, or when, after a half century's struggle and havoc, achievement and glory, the remnant of the Class should pass before the spectator as once the Tenth Legion of Rome, returning from the forests of Germany.

But we contemplate nothing of this grand sort. Our modest aim is to give a brief succession of personal glimpses, bits out of the landscapes of various lives, with which your imagination, supplemented by memory, will readily conjure forth not only separate careers in their entirety, but also, what is not so easy, a composite view of the Class as a factor in the life of the past fifty years.

In seeking to accomplish this purpose we shall simply move about among the members of '78, listening for some characteristic utterance, noting the tenor of their ways, and making no distinction between those who have finished the earthly course and those who have not, for are not all alive, whether visible to us or not, and are not all working on their unfinished and unfinishable tasks? We shall gather where we may any bits of information not unsuited to the present hour.

Furthermore, we shall listen with particular care for any echoes out of the quieter lives, those that have been passed in isolation and are little known. Thechoicest fruits of culture, like the fairest flowers in nature, are not seldom met in lonely places. We shall not mention names in this recital. Among ourselves this would be needless, while for interested friends outside the class it would afford no essential addition to the value of the sketch.

The term "quiet lives," though by no means to be limited to the farmers of the class, may doubtless be applied to them.

I am not sorry that a few of our men. went from the college or soon after to the farm. If the aim of the college course is culture, the development and enriching of the personality and that was clearly the case at Dartmouth fifty years ago then it is obviously as desirable for a farmer as it is for a lawyer, a clergyman or a physician.

How have the farmers of our Class- looked upon life ? Have they harvested from year to. year nothing but grass and corn, grapes and oranges, eggs, wool and beef? Listen and consider.

After ten years on the soil one of this group wrote thus: . "My life has been one of dreaming and drudgery, yet with considerable leisure devoted to favorite studies and current literature." Among the favorite studies of this man were French and German. "My life," he said, "has been one of dreaming and drudgery." But is not that quite ideal? Dreams accompanied with hard work, hard work and dreams. And surely there is no cleaner sweeter place for dreaming than a farm, as there is no place where one can count more securely on having a steady job irrespective of Congress and the "revoking fund." Moreover dreams are confessed to be the very elixir of joy and also the basis of life's solid achievements. College ought to enlarge the dream-life of the farmer equally with that of the metaphysician and poet.

That the farmer now in mind found stimulus in his studies and some satisfaction in working even New Hampshire soil seems to be indicated by his answers to some of the questions sent out by the Secretary thirty-five years after graduation. Here are two of them.

Question: What have you achieved? Answer: Quite a few edibles. See epitaph in Sartor Resartus. Question: What are you hoping to achieve ? Answer: Undying fame. The voice heard through these answers sounds much like the voice of a "happy warrior." We may say "warrior," for the farmer knows the "moral equivalent" of war quite as well as the professor of philosophy and usually practices it more hotly.

Another farmer's life, still more hidden, is partially and momentarily, yet most suggestively, revealed to us by a single incident that the memory of a neighbor fortunately preserved. It was this. The farmer in question, then well along in years, led a number of friends, one day in spring, through field and forest, several miles, and often at a run, to show them what? Not a vein of gold, not a fine flock of sheep or herd of cattle, but a bed of trailing arbutus !

We read that a man of long ago, back in Old Testament times, led a throng of people up to the temple in Jerusalem with the voice of joy and praise. And this unknown farmer of "'78" did an equally beautiful and perhaps equally religious service when he led his neighbors to some quiet sheltered place under the oaks or pines where they might catch a vision of divine glory in wild flowers that had hitherto been unnoticed by them.

It is another of our farming classmates who after more than thirty years of intimate acquaintance with the plough and hoe spoke these words: "The farm is a place where there is always something worth while to do, and it is also the best place in the world to grow old in." Always "Something worth while" on the farm! Would that as much might be said of some popular vocations of this day, whose followers look askance on the farmer!

Let me refer to another word by the same man whom we have just quoted. He lamented that there was nothing by which a plain husbandman could adorn his Alma Mater. Here we cannot agree with him, and we hope that this was not his last thought on the farmer's service to his college. For an Alma Mater that does not recognize character on a farm as well as in a library or a counting house, and that does not believe with all its heart that character is only true and immortal success, is unworthy not only of ornament but unworthy also of the respect and support of good men.

If any members of the class are to be commiserated on their choice of a calling, it is not the farmers of the sort we have been considering who always find something that is worthwhile to do and whose hearts are thrilled and gladdened beyond measure by simple , wild flowers in the woods.

But now, leaving the farm, listen again to echoes from quiet lives that have been devoted to business and the healing art.

".Life," said one of our number whose cup of sorrows would have driven some men insane and others to unmitigated despair, "Life is worth living if we can be of service to others." And this was his sentiment, not in the flush of proud success and in the unruffled flow of home joys, but after many years in the valley of darkest shadows.

I think that this physician, as he went his rounds from day to day along the country roads with this spirit of service in his heart, must have accomplished in some good degree that which one of our famous writers prayed that she might do

"Be to others the cup of strength in some great agony. Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, Be the sweet presence of a good diffused. And in diffusion ever more intense."

One of our class who lived an uneventful business career, who was almost unknown to us after June of 1878, may stand for a number who discovered the art of glorifying the common-place. Banking did not cramp his spirit. If he performed no single act that attracted the attention of his Alma Mater, he was in himself—in his business dependableness, his refined literary sense, his gentleness and modesty, worthy to be counted among her ornaments, for the culture of mind which she furthered in him through four impressionable years marked his life to its close. The artistic and religious color of that life are at least suggested by these lines of his: "The church that makes Truth seem divine and clearer, Makes brotherhood sacred, humanity dearer,

Puts its accent on living, Devotion, self-giving That church bringeth Heaven a little bit nearer."

A kindred spirit in its refined literary taste and wide sympathies, though not in its share of publicity, was his who, after years of fruitful labor as a writer acquired a name as the friend of dumb animals. I think this man spoke for a number of his classmates when he said: "My religious views embrace whatever makes for righteousness, and they welcome as a brother whoever accepts the supreme creed of Duty, whether he pays homage to Buddha or Mohammed, to Confucius or to Jesus." That which I note in this statement and which seems to be rather characteristic of our class is a practical liberalism in the sphere of religion springing out of a serious and high idealism. The wide and deep movement of our time away from traditionalism in religion as in science, which on its positive side is a movement to build into the religious life those views of the real and abiding values which reflect the light of truth in its progressive unfolding this great movement is one with which our .class has been in lively sympathy and to which they have made, collectively, a modest contribution.

From this point onward in our recital we shall have in mind and briefly mark some careers which have been more widely known, looking at them however in groups oftener than individually, and having regard, of course, not to what the public may have said but only to what the men have been and done. Here as hither to a single echo may stand for years of life, whether this echo can be captured in a material form, as a book or a building or a vast endowment, or whether it exists only as part of the living traditions and vital forces which flow on, unrecorded and ceaselessly, from soul to soul.

The work of our educational group falls largely into this latter category. For though they have contributed by pen to current discussion and have sometimes given their messages in oral form to widely scattered and numerous learners, their most telling and permanent influence, like that of Thomas Arnold, is undoubtedly that which has gone out through personal contact. This has been no less truly the case in the large fields, like New York and Washington, Providence, Fitchburg and Peking, than in a score of less known stations in rural districts. Theirs not "the glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song. Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea" Theirs, most truly, "the glory to go on and still to be."

Turning to our medical group on its most widely known side, we remark only that to one of this group. Vermont owes its model Preventorium for children, which promises to continue its important work through many generations, while another of the group, by learned research and lectures, has added distinction to Washington University in St. Louis.

Some years ago this classmate quoted our famous Professor Young as having once said to us, in an aside on life: "Gentlemen, you will be happier if you do not mix your science and your religion." I suspect that this word is apocryphal, for surely in Professor Young's own life these elementsscience and religion were consistently and happily mixed, as indeed they must always be if either one is to remain wholesome and helpful to mankind. Perhaps he was cautioning us against controversy on the relations between science and religion, of which there had been a great deal, and of a savage sort, for twenty years before our graduation. This thing has indeed often interfered with the happiness of men, though not necessarily with their usefulness.

Of the large legal delegation from the Class of 1878 we may say I trust without any offense that some ran who were not sent and others though seemingly sent refused to run. Some turned aside to help the forces of education, some to seek their fortune in fields that promised more immediate monetary returns.

One of those who read Blackstone and who later turned his back on him, found, after many trying experiences in which, at one time, he narrowly escaped becoming a preacher, and again yet more narrowly escaped becoming a surveyor, found his own predestined niche at last by the side of Zenodotus, Kallimachus and Eratosthenes, keepers of the world's first library.

Some time since, speaking in a reflective autobiographical vein, he modestly admitted that he became a philosophical anarchist about twenty-five years ago; and that thereafter he became nothing, and had never changed.

His attitude toward his Alma Mater at that time I do not know what it is now is succinctly, if not altogether piously, expressed in a remark that I will quote after a word of introduction.

In his Colorado days, when seeking in vain to live by farming, this gentleman once had five acres of potatoes frozen in the ground, possibly while he was meditating deep propaganda on philosophical anarchism. Now regarding this frozen crop he said : "I have much regretted that I did not donate those potatoes to Dartmouth College to found a chair of Evolution for the benefit of the faculty."

Ah well, it is barely possible that his own notable evolution, and also that of the rest of us, such as it has been, owed more to that faculty than he or any one of us has ever fully appreciated.

Seen at the distance of half a century and weighed in the scales of mature judgment, uninfluenced by the glamour attaching to those happy years of mental enlargement and abounding hope, that faculty stands out as a group of well balanced, large-minded, high-souled men, whom to have known we may gratefully account one of the great privileges of our lives.

From those of our legal group who persevered in the profession of their choice have come efficient legislators, worthy judges and one Governor. There is a remark emanating from this group that may fitly be cited here, for it is not yet too late for us to profit by it. It is this: "There are some things in which a fellow ought not to be remiss, and prominent among them are his duties to his college and his class." Had we all shared this sentiment, even twenty-five years ago, our class life would doubtless have yielded us more joy and would have made the occasion we now celebrate one of far greater satisfactions both as regards the present hour and also as regards the years that are gone.

Adverting now for a brief moment to the ministerial group of the class. We recall to your mind a distinguished editorial career in Boston and a unique educational career in China. Another theological classmate, abandoning the pulpit for a seven-inch lens, is nightly to be found in his watch-tower in Florida, observing and studying the variable stars. It may be incidentally remarked that his happiness does not appear to have suffered from the blending of science and religion. That may be said also of our one civil engineer.

From lines by another member of this group I quote the following, which are sure to find an echo in our hearts today: "The Present is mine; the heart is young; Mine still the woods, the hills, the busy

street. I will not moan farewells, but cry, All hail, Unending Present!"

It remains to notice, before closing this recital, one unique representation of our class which our present surroundings bring readily to every mind.

We are back again in the old scenes after fifty years. The Connecticut still flows between its beautiful shores away to the sea. The mountains from Ascutney to Cube still breathe their messages of strength and aspiration. The woods and meadows round about and some of the old paths are unchanged, but of the material Dartmouth of our college days little remains. The old church where Dr. .Leeds dispensed the Gospel in thoughtful quiet terms and where we had our last full gathering is still here, and a few of the familiar halls are left. But in the long course of the years the spirit of the institution has created for itself a new and splendid embodiment. Our pride in this new material equipment and in the entire development of the College, as well as our sense of ownership in it all, are greatly enhanced by the fact that two of our class have given of their counsel, one for twenty years and one for fifteen years, to the planning and the making of the present Dartmouth, while one of them has also given to the College the Administration Hall. We congratulate them on that fine service which has linked their names indissolubly with Dartmouth College.

Congratulations may no longer reach that classmate by whose last will and testament our Library comes into the possession of a vast fund with whose use there will be associated, through indefinite generations, the name of our old Professor of English Literature and of "Sequor" his son.

We can not turn the last page of this recital without a tender thought for those men of our circle on whom the burden and the mystery of suffering rest so heavily today. We miss them, we are proud of them, we know their patience and their courage, we send them greeting in assurance of the ultimate realization of ''the great hopes that make us men."

Finally, Men of '78, leaving to your imagination to fill out the many blank spaces in this recital and leaving to your charity to cover its defects, let us salute each other with these words: "Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new!"

The Library front is revealed with the removal of Butterfield Hall