1900 Memorial

[Reprinted below is the memorial addressgiven by Homer Eaton Keyes 'OO at theRollins Chapel service held Sunday, June16 in memory of members of 1900 who haddied since the last reunion, Mr. Keyes'words_ merit greater circulation than couldbe given them in the recent "1900 Report."—ED.]

DURING THE five years since our previous memorial gathering in this cloistered sanctuary, our numbers have been diminished by the death of thirteen classmates. Some of these men spent their full four years with us on the Dartmouth campus. Others maintained their active fellowship for but a brief period before withdrawing from the quiet academic scene to try their fortunes with the beckoning world outside.

Fortunately, our class was relatively small, the life of the college at that time far more centripetal than it has become in subsequent years. This happy circumstance endowed our group almost immediately with a sense of personal kinship; it engendered a spirit of solidarity that knit us together with bonds closer than those of blood brotherhood. So it is that to this day there is not one amongst us who in memory cannot clearly vision the faces even of those whose sojourn with us hardly outlasted the beginning term of our course. The stature, the bearing, the mode of speech of others is as fresh in our minds as when they first impressed themselves upon our quick sensibilities nearly forty years ago.

Graduates, non-graduates—we care not how our dead comrades of old may be listed in the formal records of the College; the record of our cherishing hearts admits of no differences amongst them. All have been one with us in the past. They are one with us today, though their course on earth is finished; for there is a spiritual essence that survives the relinquishment of living intimacies and gains in precious fragrance with the lapse of years.

We are not here to mourn the passing of our friends. Peace attends them; beatitude is their portion. We would not, if we could, recall them to the tumultuous present and its travail of mind and soul. But it is appropriate that, in profound reverence, we name their names and yield to each the tribute of brief but sincere praise.

So ends the list of those who have passed since our previous reunion. Their names are entwined with our happiest recollections. Our love attends them. We know that their love abides with us. Increasingly we sense their nearness as the shadows of our own brief day begin to lengthen and the horizonss that once seemed so fair, so easy of achievement, fade into the slow mists of eventide.