ories than when we pass away having done nothing
except for ourselves !

There is another beautiful incident, as it has seemed
to me, connected with the other early originator of
the College, the first president, contained in the letter
which has just been read. It was said this morning
that he had a salary of £140, and he says the salary, if
paid with regularity, will enable him to have a decent
living and to contribute something to the cause of
learning. He was one of the early workers in the line
of education, who have given out of their own means
for the advancement of the cause in all our colleges
and universities. And as I look back and think of
that man who came out of Yale College and entered



THE LUNCHEON. 269

upon his work here, determined to give something
for the cause of education out of a salary of £140, I
bless the memory of that man, and feel that Yale
College gave a great gift to Williams when it gave
its first president.

One word more, gentlemen. Col. Williams wisely
left his property in the hands of trustees, who kept it
safely for many years, and they wisely committed it
to trustees, the large majority of whom were Yale
men. Now this morning a trustee of Yale university
has been most worthily made a doctor of laws, —
Frederick J. Kingsbury. If you wish to know what
sort of trustees belong to Yale College, and whom
Yale College is ready to give to other colleges in all
generations, you have only to look at the Hon.
Frederick J. Kingsbury and find what well-rounded
and grand men they are. I congratulate you, gentle-
men, that you began under a Yale administration.

And now you have not ended this first century with-
out a Yale administration, for here is President Carter,
who is half a Yale man, and we think down there that
it is the better half of him. Gentlemen, I have spoken
too long, but I cannot refrain from saying one word
more. The education of the individual man is what
we seek after, — the development of the individual
man in his mind and soul ; it is a blessing for Yale
men, and for all men in the United States, to have
before them such an example of the power of an
educator, bringing his own personality into the person-
ality of other men, and making them grow out of him-
self, as we have all had in the past here when we



270 WILLIAMS COLLEGE.

saw that grand old man, Mark Hopkins, doing his
admirable work.

President Carter : Our next speaker is to speak
for the patrons of the college. We have with us to-
day one who, descended from an illustrious line, has
himself added lustre to that line. He comes of a
family which has given freely to Christian learning, not
merely in Williamstown and in other places in Massa-
chusetts, but far beyond the borders of this State. He
comes to us fresh from consecration to a noble work,
a Christ-like office, which is endeared to us by the
memory of one who, in his ministrations, set no limits
to his love for all sorts and conditions of men, and
whose inspiration, freely given to us and to our stu-
dents, will never be forgotten. We welcome him,
then, not merely as the representative of the Law-
rences and the Morgans and the Lasells, the Jermains,
and the Thompsons, but as the worthy successor of
Philhps Brooks, the friend of every man and every
woman and every child in Massachusetts. We pray
for him that his tenure of office may be as long as that
of Brooks was beautiful and sweet, and that it may
be no less beautiful and sweet than it shall be long.
I have great pleasure in introducing to you Bishop
Lawrence of Massachusetts.

BISHOP LAWRENCE'S SPEECH.
Mr. President, Alumni of Williams College and Friends :

I came up here with a certain sense of pride, for
your president had notified me that I was to say a
few words after dinner in memory of the patrons of



THE LUNCHEON. 271

this College, especially of my grandfather, who founded
the college library. I confess I have met with some
chagrin this morning when I find that, as I trace back
two generations to my grandfather, I am " nothing but
a name in the herd-book of Williams College." Amos
Lawrence was one of the benefactors of Williams Col-
lege ; and yet let me say that, while men of wealth
who give to colleges and to other institutions for the
welfare of mankind may be their patrons, the colleges
and the institutions become the patrons of the men
and of their families. For in the friendship which the
Lawrence family had with Mark Hopkins, through my
grandfather, through my father, and through myself,
the Lawrence family have received in ample return
and with far more than compound interest all that
they gave to Williams College. We count ourselves
as having been the ones who have been benefited,
bountifully benefited, in the friendship of Mark Hop-
kins, and now in the kindness which the College has
shown in making a member of the family of Lawrence
one of your Alumni.

Your president has been good enough to connect
my name with that of Phillips Brooks. Mark Hopkins,
— strong, sagacious, sturdy, and yet with a heart so
tender that though strong as an oak he gave inspira-
tion to words and thoughts and emotions as tender as
the tenderest oak leaf that shimmers on these moun-
tain sides in June ; Phillips Brooks, — also strong and
sagacious, but tingling with emotion and with sym-
pathy for his fellow-men, turbulent at times as one of
your mountain brooks, — those two men, one in the



272 WILLIAMS COLLEGE.

East and the other in the West of Massachusetts, seem
to have bound Massachusetts together. They stand like
two mountain-tops, these men, who, I do not think I
go beyond the truth in saying, more than any other
two men in this State have moulded the characters of
the men and the women and the children of Massa-
chusetts in this century: and just as there are beneath
this valley connecting your two great chains of moun-
tains strong strata which bind them into one beautiful
landscape, so these two men, proud as we are of them
as citizens of Massachusetts, had beneath them em-
bedded in their characters the principle of love for
their Saviour, Jesus Christ. And we can say that in
this nineteenth century, with all of the doubt and
scepticism that prevails, the characters that mould the
people of Massachusetts are the characters which have
their lives embedded in that same person, Christ.

Now, my friends, I have no right to speak for those
great men ; yet it seems to me that if their voices
could reach us to-day they would unite in one word,
and with that word I shall close. As they saw men
of all sorts moving into the State, — French Canadians
from Canada, Italians from the south of Europe, and
Russians from the north, moving into our mills, our
factories, our cities, moving on to our farms and tilling
these hillsides, — I think that those two men, the one
of the church of the Cavalier of old England, the other
of the church of the Puritan of old England, the one
the man of the city, the other the man of the country,
the one the preacher, the other the scholar, would say
that the one thing that was needed, in the face of all



THE LUNCHEON. 273

this enormous immigration into this great State of
Massachusetts, was that all intelligent, educated, high-
minded citizens of Massachusetts should combine them-
selves, suppressing their differences so far as they can,
ecclesiastical, dogmatical, and partisan, and mould all
these people into one strong body of high-minded,
pure, patriotic, Christian citizens of Massachusetts.

After a brief intermission, with a selection by the
orchestra, the assembly rose and sang the Centennial
Hymn, written for the occasion by Rev. Dr. Washing-
ton Gladden : —

Here, 'neath the soft October sky,

A century gone, the scholars stood
And praised the Power who dwells on high,

The Source of Light, the Fount of Good.

The flaming mountains heard their praise ;

The winding river hushed its mirth,
And through the dreamy depths of haze

The heavens stooped down and touched the earth.

A hundred years their gifts have brought

To crown the work that day begun ;
And flames from off this altar caught

Light every land beneath the sun.

flaming mountains, guard us still !

skies of autumn, softly bend,
And whisper of the gracious will

Of God, our Father and our Friend.

Lord of life and light and love,

The years to come are safe with Thee ;
Clothe us with wisdom from above,

And make us brave and strong and free !

18



274 WILLIAl^IS COLLEGE.

President Carter : It is a very great pleasure to
me and to my colleagues, I know, to welcome Dr.
Tucker, whose voice has been heard so often and so
delightfully in our chapel, as an honorary graduate of
the College. Dartmouth College is one of three col-
leges, including our own, which represent the old New
England college. President Tucker, in his inaugural,
the subject of which was the old and small New Eng-
land college as distinguished from the university, said a
word of our College which I cannot forbear to repeat.
He said, " My friend President Carter is accustomed
sometimes to say that he does not know how many
students will be in the next class or whether there will
any class, but the college of Garfield and Hopkins and
Armstrong can never want for students." To-day we
return the compliment : The college of Webster and
Choate and Tucker can never want for students. I
have great pleasure in introducing to you President
Tucker, of Dartmouth College, who makes his en-
trance into public relations with New England college
men with us to-day.

PRESIDENT TUCKER'S SPEECH.

Mb. President and Men of Williams :

Acknowledging as I pass your very gracious act of
adoption this mornhig, I bring you the most affec-
tionate greetings of Dartmouth. From my personal
knowledge of you during the past years, it was not
surprising that I took to Dartmouth a great warmth
of remembrance of Williams; but I found there the



THE LUNCHEON. 275

same feeling which I carried, — a profound affection
and a profound respect for WilUams. As I hstened
to the graphic story told this morning of your history
I could but feel, without borrowing anything of your
honor and glory, that the two colleges in many ways
during that early time ran parallel, — pioneers alike in
the wilderness, choosing like situations, cherishing the
same ideals, and to-day moving abreast in a glorious
fellowship. In only one particular did I see a differ-
ence : you had your Indians on the outside ; we took
our Indians on the inside.

If I were asked to speak of the most characteristic
thing in New England life I should point unhesitat-
ingly to the New England college. Nothing has so
perpetuated the traditions of that life as the college.
That life was poured into a mould in three forms:
the local church, the town as a social and political
unit, and the college. The local church has modified
somewhat its relations, and has divided the field with
other polities. The town no longer remains the same
social and political unit. I have in mind a statesman
and a jurist whose constant lament is the breaking up
of the social unity of our New England towns. The
college perpetuates, with scarcely a break, the tradi-
tions of that early life. No college in New England
has gone out of existence ; no college has ceased to
grow with the century. There is no pathos in the
New England life like that in the sacrifices attending
the history of our New England colleges. And to-day
I believe that the great feature of our New England
college life is this : that every college stands as a grand



276 WILLIAMS COLLEGE.

power of social democracy. Without there are con-
ventionalities; without there are distinctions. Within
the college there is absolute equality, — no distinction
of religion, no distinction of race, no distinction of
color. Every man stands absolutely on his own merit,
and the public sentiment of a college realizes, better
than anything even in our democratic New England,
the idea of a great social democracy.

I confess that there may seem to be about all
this a touch of provincialism. Grant it. I suspect
that in everything that takes hold of the universal
there is a touch of provincialism. The Hebrew had it;
the Greek had it ; the Scotchman has it ; the New
Englander has it. Somehow, in his remoteness and
in his semi-provincialism, he is making a connection
that will come out in a crisis with that which is uni-
versal. When your own Mills was cherishing in his
own remote quarter his idea of the Christian conquest
of the world, I suspect men thought that provincial.
You know better. I suspect that when your own Arm-
strong thought of laying his hand on that enslaved
race and not only making it free but intelligent, some
men thought that provincial. You know better. From
Mills to Armstrong, you, cherishing the traditions of
your College, have been coming out of your pro-
vincialism with the power of a life trained to take
hold of that which is universal and everlasting. And
God grant, gentlemen of Williams, as you stand with
your feet in these Berkshire hills and face the wide
continent, drawing from the sources just about you
and drawing from sources far and wide, that you may



THE LUNCHEOX. 277

keep the traditions that have made you strong and
free. I believe that the traditions of the New Eng-
land college are safe in your keeping. I know of no
college, not even my own, to which I would rather
entrust those traditions. You go into the new cen-
tury with your history safe. Your future, I believe,
is equally safe.

President Carter : On account of the lack of time
T will cut short my introductions. Let me present to
you President Eliot of Harvard University.

PRESIDENT ELIOT'S SPEECH.

I THOUGHT, Mr. President, that you were going to
introduce me in the now very familiar manner by
saying that I was the head of the oldest college in
the country, I have so often been presented to college
and university audiences in that secure manner.
That introduction is based upon a solid fact. Other
references to the university might possibly be some-
times inconvenient, even to an academic audience.
The vivacious and eloquent orator who presented the
history of the college so vividly to us this morning,
followed the advice of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes,
who said that if you wanted to get at the character
and qualities of a child you had better begin by
studying the character and qualities of its great-
grandmother. He went far back, two centuries, three
centuries, to the Protestant Reformation, and to the
planting of the English colonies in this country. He
referred very graciously, very humorously also, to



278 WILLIAMS COLLEGE.

Harvard College. He did not bring out — he had not
time to bring out — the real bonds that unite the older
and the younger of the New England colleges. Let
me take five minutes to state to you, if I can, what
I hold to be the real bonds of union between these
characteristic institutions of New England.

After all, what does "Williams College live on to-day ?
It lives on endowments and on tuition fees. Now that
is characteristic of all the old New England colleges.
The State universities which have risen later have no
such basis of support. They trust to an annual tax
under a general law, or to annual appropriations made
by the people at large through the legislature. We in
New England are all characterized by this peculiarity :
we are endowed, and we live on tuition fees besides.
Now is this going to last, gentlemen ? What is the
prospect in this country ? These endowed colleges are
all in competition with free tuition colleges and uni-
versities. The income of the University of Michigan
is, to be sure, somewhat smaller than that of Columbia
College, which is about half as large now as the income
of Harvard University, but it is constantly increasing,
and the regents have their hand on the public purse.
Are these means of support for the New England col-
leges going to last ? I think the history of Harvard
University, now two hundred and fifty-seven years old,
assures us that they are ; and right here is a valuable
assurance for the future of every one of the New
England colleges. The history of Harvard is simply
this : that endowments have steadily increased from
the first beginnings until now, and were never so great,



THE LUNCHEON. 279

never flowed in so large a stream, as since the Civil
War. Let every endowed college of the country get
assurance of the future from that firm fact. And
tuition fees : how is it to be with them ? Can the
New England colleges live in competition with insti-
tutions that have no tuition fees ? Again the history
of Harvard shows that they can. We have as high
tuition fees as any institution in the land, — at the same
rate as that of Yale, for example, — and yet no insti-
tution in the United States has so large a number of
students as Harvard has to-day. And never were the
New England colleges as a whole so prosperous as they
are to-day. We get firm assurance for the future here
from the history of this group of colleges ; we look
forward with confidence.

But there is another bond that unites the New Eng-
land colleges : they were all founded to bind education
to religion. Is that going to last ? We see great uni-
versities in this country carefully detaching themselves
from all religious affiliations. Is this characteristic of
the New England Colleges to endure ? Let the history
of Harvard University speak. There are many forms
of religion in New England, ever a growing diversity of
religious belief and practice ; but in the oldest college
of all, religion still goes hand in hand with intellectual
and physical education ; religion, which binds men
to God and men to each other, in lifting up and holding
up each the other through the whole human brother-
hood, is the supreme interest of all the New England
institutions of the higher education.

There is one other community of thought and action



280 WILLIAMS COLLEGE.

between them : they were all founded in the poverty
of early settlements. The circumstances of Williams
were a repetition of the circumstances of Harvard, —
a single benefactor giving an insignificant sum ; the
college founded in the wilderness in both cases, amid
a sparse population, desperately poor, struggling to
maintain a foothold in the barren wilderness. Their
lives were simple, their manners plain, their customs
of the very simplest and plainest possible. But how
is life among us to-day ? Is life simple as it was ? Are
manners and customs plain ? Is plain living the rule ?
Have we not seen a great change in the manners and
customs of the communities which support these col-
leges ? We must admit that we have, indeed, seen the
inroads of luxury which goes ill with scholarship, which
goes ill with the religious devotion of life to public
duty and to public service. We have seen a homo-
geneous people become heterogeneous, as Bishop Law-
rence has just pointed out. We have seen, that is,
great social changes within the last thirty years in our
beloved New England. But, gentlemen, in all the
New England colleges, the largest as well as the
smallest, the richest as well as the poorest, the ideal
remains the same ; there is the same association of
simple living with high ideals. Long may this beau-
tiful, strong, and simple combination stand. Long may
all the New England colleges be bound together by
common practice and common purpose in this regard.

I believe, therefore, gentlemen, that the history of
the New England colleges teaches that they are to be
the most permanent, the most durable, the strongest



THE LUXCHEON. 281

and most uplifting of New England institutions. Think
what Harvard University has lived through, — a series
of wars, French and Indian, the Revolution, the war
of 1812, the Civil War. Think what it has lived
through in changes of government, — from the colony
and the province to the State, from the government of
the English king to the present government of the
democracy. Think what social changes it has passed
through. The changes of the future cannot be greater
than the changes of the past ; and we read in the his-
tory of this single institution that colleges and uni-
versities are the most permanent of human institutions,
excepting always churches.

Let us look forward, therefore, to the future with
confident hope, and with the determination that we
will follow the example of our fathers. Let us look
forward with the determination to reconcile liberty
and conservatism. The two go together ; only as they
are united can a safe progress be assured. One of
my predecessors said to the assembled graduates of
Harvard College, one day, that Harvard College did
not care to what denomination in religion or to what
party in politics its graduates belonged ; but Harvard
College did care that whatever denomination or what-
ever party a graduate of the college belonged to, it
should always be the most liberal portion of that
denomination or that party. It has been one of the
bonds of sympathy between Harvard and Williams
that we have always believed at Harvard that that
was the creed of Williams. We have seen some



282 WILLIAMS COLLEGE.

delightful evidences to-day that the faith of the fathers
is held also by the children.

I thank you, Mr. President, for the kind way in
which you invited me to be present and to speak to
this gathering. There is no pleasanter duty for the
president of Harvard College than to look upon the
assembled multitudes of the sons of her younger sisters.
I cannot but remember that the graduates of this Col-
lege have had, as the orator of the day so justly said,
a very wide influence upon education all over the great
West. Here are two gentlemen present to-day, grad-
uates of Williams, at the head of great and important
State universities. If we examine the headships of the
Western colleges and universities in general, we shall
find that they are often held by the graduates of this
very group of New England colleges whose amity and
the grounds of that amity, I have been describing.
I met lately, in a short journey among the Western
universities, four New England men at the head of
four State universities, all of whom had received their
education in New England colleges. You propagate
far and wide, gentlemen, the influences which lifted
you to higher things while you studied here. We all
do that ; all the New England colleges are doing that ;
and here is the great common service which we render
to our beloved country.

President Carter: Now will Senator Lodge of
Massachusetts give us five minutes before he has to
take the train ?



THE LUNCHEON. 283



SEN"ATOR LODGE'S SPEECH

Mr. President : When you ask a senator of the
United States to confine his remarks to five minutes
you are making a request Httle in accordance with the
general customs of that body. I think^ after Senator
Hoar's letter, I ought to explain why I am here at all,
as he alluded to public duties requiring his attention in
Washington. We felt that one senator from Massa-
chusetts would be enough for a day or two until that
humorously termed " debate " was brought to an end.
The period of legislation by the process of physical
exhaustion begins to-morrow, and I hurry away from
here to take part in that elevated method of making
laws for the people of the United Slates.

Mr. President, Dr. Holmes, in some very familiar
lines, written in reference to another centennial, said, —

" Little, of all we value here,
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both looking and feeling queer.
In fact, there 's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and a truth."

Dedicated to the service of truth, certainly an
ancient institution of learning falls within that cate-
gory. It at least does not need any of the water from
the Spaniard's fountain. Williams wakes on the morn
of her hundredth year, strong, with a larger capacity
for usefulness, with brighter years ahead than ever
before. The light of unaccomplished days is large and
lucent round her brow. She gathers strength with



284 WILLIAMS COLLEGE.

each class that goes out, and her students turn back to
her with a tenderer love because they are treading in
the footsteps of their fathers and their grandfathers, as
the generations stretch away behind.

If you will pardon the weakness incident to all
human nature, I will say that one of the most impor-
tant events of the day has seemed to me to be the
high honor which the college has conferred upon