Brethren of the Alumni of Dickinson and Friends Assembled at our Reunion:

    I may seem more daring than discreet In venturing to select as the theme of my address, our Alma Mater and her sons, I may, perhaps, be thought more daring than discreet.  An Alumnus of almost any College of our country, who, speaking to, should undertake to speak concerning, the Alumni of his College, might, perhaps with reason, be regarded as assigning himself a theme meagre in itself, and difficult to

^2.handle. It is not with College as it is with individuals.Men achieve renown, if they do at all, in no great length of time. Colleges crown themselves slowly – need the years of generations to win distinguished reputation. Not many of ours can claim even an American antiquity. Only A few, coëval with, or older than, the Republic, have had the time to rear a line of sons, and to garner treasures, entitling them to hold a place among the famous seats of learning. But, of the rest, By far the most are
so much of yesterday that, however nobly they have done, the very shortness of their lives renders them, as yet, comparatively

^3.poor in all that gives celebrity to Academic Halls.  Moreover, in addition to Besides its poverty of matter, such a subject is embarrassed in another way.  Discourse about the living is always at the risk of wounding justice.  When men have played their part, and passed away, not only in our judgment of them after to be just, but the common sentiment allows, indeed applauds, our going to the utmost bound of kindly speech concerning them.  But so long as they are on the stage, and the play of life is going on, besides the possibility that, ere the curtain falls,

^4.they may act amiss – may dim the glories of the morning or the noon – we may fail to judge of them precisely as we should: estimate and utterance are liable to take their coloring and tone from partiality or prejudices from which the best are not entirely free.  Our Alumni are, as yet, so largely of the living, that speech concerning them, not to be offensive, would have to be with caution quite unfriendly to the interest of popular discourse.

^5.a subject for to-day, it was the first to come; but, as being burdened with the difficulties named, it was promptly set aside.  Address was paid to several themes in turn; and more than one was wooed with very earnest suit.  But this one kept returning, and so earnestly entreating to be taken into favor, that no other could be coaxed into willingness to serve.  At last, like many a suitor, who, unable to wed the one he would, has been glad to wed the one he could, I found myself taking kindly to this, at first, so unattractive theme.  One of the reasons caus-

^6.ing hesitation – absence of the interest which years impart to seats of learning – measurables vanished, when I came to think that how old our Alma Mater really is; that the nation had but left its cradle, when her maternal life began; that, married twice, the gracious lady has a double set of sons, all of whom it is our right to claim, our pride to feel, compose a single brotherhood.  Numerous, then, and not without renown, is the family whose record we are able to unroll.  Recalling, too, the fact that the closing year has been quite an somewhat epochal in her history – that, in it, she was dower-

^7.ed nearly to her wish – it seems a time for reminiscences and congratulation; seems, indeed, but dutiful in us, revisiting her halls, to give an hour to memory and hope: with filial eye to review the past, survey the present, and cast a look into the future.
    The offices, then, filial and friendly, with which we then it is proposed to occupy the hour, are first to be

Retrospective.

    It was in the year 1783 that the purpose was conceived of Establishing a College in the Borough of Carlisle.  A number of gentlemen in the City of Philadelphia, distinguished

^8.for their wealth and public spirit, among whom was the celebrated Dr. Rush, were its principal projectors.  The Hon. John Dickinson, at the time Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, so ardently espoused and liberally assisted the infant undertaking that, out of compliment, the College took his name.  It has been said by one* conversant with its early history, that the enterprise originated in a feeling of disaffection, not to say hostility, on the part of its founders, toward two already existing institutions, Princeton College, and the University of Pennsylvania.  Some proceedings of the Legislature in founding
*Rev. S. Miller – Memoir of Dr. Nisbet; p. 102

^9.the University, he alleges, were the occasion of serious affront to the gentlemen in question; and that the unfriendly feeling thus engendered, and some unexplained antipathy to the College of New Jersey, were the causes out of which, at least in part, grew the purpose to found an institution which should be the rival of both.  That this opinion was expressed by a gentleman long identified with one of the institutions to which it charges that Dickinson was meant to be inimical, out perhaps to qualify the censure it implies of the eminent men, whose patronage and zeal called it into being.

^10.    But were we sure that no such feeling mingled with their motive, it yet would have to be confessed that their discretion was hardly equal to their zeal.  A reasonable interpretation of surroundings – the time, condition of the country, educational provision already in existence – should at least have counselled greater caution a less precipitous beginning, better preparation for success, than it, founders thought it needful to observe judged essential.  The truth is the infancy of Dickinson fell on a time, compared with which there has not been no another in our history so unfriendly to the nurture of such an infancy.

^11.The war for independence left the colonies impoverished and depressed.  Currency almost without a value; credit fallen to decay; commerce spreading scarce a sail; enterprise stricken with paralysis apparently complete – not to say that a condition of things like this was, to the last degree, unfavorable to the growth of its endowment, it only here and there left a family with means to bear the cost liberal education.  Funds and students both were scarce.  That under circumstances so adverse the College had success at all , was more a marvel than its failure would have been.  This was party due, we may

^12.believe, to the fact that, in the freshness of their enthusiasm, its Patrons exerted themselves strenuously with very special zeal to bear it onward against these peculiar obstacles; but more quite as much perhaps, to the reputation and ability of its first President, Charles Nisbet, a Scotch divine renowned among the scholars of his country for elegant culture and extensive erudition while the enterprise was yet in its merest infancy, was unanimously chosen as its head.  Induced by the eloquent persuasion of Dr. Rush, and the concurrent judgment of those acting with him to believe that, in this station, he

^15.were not long in making an impression.  The reputation of the College, and the number of its students, gradually increased.  The first Com.  Its first commencement was held September the 26th, 1787, when nine young men received the Bachelor’s Degree.

    Almost, however, from the first, and from year to year increasingly, it was seen that the President and Trustees were not in full accord as to what the College ought to be.  The severity of is course of study, and the length of time required for its completion, the latter judged a bar to patronage.  By

^16.lowering the standard and shortening the term, students, they believed, would, in greater numbers, be attracted to the College.  He was hostile to any change, in this direction, regarding it a degradation of the College, and fatal to its ultimate success.  Short roads to learning he pronounced an absurdity and folly.  But his views, at length, were disregarded: the authorities decreed the execution of their own.  This defeat of what to him had been so fond a wish, and to attain which he had given himself to such exhausting labor, was a sore trial and a great discouragement.

^17.The grief he felt reveals itself in an undertone of sadness in his correspondence.  “I live”, he writes to an intimate of other years, “a very laborious life.  I consider myself as engaged in the inglorious work but useful labor of digging under ground, and laying the foundation of a building that may rise and make some figure in another age.”  It was said of the instructor’s office, it was long ago remarked by one who knew whereof he spoke: sceptrum illud scholasticum plus habet solicitudinis quam pulchritudinis, plus curæ quam auri, plus impedimenti quam

¹⁸argenti.  Never, I judge, did College President more fully prove, than he, the truth of this alliterative dictum; and seldom surely has another, with such cares and trammels, borne himself more manfully.  On a hard field – disappointed in his hopes, and hindered in his plans – he yet worked on till the sun went down.
    After his decease, for a period of twenty-nine years, and under a succession of four actual, and two acting, Presidents, the College was continued in the interest of the Presbyterian Church; but with no effectual relief from the old em-

^19.barrassments.  Notwithstanding men of the first abilities occupied the chairs and did their utmost to bear the College onward to success, its prevailing condition was one of decline.  The incubus of poverty, and the absence of harmony and energy in its Board of management were obstacles which no ability in the department of instruction could obviate countervail.  In this general declension, there were, occasional alternations it is true, periods of comparative prosperity – seldom, however, outlasting the transient impulse to which they were due.  The most notable instance of this was, probably, during the brief

^20.Presidency of Dr. John M. Mason, from 1821 to 1824.  Esteemed the most accomplished and eloquent divine of his day; coming to the College from the city of New York, where, in reputation, he was without a peer, he attracted to the College a large number of young men.  It anticipates what would be fitter to say when I come to speak of the Alumni, but, as illustrating the prosperity of this period, I pause in brief allusion to some of its fruits.  In the Memoir of Dr. Erskine Mason, youngest son of the President, a graduate of the class of ’23, there is an extract from a funeral dis-

^22.of Kentucky, and others, dead and living, justly widely distinguished for abilities and usefulness.
    It Surely it is matter of profoundest sorry deepest regret, that an Institution capable of nurturing sons like these, should suffer lack of any help in such a noble work.  It Such however, was its the hard lot of this College however, to It pined for sustenance.  Through heavy years it lingered on still declining; till, at last, its Guardians, wearying of the effort to prolong its languishing life, surrendered their care charge to others.

²³    In 1833 was consummated the alliance from which our Alumnic line descends branches and descends.  For several years preceding this, the question of a College in the interest of Methodism, within the region of which Baltimore and Philadelphia were the influential centers, had occupied the thoughts of leading members of the Church, both clerical and lay.  The need of such an agency, to qualify the Church for the work which advancing years would summon her to do, was coming to be widely felt.  At several sessions of the Baltimore Conference

²⁴the question of a College was seriously agitated and the feasibility and methods of its establish ingment a College had been were matter of earnest consultation and debate.  At length, as the impressions went abroad that the Church was on the outlook for a suitable location, several points were brought to notice.  Of these what was known, as the Ringold property near Hagerstown, Md., was though to possess peculiar advantage.  Opinion was fast settling in its favor, when the late Rev. Edwin Dorsey, at the time stationed in Carlisle, represented to the Baltimore Conference that a transfer of Dickinson College

²⁵could likely be effected on advantageous terms.  At the same time leading citizens of Carlisle urged its acquisition.  The locality, ample grounds, substantial Building, and the fact that it had long been a seat of learning, were considered weighty reasons in its favor.  Its scanty means, taken with the fact that those on whom it depended for support had other Colleges equal to their wants, and were hence without a motive to succor this, was alleged as accounting for its poor success.  But with the interest we could center on it, success, it was argued,

²⁶was reasonably assured.  Pending these deliberations, formal overtures were made by the then existing Board of Trustees.  At its session of 1833, the Baltimore Conference took the initial step, looking to acceptance, in an order that all the elders, who might that year be stationed in the city, should confer with representatives of the Philadelphia Conference (whose coöperation had been solicited and pledged), and that, in case they deemed it wise to accept the offer of the College they jointly arrange preliminaries for its proper

²⁷transfer and control.  They met in May, that year, in the Conference Room in Baltimore; and, in repeated sessions, running through a week, the whole question was patiently considered.  The meeting developed opposition to a College on the part of several influential ministers, who made large use of the Cokesbury failure as a Providential confirmation of their views.  Of those who not only gave the project hearty favor, but advocated Dickinson, Stephen George Roszell, by consent of all, was easily the chief.  Sagacious, far-seeing, a revelation could hardly

²⁸have increased his sense of its importance; and he lent all the force of his strong will and talent in debate, to induce an affirmative decision.  This, at length, resulted; and the transfer was shortly after consummated in the accession of a new Board of Trustees, effected by the process of alternate resignation and elections carried on till the old Board was vacated and the new one constituted.
    The College was

²⁹    Commencing now the second stage of her career, the College was singularly favored in the men who came to fill her chairs.  Mostly young, with reputations yet unmade, but, without exception, able, and growing with their work, they soon bore the College upward into good comparison with the foremost institutions of the country.  As my own Collegiate life connects with with the closing years of their illustrious labors, I feel impelled, though some of them are living, to indulge a tribute to it will not, I trust, be thought indelicate, even in the case of those who yet survive, that I allow myself to indulge a memory of the men from whom the lapse of years has taken nothing of my youthful admiration.

³⁰    Doctor Durbin, chosen to preside, brought to his position some experience in the work of instruction, and the fame of great eloquence in the pulpit; but it soon became apparent that he possessed, besides, many of the best qualities of a College President.  Vigilant, forbearing, firm, he knew to exercised effective discipline with the smallest measure of severity.  Fertile in resource, of energy that rested only with success, he was particularly fitted to grapple with the difficulties that lay around the College in its second infancy.  Of rarely equalled power in the pulpit, he stirred the churches in its favor.

³¹The erection of the new College Building was largely due to his exertions.  It is, indeed, but true to say that, through the twelve years of his presidency, he administered the affairs of the College with eminent success.

    Of those who took the other chairs Professor Caldwell was the least a novice, having been some years connected with the faculty of Wilbraham Academy.  An accurate scholar himself, he was a very careful teacher.  His modes were a little peculiar, yet, so congruous with his character, that no others could with him have been so efficacious.

³²Of all the men I ever knew, he was the serenest, the most completely self-possessed.  No lecture-room annoyance, no provocation of delinquents, could, in the slightest, ruffle his composure.  This all-enduring patience, coupled with the feeling every student had, that he was a very Rhadamanthus in estimating their deserts, was more a spur to laggard bogs, and more encouraging to studious, than spoken praise or censure.  He served the College fourteen years: two, in the chair of Mathematics, and twelve in that of Metaphysics and Political Economy.  His end

³³was beautiful.  Such triumph toned his utterances as death drew near, melting, at times, into the music of such tenderness, as none were ready to expect in one who, living, was so calm the least excitable of men.

    Robert Emory, fresh from the Halls of Columbia College, and but little more than twenty years of age, was the first to fill the Chair of Languages.  The meagre reminiscence this occasion will allow can but imperfectly recall how worthy he was of a place with the men who give the College reputation.  He was, in truth, a remarkable man.  Possessing

³⁴a mind both analytic and synthetic, he could open up the intricate, could find the way to principles and facts, with great very uncommon skill; and, with just discernment of relations, he was able to combine and generalize with no less uncommon skill.  His executive power was great and versatile.  In every sphere in which he was tried, there was the demonstration of ability that ranked him with the first in each.  At the early age of thirty four he passed away with the impression widely felt impression made that if, of his years, he left an equal he left no superior, in the Church.

³⁵Except a brief interval of pastoral service, his working life was spent for Dickinson – six years of it in the chair he first assumed.  When, in 1845, Dr. Durbin retired from the Presidency, he was judged the fittest man to take his place.  A pro tempore occupance of the post, while Dr. Durbin was on the tour of Europe and the East, enabled him to enter with assurance on the office.  He proved an able and successful President – skillful in his own department, judicious and efficient in all the duties of his post.  Alert, discerning, not easy to deceive, and,

³⁶on occasion, stern to the last demand of good discipline, he, yet, was tenderly solicitous for the welfare of every student.  His prayers in the chapel can never be forgotten.  His occasional addresses, when some need arose for public admonitions, were master pieces of their kind.  Of style the pen could not improve; having, yet, the glow of spontaneous utterance; adroitly framed to compass their design; persuasive, facetious, sarcastic, as would best subserve his end; I recall no instance in which we did not go our ways confessing their victory complete.

    Though, in the main, quite contrasted men, in some respects they were alike.  Both were men of genial, kindly men nature, uniting great complaisance with habitual dignity.  Both possessed

³⁸the aptitudes and requisites for easy and effective teaching.  I know not how, in a single statement, better to describe what seemed most notable in Professor McClintock, than to say that he united g almost electrical clarity of mental action with great power of continuous application.  He could study hard, and long, and rapidly.  As a consequence, even at that early day his acquisitions were vast extensive, minute, and thoroughly possessed.  With the Greek and Roman tongues his familiarity seemed almost vernacular; while his knowledge of their literature was extensive, and ever at command.  If, as an

³⁹instructor, there was he had anything, I will not say, to fault, but to wish otherwise, it was that occasionally, under special provocation, his own intellectual quickness, coupled with a nature bordering on impulsive, became a trifle impatient with those, whom laziness, or lack of aptitude for languages, caused to grope and stumble.  For myself, I had it is a pleasure to say that, while consciously a debtor to all the noble men composing that faculty, the best fruits of my College life were gained through his assistance.

    In Natural Physical Science Professor Allen was an equal Master.  Enthusiastic, keeping himself familiar

⁴⁰with current achievements in every branch of his department, he made the recitation hour rich in interest and instruction.  Expert in manipulation, and happy in the use of language, I can but think that in easy, lucid lecture, and in experimental illustration, he had few equals anywhere.

    Of Thomas Emory Sudler, the last to enter, and the last to leave, the original this faculty of our regime, it is true to say that he was a man of great amiability, a very earnest Christian, and of great attainments in his own department.  In The genius of Mathematics once seemed, indeed, to have

⁴¹to have and mixed he seemed indeed a prodigy appropriated him.  Lines and angles and quantities were his delight.  He threaded their mysteries, and reached their results walked their imaginary paths, as by apparent by the light of intuition.  And yet, this very intuitive facility rendered him, perhaps, a less successful teacher, than he would have been, had he been compelled to notice more attentively, and exert himself more earnestly to make apparent to others, the processes by which ordinary minds laboriously plod to these results.  As it was, his instructions, sometimes overleaping intermediate steps, though clear as light to him, left duller minds bewildered, as

⁴²much to his astonishment, as to their regret.  He was the soul of kindness, and is remembered with affection by those he helped to train.

    Such were the men who made the opening era of the new regime illustrious.  It was, indeed, a proud time for our Alma Mater.  In the morning of a new alliance; ardent friends pressing to her side; instead of the languor of deep decline, the pulsing of a new and vigorous life; men of mark in all her chairs; patronage increasing, beginning to come from remotest sections of the country; in fruits and promise, these,

^42½indeed, were golden years.  Had she been as rich in dower as she was in merit, the glory of their promise would have suffered no eclipse.  But, like many a mother poor in all but children, she was called again to struggle.  The fostering Conferences in time began to weary of her care.  Efforts at endowment, partially successful, eased her troubles for awhile; but, when her need was greatest, this resource unhappily produced the least.  Fueling these embarrassments, the great calamity, which rocked and vexed the nation, deepened

⁴³the clouds upon her path.  But through it all she struggled – never closed her halls; never ceased her call to recitation; yearly her crowned departing sons.  Honor to her!  Honor to the men, who carried her through the cloudy days!  To the latest of their her history, it will be for a praise to them, that, through all discouragements, they gave the help by which, if bowed and staggering, she still kept on her way.

    It remains of reminiscence to make allusion to her family.  I purpose but a glance.  Scanning our record, in its latest

⁴⁴publication, awakens a feeling of pardonable pride that, as children of her nurture, we belong to a family respectable in years, respectable in numbers, and not undistinguished by honorable deeds.  Age is an element of renown.  Compared, indeed, with the hundred and sixty nine years of Yale, or the two hundred and twenty five of Harvard, or the uncounted years of Oxford, the eighty three of Dickinson appear suggestive of but little that is venerable.  But when the majority of kindred

⁴⁵institutions in the country are the basis of comparison, there arises in our favor a valid claim to respectable antiquity.  We are coëval with the Nation.  While the Republic has been growing – perfecting its form, extending its domain, developing resources, multiplying act industries, making the symbol of its power a glory in the eye of nations – through all the years the Republic has been on this grand march of advance and elevation, our ancestral line has lengthened.

⁴⁶lengthened.   Though, to such as boast the life of centuries, ours may seem an upstart house, and be by them regarded with the old patrician scorn, yet assuredly a record, which dates from the early morning of the nation, vindicates for us the claim to reputable years.

    Again, numbers are regarded as helping to confer family distion.  And here again it must be owned that other families distance ours.  While the easy circumstances of other seats of learning made their halls attractive, the penury of Dickinson had always had the tendency to keep her classes small.

⁴⁷And yet her Alumni are a goodly host.  Their roll exceeds a thousand names.  An average of fourteen young men, each year of her life, have gone forth laden with her treasures, and bearing her parental benediction, to enter spheres of honorable activity.  This numerous brotherhood has representatives in every section, perhaps in every State, of the Union; and hence not their numbers only, but their wide diffusion, give the family fame.  The feeling with which they left these portals – a laudable pride in their scholastic parentage and brotherhood – goes with them

^48.everywhere.  Harnessed to the work of life, on the steeps we may be climbing, amid the billows we are breasting, or on the sunny lawns to which our steps may come, this feeling many a time awakes.  We live our student-life again.  Our Alma Mater sits enthroned; while from the hoary past and the living present, crowd up the family to which we feel it honor to belong.

    But the crowning distinction is honorable deeds.  The older a family, and the more its members, without illustrious names and worthy deeds, the deeper

⁴⁹its disgrace; for it has had both ample time and a wide field to demonstrate its worthlessness.  But if its roll reveal the light of wisdom, and the beauty of goodness; if, along its lines and through its years, appear the monuments of usefulness, age and number add renown.  Estimated thus Dickinson has no cause to blush for her Alumni.  She has grown defenders and promoters of the truth; laborious and successful workmen in the cause of good; lights in the pulpit, at the bar, on the bench and in the councils of the nation, honorably comparing

^50.with those of any parentage.  Two hundred and fifty of her sons – nearly a fourth of all – have occupied the pastoral office, many of them with marked ability and great success.  To pause a moment at the graves of some of her illustrious dead, would be grateful to fraternal feeling; and would, besides, impress us with the honor of their our fellowship.  But time presses; and we must turn away.  The occasion, however, and our relation to the later period of the College, alike forbid the silent passing by of that part of the family identified therewith.  Less than the period

^51.of a generation has elapsed since this line of graduates commended; and it hazards nothing to affirm that the result is an ample vindication of the wisdom of those, who, impressed with its importance, secured control of Dickinson.  It is, indeed, most true that in all the work the Church is was laboring to accomplish, the College has proved a most efficient ally.  The cost and care of its sustenance and management are many fold repaid in the fruits already borne.  The second family already outnumbers the first and are worthy of their fellowship.  As

^52.mostly living delicacy forbids their eulogy.  They are themselves preparing the material which another tongue than mine may use to pay them fitting tribute.  Meanwhile it is a pride to know that in devoting to the interests of mankind – in Church and State; in the offices of education; in the circle of professions; in the varied fields of business enterprise – our brothers are in honorable comparison with the brotherhood of other Colleges.

    I can not leave the past, so full of pleasant memories without renewed expression of regret for the single sadness it reveals.  It is no reproach,

⁵³yet surely a misfortune, that an Institution so deserving has, in nearly all its history, been so much embarrassed.  It is the flippant remark of a certain class, that a man had as well be dead as poor.  Spoken of Colleges, it would be nearer true; but it is false of both.  Poverty is no disgrace; good done in spite of it is, to man or College, an exceeding honor.  To the reflecting it must ever be an admiration that the men, who have composed the faculties of Dickinson, have, with inferior appliances, and, at times, on scarcely living compensations, conducted a system of instruction, and pro-

^54.duced examples of scholarship, not surpassed by those of better furnished institutions.

Present and Prospective.

    In turning to the present, the pleasing fact confronts us that the clogs and burdens of the past will be felt no more.  The College faces a future from which clouds have been driven.  Light is on her path which was never there before.  When the Church, proposing to celebrate her hundredth year, called upon her members to mingle with devotional observances such material tokens of their gratitude as would be fitly monumental of

^55.the ended century, the patronizing Conferences, joining in the jubilee, happily agreed that a liberal part of their respective offerings should go in favor of their needy foster child.  Their gifts were found to aggregate a sum, wh. will sufficiently augment the previous fund to maintain existing chairs in easy and efficient operations – perhaps endow another.  The instant effect of this was to diffuse a feeling of relief and satisfaction among the friends of the College.  But how much there is in this result for gratulation, how much to kindle hope, is yet,

⁵⁶I judge, but partially appreciate, even by those who have borne the care and worry and care of conducting operations with insufficient means of the past.  But the early future will reveal, as none perhaps can see it now, the value of these generous benefactions.  As better support shall stimulate to better work; as division of labor shall lead on to more effective performance; as accessions to the faculty shall enlarge the curriculum; as her outgoing sons shall bear the good report abroad, the tide of patronage will crowd her halls till the care clouded troubled brow of our venerable mother will glad-

⁵⁷den with the smile of assured prosperity.  We bid her hail, to-night! – hail for the good that has befallen! hail for the promise that dawns!  We read it but in part!  It augurs, though, we can not fear, her growing equipment for all the demands of increasing patronage, and of that more elevated culture, which advancing years will call her to dispense.  The present fund is limited to one specific use: endowment, in the strict sense of tuitional provision.  And this is well; for such provision has been the loudly crying want of Dickinson.  But this supply will of itself cre-

⁵⁸ate a new demand.  Apparatus, Halls, in a word, the various appliances, which unitedly compose the perfect educational equipment, will, in time, become necessities; and will, in time, be furnished.  Not that I suppose there will ever again be need to go before the people with pleading importunity.  In different way these will come.  Growing appreciation of culture; increasing means among our people; deepening sense of the honor of fostering seats of learning; multiplying instances of liberality – all of these are grounds from which to take the hope that need-

⁵⁹ed helps will be supplied.

    Brothers and Friends!  I release your attention, already, I fear, unduly taxed, with but a further word: let us be eager not to fail of any duty service filial or friendly duty owes, or can perform, to have the future fulfill verify these fond anticipations.  The present is inspiriting.  As Paul, escaped from perils of the sea, “thanked God and took courage” – went on to Rome with lighter heart for the cheer that met him on the way – so let us, grateful for the present good, take heart for all our wishes crave.  Of this we may be sure,

⁶⁰the worst is past.  Our venerated mother has come up from the wilderness.  It has been a hard way; but she is not weary.  Erect, buoyant, newly sandal led, she stands to day fronting a future full of promise down which, it is our hope the tokens are she will long and grandly travel, dispending better favors, gathering fresh renown, and crowned with increasing benedictions, as that future rolls away.