1897.] I am inexpressibly thankful in having a theme in the handling of which my honesty is untrammeled and consistency is courted. Had I been slated to toast ‘"The Faculty,” I might have been tempted to resurrect an almost buried propensity to lay to its door those self-same charges which, as students, we were all prone to regard as our sacred privilege and our bounden duty. We for give them, for they knew not what they did. Following, as I do, almost in the wake of our distinguished guest and citizen of that county the birth-right of whose children is the governorship—that man who brought order out of chaos wrought by rushing waters —I cannot do other than expect to appear as a frail skiff, tossing on the swell of a mighty craft of deep keel, broad beam, and impenetrable bulwarks. You can but note that my tongue is bridled by that diffidence {almost painful to you and decidedly so to me) which necessarily and pointedly marks the public utterances of one quite unaccus tomed to address other than the poor, down-trodden, labor-aged trackman whose English vocabulary is wholly inadequate to enable him to talk back. You are bound to realize that because of long disuse I cannot aptly use those wondrous elocutionary powers which were and are imparted to us all in the old chapel and society halls, and that therefore I can not favorably compare with those legal lights whose silver tongues have convinced judges, blinded juries, hood winked clients, enthused court room frequenters, and made us all believe that—having eyes we saw not. I cannot —I do not dare to hope to even come within the sight of those who from pedagogic chair have literally poured out floods of wisdom from vast unfathomable reservoirs of scholastic lore upon barren, dry, absorbent wastes —student intellects. I once heard a man nominated to that high office, the superin tendency of a Sabbath School, and in that nominating speech he was held upas having the gift of gab, if nothing else. Such can never be made applicable to those who have had their armor hung upon them beneath the roof and cupola of the noble institution in dear old Nittany ‘ 1 Where every prospect pleases, And “Co-Eds” sweetly smile.” ‘ ‘ Having listened to the apt words, the easy eloquence (that needs but the occasion to freely flow) of those who have preceded me and reading upon this evening’s programme the names of those “Our Alumni .”
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers