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 .”