“Remember how He spake unto you.” I would give these words a two-fold meaning—remember what he said and how he said it.
Twenty-seven years is a long time in the life of any man, even if he has lived more than three-score years and ten. In all these years President Allen was going in and out before the college boys, saying good and kind words to them.
How often he spoke to you in the chapel! It was your church, and the only church that you could attend, except on holidays. His purpose was that this chapel service should be worthy of you, and worthy of the day. So important did he consider it, that when his turn came to speak to you here, he prepared himself carefully. He always wrote his little discourses, and the best thoughts of his mind and heart he put into them. He thought that nothing that he or any other speaker could bring was too good for you.
And then the tones of his voice, the manner of his instruction; how gentle, kind, conciliating. He remembered the injunction of Scripture, “The servant of the Lord must not strive.” You will never know in this life how much he bore from you, how long he bore with your waywardness, your thoughtlessness; how much he loved you. He always called you “his boys.” No matter though some of you are almost men, he always called you “his boys,” much as the apostle John in his later years called his disciples his “little children.” For President Allen felt that in a certain sense he was a father to you all.
For some time past you knew that his health was declining. You saw his bowed form and his feeble, hesitating steps. In the chapel his voice was tremulous and feeble. The boys on the back benches could not always understand his words distinctly. But you knew that he was in earnest in all that he did say. And for many months he was not able to speak at all in the chapel. On the last Founder’s Day he was seated in a chair, with some of his family about him, looking at the battalion boys as they were drilled, but the fatigue was too great for him. And as the summer advanced into August, and the people in his native State were gathering their harvests, he, too, was gathered, as a shock of corn fully ripe.
When Tom Brown heard of the death of his old master, Arnold of Rugby, he was fishing in Scotland. It was read to him from a newspaper. He at once dropped everything and started for the old school. He was overwhelmed with distress. “When he reached the station he went at once to the school. At the gates he made a dead pause; there was not a soul in the quadrangle, all was lonely and silent and sad; so with another effort he strode through the quadrangle, and into the school-house offices. He found the little matron in her room, in deep mourning; shook her hand, tried to talk, and moved nervously about. She was evidently thinking of the same subject as he, but he couldn’t begin talking. Then he went to find the old verger, who was sitting in his little den, as of old.
“‘Where is he buried, Thomas?’
“‘Under the altar in the chapel, sir,’ answered Thomas. ‘You’d like to have the key, I dare say.’
“‘Thank you, Thomas; yes, I should, very much.’
“‘Then,’ said Thomas, ‘perhaps you’d like to go by yourself, sir?’”