Young Gentlemen, (the Boarders.)
You are happy in having parents, who have both inclination and means to pay for your education. I have none. But to you, Gentlemen, I must own my obligation for having the opportunity of an education I could not, from my situation, have expected, had not your parents enabled our worthy Executor to employ so able a Tutor, as we now have, to instruct us, and I hope we shall shew, that his assiduity, care and pains, will have the desired effect.
My fellow Orphans,
What shall I say to excite your gratitude? I hope the memory of our late Benefactor, who has laboured incessantly for me, for you, and many others, who have partaken of the benefit of this institution, since its first foundation, will be deeply engraven in our hearts, and remembered with the greatest reverence and gratitude. This is all we have in our power, in return for such unmerited favours, and if this, our small tribute, should be wanting, we must, we shall be justly deemed the most ungrateful to our deceased Benefactor, who encountered innumerable, uncommon, and unknown difficulties, in carrying on this institution, notwithstanding he was maligned, traduced, and persecuted, with unrelenting virulence, as a cheat, an impostor, a public robber, and as one, who, under the specious pretence of promoting a charitable design, was amassing great wealth to himself; all which he bore with an uncommon degree of patience. Let me add, that God has been graciously pleased to provide for you, and for me, beyond many, very many in our circumstances. We are here daily taught the great and fundamental truths of the gospel of the Son of God, have plenty of the necessaries of life, and are carefully educated to qualify us to get a comfortable subsistence, and make us useful members of society. Let us therefore make a proper improvement of these mercies, and let us, my dear fellow Orphans, be thankful to God, the Father of all, for them, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to his service, and by walking before him in holiness and righteousness all our days, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
May it please your Excellency,
Reverend Gentlemen,
Gentlemen and Ladies,
I fear I have trespassed on your patience, and humbly entreat you to pardon the poor attempt of a youth unaccustomed to speak before so respectable an audience.”
After this the Rev. Mr. Edward Ellington, minister of the parish of St. Bartholomew, in South Carolina, read prayers, and preached a sermon very suitable to the occasion, from Matthew xviii. 20. Divine service being ended, the young gentlemen of the academy repeated several passages taken from some of the most approved English authors, in such a manner as appeared agreeably to engage the attention and to meet with the entire approbation of the company. Then Mr. Edward Langworthy, their Tutor, addressed the company as follows:
“May it please your Excellency,
Gentlemen and Ladies,
Having observed the attention of your Excellency to the exercises of this morning, and the marks of pleasure and approbation so visible in all the Gentlemen and Ladies now present, I think it my duty, with the warmest gratitude, to acknowledge the honour your Excellency and this respectable audience have conferred on this institution. The young gentlemen that just now spoke before your Excellency, have not been long under my tuition; they are indeed young, and scarce initiated in the first principles of literature; however, I flatter myself that these feeble attempts will be favourably received, and that hereafter they will be enabled to exhibit something more worthy of your attention and approbation.
It affords me the highest satisfaction, when I reflect, that divine providence hath honoured me with the care and direction of them, and I cannot but make a tender of my sincere and best respects to you, our worthy Executor, and to their worthy parents and friends, for the great confidence reposed in me. Duly sensible of the important trust committed to every preceptor, I shall, in the fear of God, do my utmost to form their tender minds, and to impress on them such principles as may tend to advance their happiness in private, as well as in public life: and I hope, from their proficiency, the Gentlemen of this province will be induced to promote with all their influence the growth and prosperity of our present undertaking.