It is a curious coincidence that a love of the classics and proficiency in intellectual pursuits should coexist with admiration for physical perfection and with athletic superiority during all the centuries of which the history is written. The youth who lisped in Attic numbers and was brought up on the language we now so painfully and imperfectly acquire, who was lulled to sleep by songs of Ęschylus and Sophocles, who discussed philosophy in the porches of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, was a more accomplished classical scholar than the most learned pundit of modern times, and was a model of manly beauty, yet he would have died to win the wreath of parsley at the Olympian games, which all esteemed an immortal prize. While, in our time, to be the winning crew on the Isis, the Cam, the English or American Thames, is equal in honor and influence to the position of senior wrangler, valedictorian, or Deforest prize man.
The man who wins the world's honors to-day must not be overtrained mentally or physically; not, as John Randolph said of the soil of Virginia,—"poor by nature and ruined by cultivation," hollow-chested, convex in back, imperfect in sight, shuffling in gait, and flabby in muscle. The work of such a man will be musty like his closet, narrow as the groove he moves in, tinctured with the peculiarities that border on insanity, and out of tune with nature.
No man can work in the world unless he knows it, struggles with it, and becomes a part of it, and the statement of the English statesman that the undergraduate of Oxford or Cambridge who had the best stomach, the hardest muscles, and the greatest ambition would be the future Lord Chancellor of England, had a solid basis of truth.
Gentlemen of the bat, the oar, the racquet, the cinder path, and the leathern sphere, never were conquerors more welcome guests, in palace or in hall, at the tables of their friends than you are here.
You come with your laurels fresh from the fields you have won, to receive the praise which is your due and which we so gladly bestow. Your self-denial, devotion, skill, and courage have brought honor to your University, and for it we honor you.
THE BABIES
At a banquet in honor of General Grant, Chicago, 1877
BY SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (Mark Twain)
MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,—"The Babies." Now, that's something like. We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground—for we've all been babies. It is a shame that for a thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn't amount to anything! If you, gentlemen, will stop and think a minute—if you will try to go back fifty or a hundred years, to your early married life, and recontemplate your first baby—you will remember that he amounted to a good deal—and even something over.
You soldiers all know that when that little fellow arrived at family headquarters, you had to hand in your resignation. He took entire command. You had to execute his order whether it was possible or not. And there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick. When he called for soothing syrup, did you venture to throw out any remarks about certain services unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman? No; you got up and got it! If he ordered his pap bottle, and it wasn't warm, did you talk back? Not you; you went to work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was right!—three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those immortal hiccoughs. I can taste that stuff yet.