The commonwealth justly expects much from the students and alumni who enjoy the advantages both literary and pecuniary now accorded.
“Ye are marked men, ye men of Dalecarlia.”
The associations of this day come home with peculiar force to the minds of those who have been familiar with the history and watched the progress of this college from the day it was a mere shrub, with bare shade sufficient to cover its own roots, to this glad hour when they rejoice that they are permitted to look upon it as a massive tree, on whose broad foliage the sunlight loves to linger and the dew lieth all night on its branches. Withered hands are lifted in benediction: the tremulous accents of age join the universal jubilee. They will depart cheered by the assurance that when the dial plate shall be taken off from this great clockwork of the universe, and in eternity we behold its secret wheels and springs, it will be found that those who, at this seat of science, have separated themselves that they might intermeddle with all knowledge, its officers and its benefactors, have lived, labored, endured, not for themselves, but for their country and their God.
LOVE
[Delivered at “Donation Party,” Harpswell, September 18, 1894]
Love, my friends and neighbors, is something that defies definition and resents analysis. It is not possible to communicate the perception of it to one who has never experienced it. It must be felt in order to be known. It is likewise the most permanent of all the qualities of the mind. Anger, however violent, expires with the occasion that called it forth. Grief, however bitter and heart-rending, time will remove, and it will blunt the sting of sorrow. But love is inexhaustible and grows by what it feeds upon. Here is the father of a young family. He is returning at night from his work. As he approaches the door, a little one who can just go alone espies him. With cries of delight he runs to meet his parent, till, out of breath and strength, he falls exhausted into his father’s outstretched arms. The happy parent raises the little one and kisses him. When he has kissed that child a dozen times, does he not want to kiss him a dozen times more? Thus affection grows by what it feeds upon and is inexhaustible. It will do or endure more for the welfare of its object than any other faculty. You may hire a man to labor for you, you may force him to obey you, but not to love you. No power on earth can do that. On the other hand, does he love you, that love will cause him to do more for you than all other motives put together, and the more he does the more will he delight to do, because love tells nothing is lost that a good friend gets.
