we only lose because it has sometimes been poorly requited. Let us array ourselves against such tendency. Better is it to suffer the heartache of a disappointment in our faith than to have had no faith, or, to modify a more familiar saying-it is better to have had faith in vain than not to have had faith at all. Charity, alone, perhaps, of the three virtues of which it is said to be the greatest, requires a certain maturity of mind and inculcation to establish it. It may be said to be the most intellectual of the virtues, seeming to be less a natural endowment than a matter of education. With this exception, however, the virtues considered are inherent in youth, and it is their gradual decadence with growing years which detracts from the perfect man and woman, and makes them less than something lower than the angels. Such is the lesson I would draw from youth to age, from your youth to your age, a lesson which may help you if sometimes recalled. The fountain of youth is not perennial, and the secret of its perpetuity will be forever hidden, but there is no reason why its rainbowed mist should not surround us through our maturer and older age, not with a fitful or unsteady glimmer, but with a continuous though subdued luminosity that will brighten the later life as the afterglow the path of the wayfarer at nightfall. III THE OFFICE OF THE COLLEGE AND THE DUTY OF THE GRADUATE MANAGERS, FACULTY AND FRIENDS OF HAVERFORD COLLEGE, MEMBERS OF THE GRADUATING CLASS:1 More than four decades have passed since I stood upon a platform of which this is the direct descendant, in response to the announcement Expectatum Carmen in linguâ Latinâ Tuson. The poem entitled "Ad Italism Resurgentem" was supposed to have been written in choice Horatian verse. That the meter was good was assured by the fact that it was supervised by our beloved then Professor of Latin, and Greek, Thomas Chase. That its poetry was dim and shadowy it is needless to say, because the narrative poem is feeble even in the hands of the experienced poet; much more so in those of the tyro whose sole ability lay in his power to build up verses out of dactyls, spondees and trochees. Since then, changes many and great have taken place in Haverford. In that day Founder's Hall, the Observatory, the Gymnasium, wash room and carpenter shop constituted the College buildings, although the same broad acres of beautiful lawn surrounded them then as now. But no stately hall of Barclay or Roberts, or new Gymnasium or Library or spacious Dining Hall then adorned the ground. Nor do they now shelter more loyal sons than did the old buildings of my day. If we examine the roll of that day we find the names of men of such mark as to have it said of them, whence came they? What their training? What their Alma Mater? It was the memory of these, 1 Read on Commencement Day, June 15, 1906. Not previously printed. |