on the common were the merest saplings, but an elm of mighty sweep, whose loss one must regret, shaded the whole of Harvard Square. Horse cars came and went on week days, but on Sunday he who would visit Boston must either walk or take an omnibus, in which riding was a penance severe enough to atone for the sin. "Blue Laws" in the University were in full force; the student who spent his Sundays at home in Boston must bring out a certificate showing that he had attended divine service twice; no discretion was allowed the parents.
College athletics were in their infancy, as the little gymnasium still standing serves to remind us. There were rowing matches, but baseball had not come upon the scene, and football had just been summarily suppressed. The first college exercise in which I took part was the burial of the football, with solemn rites, in a corner of this Delta. On Class Day there was no need for closing the yard; there was room enough for all, and groups of youths and maidens in light summer dress, dancing on the green before Holworthy, made a charming picture, like that of an ancient May Day in merry England, save for the broiling heat.
The examination days which followed were more searching than at other American colleges. The courses of study were on the whole better arranged than elsewhere, but during the first half of the course everything was prescribed, and in the last half the elective system played but a subordinate part. The system of examinations did not extend to the Law School, where a simple residence of three terms entitled a student to receive the bachelor's degree. The library at Gore Hall had less than one fifth of its present volumes, with no catalogue accessible to the public, while one small table accommodated all the readers. For laboratory work the facilities were meagre, and very little was done. We all studied a book of chemistry; how many of us ever really looked at such things as manganese or antimony? For the student of biology the provision was better, for the Botanic Garden was very helpful, and in the autumn of 1860 was opened the first section of our glorious Museum of Comparative Zoölogy.
Here one is naturally led to the reflection that in that day of small things, as some might call it, there were spiritual influences operative at Harvard which more than made up for shortcomings in material equipment. There is a kind of human presence, all too rare in this world, which is in itself a stimulus and an education worth more than all the scholastic artifices that the wit of man has devised; for in the mere contact with it one's mind is trained and widened as if by enchantment. Such a human presence in Cambridge was Louis Agassiz. Can one ever forget that beaming face as he used to come strolling across the yard, with lighted cigar, in serene obliviousness of the University statutes? Scarcely had one passed him, when one might exchange a pleasant word with Asa Gray, or descry in some arching vista the picturesque figures of Sophocles or Peirce, or, turning up Brattle Street, encounter, with a thrill of pleasure not untinged with awe, Longfellow and Lowell walking side by side. In such wise are the streets and lawns of our city hallowed by the human presences that once graced them; and few are the things to be had for which one would exchange the memories of those days!
My class of 1863, with 120 members, was the largest that had been graduated here. It would have been larger but for the Civil War, and a period followed with classes of less than 100 members,—a sad commentary upon the times. Boundless possibilities of valuable achievement must be sacrificed to secure the supreme end, that the commonwealth should not suffer harm. How nobly Harvard responded to the demand is recorded upon the solemn tablets in this Memorial Hall. For those who are inclined to dally with the thought that war is something that may be undertaken lightly and with frolicsome heart, this sacred precinct and the monument on yonder common have their lesson that may well be pondered.
The vast growth of our country since the Civil War has been attended with the creation of new universities and the enlargement of the old ones to such an extent as to show that the demand for higher education more than keeps pace with the increase of population. The last graduating class in our Quinquennial Catalogue numbered 350 members. The University contains more than 3000 students. The increase in number of instructors, in courses of instruction, in laboratories and museums, in facilities and appliances of every sort, has wrought changes like those in a fairy tale. The Annual Catalogue is getting to be as multifarious as Bradshaws Guide, and a trained intellect is required to read it. The little college of half a century ago has bloomed forth as one of the worlds foremost universities. Such things can come from great opportunities wielded and made the most of by clearness of vision and administrative capacity.
To this growth of the University must be added the most happy inception and growth of Radcliffe College, marking as it does the maturing of a new era in the education of women. We may well wish for Radcliffe a career as noble and as useful as that of Harvard, and I doubt not that such is in store for it. A word must be said of the Episcopal Theological School, based upon ideas as sound and broad as Christianity; and of the New-Church Theological School, more recently founded. We must hail such indications of the tendency toward making our Cambridge the centre for the untrammelled study of the most vital problems that can occupy the human mind.
But the day we are celebrating is a civic, not a university occasion, and I must dwell no longer upon academic themes. We are signalizing the anniversary of the change which we once made from government by town meeting to city government. Have we a good reason for celebrating that change? Has our career as a civic community been worthy of approval? In answering this question, I shall not undertake to sum up the story of our public schools and library; our hospital and charity organizations; the excellent and harmonious work of our churches, Protestant and Catholic; our Prospect Union, warmly to be commended; our arrangements for water supply and sewage; and our admirable park system (in which we may express a hope that Elmwood will be included). This interesting and suggestive story may be read in the semi-centennial volume, "The Cambridge of Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Six," just issued from the Riverside Press. It is an enlivening story of progress, but like every story it has a moral, and I am going to pass over details and make straight for that moral. Americans are a bragging race because they have enjoyed immense opportunities, and are apt to forget that the true merit lies, not in the opportunity, but in the use we make of it. Much gratifying progress can be achieved in spite of the worst sort of blundering and sinning on the part of governments. The greater part, indeed, of human progress within historic times has been thus achieved. A good deal of the progress of which Americans are wont to boast has been thus achieved. Now the moral of our story is closely concerned with the fact that in the city of Cambridge such has not been the case. Our city government has from the outset been upright, intelligent, and helpful. We are satisfied with it. We do not wish to change it. In this respect the experience of Cambridge is very different from that of many other American cities. The government of our cities is acknowledged to be a problem of rare difficulty, so that it has begun to seem a natural line of promotion for a successful mayor to elect him governor, and then to send him to the White House! In some cities one finds people inclined to give up the problem as insoluble. I was lately assured by a gentleman in a city which I will not name, but more than a thousand miles from here, that the only cure for the accumulated wrongs of that community would be an occasional coup d'état, with the massacre of all the city officers. So the last word of our boasted progress, when it comes to municipal government, is declared to be the Oriental idea of "despotism tempered by assassination"! Now to what cause or causes are we to ascribe the contrast between Cambridge and the cities that are so wretchedly governed? The answer is, that in Cambridge we keep city government clear of politics, we do not mix up municipal questions with national questions. If I may repeat what I have said elsewhere, "since the object of a municipal election is simply to secure an upright and efficient municipal government, to elect a city magistrate because he is a Republican or a Democrat is about as sensible as to elect him because he believes in homœopathy or has a taste for chrysanthemums." Upon this plain and obvious principle of common sense our city has acted, on the whole with remarkable success, during its half century of municipal existence. The results we see all about us, and the example may be commended as an object lesson to all who are interested in the most vital work that can occupy the mind of an American,—the work of elevating the moral tone of public life. For it is neither wealth, nor power, nor cunning, nor craft that exalts a nation, but righteousness and the fear of the Lord.
An essay from
Century
