The longer a man lives the more sensible he becomes of this obligation, and though it is impossible to repress a feeling of sadness when we visit the rooms and tread the floors where those swift-winged hours flew, and where we decipher the almost obliterated inscriptions, the names on the walls, names of those most dear to us, of those whose step kept time and whose hearts throbbed in unison with ours,
“Who the same pang and pleasure felt, At the same shrine of worship knelt, And knew the same celestial glow That young and burning spirits know In the bright dreaming days of youth, Ere visions have been chilled by truth, And feelings gushed without control Of those cold fetters fashioned by That wayward king, society.”
And yet these considerations are modified by the reflection that they have nobly used the training that they here received, and are exerting influences that survive them, and have sown seed that shall be the increment of future harvests.
I feel grateful that a lengthened life and an intimate acquaintance with the history and former faculty and the students of this college have enabled me to appreciate the progress of this institution for the last fifty years. For more than forty years circumstances have so ordered it that I have been brought into most intimate relations with the faculty and students of Bowdoin College. They have loved me and I have loved them. I have been brought into contact with these young men at a period in their moral and mental development when a youth will tell his whole heart, all his best plans, aspirations, and difficulties to an older person who he feels understands him and whom he knows he can trust; and in the light of this experience, I do not hesitate to say that this college never stood so high in moral and intellectual work as it does this day. In 1838 I listened to the farewell address of President Allen to the faculty and students of this college and the inhabitants of this town, in which he declared that this college was a seething tub of iniquity, and he could not in conscience advise any parent to send a child here. Mr. President, do you think you could in conscience make such a declaration? And whatever may be thought, I say whatever may be thought of the good judgment of the reverend gentleman, it cannot be denied that he had good grounds for his assertion.