MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN, MEMBERS OF THE ALUMNI, AND CLASSMATES: It is fifty years this autumn since I presented myself, a sedate and diffident youth, between the two maple trees that relieved the monotony of this then arid and barren college yard, and, like friendship and misfortune, flung their shadows over the steps of Massachusetts Hall, and sued for admittance to Bowdoin College. With that humility which was an inherent attribute of youth in that bygone day, I requested an inhabitant of this village to point out to me the president of the college, and I gazed upon the great man with that anxiety and solicitude, inspired by the belief that my fate and that of my companions lay in his clutches. Since that period, since that comparatively short period, what changes have taken place! This barren college yard, across which students were wont to hurry, has been transformed into a beautiful and attractive campus where they are now prone to linger and repose and sport. This then barren college yard, where Professors Smyth and Newman struggled desperately to prolong the existence of a few sickly trees, and died in the struggle, is now adorned by that beautiful Memorial Hall, created by the hands of a progressive age, and transmitting to other generations the virtues and the memory of those sons of Bowdoin who were true to their country in the hour of her peril.
[Illustration: ELIJAH KELLOGG AT SEVENTY-SEVEN. 1890.]
But in other respects what changes! Every president but two, a great portion of the overseers, the trustees, and alumni, every instructor, every teacher, every tutor, almost every person in any way connected with this college, from the treasurer to the janitor, and the woman who took care of the rooms, have all passed away. I can reckon my own surviving classmates on my fingers, and I stand here to-day like an old tree among the younger growth, from whose trunk the bark and leaves have fallen, and whose roots are drying in the soil. Then I could stand where the roads divide that lead to Mere Point and Maquoit, and hear the roar of the Atlantic in one ear and that of the falls of the Androscoggin in the other. To-day I have not heard a word, except the two words “Bowdoin College.”