The Portland daily press., 1878-07-11
THURSDAY MORNING, JULY IL.
BY TELEGRAPH.
BOWDOIN COLLEGE.
Meeting Of the Phi Beta Kappa
S1ciety.
Grafton Before the Alumni by
Judge SymOnds.

BRUNSWICK, July 0.-Commencement ex-
ercises at Bowdoin were continued to-day by
the annual meeting of the Phi Beta Kappa
Society, Alpha chapter of Maine. A business
meeting was held in Adams Hall at 30 a. M
d. G. Lns colt was appointed president, and
Professor 81. s. Chapman, secretary and
treasurer. Remarks were made by Professor
Packard. The .treasurer's report shows a
balance in the treasury. The following were
elected members from the class of rs: Messrs.
Potter, Burton, Pray, Paine, Fetch and
French. Mr. Metcalf of II was also elected
a member.
After recess of lbalf an honr the society,
headed by Chandler's band, proceeded to the
church on the hill, where Rev. William Henry
Savage of the class of SO, delivered an grafton.
He alluded in opening, to the beginning of the
organization, and proceeded to discourse upon
the subject, "Has a man a right to be
religious"
After mentioning the various methods OF
argument pro and con, he introduced method
Of comparison somewhat different from that
usually adopted, and arrayed on the one side
those who argue from scientific standpoint
and on the other those who take simply
religious views. The following is an abstract.
All real gains in religious knowledge have
been made by discovery in scientific investiga-
ton; all gains made by faith are mere hypO-
theses instead of knowledge. Mans religious
nature is distinct fact. No scientific fact is
complete unless 1t is accounted for. The
church doctrine of creation from nothing is
milk for babes" The germ or original cell is
environed by some spiritual power. The feel
ing of environment awoke in man the spiritual
nature. : Heart religion, when it is not fraud,
is the expression of this spiritual environment.
Mans response to the spiritual environment is
analogous to physical laws. Man has given
5000 years to the investigation of scientific
teachings, and has thrown out the worthless;
and SO it must be 10 religious matters, man
must leave what seems inconceyable for W hat
is conceivable. All growth comes in contact
with experience 1t is especially true that in
religion, hypothesis and assumption stand for
truth. Culture will leave faith to fools Let
religion come fearlessly forth from the cell.
Demonstrating reality is needed, and a method
which will make good her claim. Reason and
reverence shall stand together.
On motion Of Prof. Chapman, vote of
thanks was extended to Mr.. Savage, and the
fraternity adjourned.
Judge Symends' Grafton.
A large number of Alumni and friends
arrived in the afternoon trains, and the church
was again will filled on the occasion of an
address before the Alumni by Judge j. w.
Symonds of Portland. His subject was Ma
thaniel Hawthorne. The following is an alb.
stract:
1t Is true, 1 apprehend, at least of those of us
who, after long absence, revisit this seat of
learning, that we come to remember the dead
not less than to rejoin the living. We reuew
with delight our intimacy with those who re-
turn, while, across the Intervening distances
affection and memory go to join hands with
those who shall not return again. There are
footsteps here which do not press the green of
the fields; in many favorite haunt faces, long
unseen, glimmer upon our thought in the splen-
dor of MONDAY. or brighten out of the haunted
darkness; while forms of men. unknown or
forgotten of the world, glide silently among the
lettering strangers, who do not observe them,
and walk arm in arm with us along ''the CLEAN
and shadow" of familiar paths
Nor do our thoughts dwell only within the
domain of personal recollection. The tradi-
tions Of the college are our inheritance. The
halo of early dreaming was over them all
when first we journeyed hither. They made
part of the enchantment of college life. They
greet us on every return.
No vista even of thought here stretches back
into the silent or legendary gloom of antiquity,
but there are associations which illumine these
scenes with light from vanished faces, with the
radiance of noble lives.
Yet, in the retrospect, we do not all look
upon the same picture. In the foreground and
in clearer light each sees the figures and events
of his own time. No cloud obscures them
While, grouped around these, in more shadowy
outline. but present in every picture that here
passes before the imagination, stand the men
whose genius and fame have become part of
our common Inheritance
And among these, somewhat aloof from the
group, in the seclusion of strange experience,
with q shadow resting upon his face that might
be of passing cloud, but does not pass, intent.
absorbed, as if he had questioned guilt and sor-
row for their darkest secret and was awaiting
reply; or as if he were following to the qtr's.'
verge of thought the threads of sQpnsses nue. on
Which human life is woven 6oweyer ~ unane
ful light and shadyemi may paint him. will H for.
ever ft6orne. o'' - '"n'''
The Grafton then proceeded to give sketch of
his boyhood, early traits of character and early
reading, and then continued:
But while he had all the healthfulnesss and.
in certain sense, the happiness of childhood.
there was early developed love of solitade,
which distracted him even from the society Of
his fellows at school. Long rambles alone
were his favorite schoolboy pastime. His
father, sea captain, died abroad of fever in
1908. Hawthorne's earliest thought of him
must have been of one who had sailed away,
never TO return. 1t was an event that bore
upon its gloomy wings not only the darkness of
mystery, but the burden of perpetual loss. He
died young without fortune. Day BY day,
year by year, the boy grew irto consciousness
OF the hopes that had persisted on the distant
shore. The tendrils of thought aspiring to the
light, found only dark and mysterious phase
of life to cling to. 1t shows either native ten
dency or the effect OF this early experience,
that in bis reading gloomy but picturesque
10 otta
manned in his memory. One of his fayorite
quotations was the line from Richard I'LL:
:, "Stand back, my lord, and let the coffin pass"
Fancy was already fitting in dark places.
Among the mental visitors were already they
who yelled their beauty in sombre guise.
At the age of fourteen Hawthorne came to
reside With bis mother in the house which her
brothers had built for her on their new lands in
Aalne-a large house, the walls of which are
still standing near the shores of Sebago Lake,
In Raymond. s-,-
The details of his experience there were
given, and his own illusions to it in after life.
A vein of the supernatural which ran through
the legends of the people was referred to some
what infinitely as one of theiinfuences of his
early life.
There is still another feature of his life at
Raymond. 1t was very solitary. sit was
there" he exclaims in moment of unreserye
sit was there first got my cursed habits of
solitude" The grand hermitage of nature was
around him, and he sought out its most secret
haunts of beauty and unbroken silence, while
In his heart and at his home, there was the
loneliness of sorrow. This experience strength.
snsd tendency that had already too strong a
root in his own nature. 1t had in it an Gle.
ment Of harm to himself, whatever may be the
wealth it has added to our literature He
needed the sunshine and ripple of life more
than the gloom of the pine woods or the sound
Of the voices that whisper mournfully In noun
tain glens.
The grafton dwelt upon some of the details of
his college life and.made allusion to Prof. Pack.
ard, - venerable man, from whose lips by pre-.
cept and by example, Hawthorne learned,
more than half century ago, the charmed Sc.