Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1880-07-28
BY TELEGRAPH.
Associated Press kilograms to the Daily
Kennebec Journal
MAINE.
Colby commencement.

! ~ tAS a@utbHi uSSt4uS taiS lolipNutS tni-
GERS were chosen: President. Almore Ken
nedv. Waldoboro: Vice President, Selwir
| Hamlin; Secretary. Prof. +. W. Hall, Wa
| terville; Necrologist, Prof. Charles E. Ham,
lin. Cambridge; Council. Prof. J. B. Foster,
Rev. A. 5. Lane and DR.. A. Crosby.
Resolutions of deep respect and sympathy
were passed for J. I. Champlin, ID. D.,
former President of the University, now
dangerously ILL.,
The class of So have a grand reunion at
the residence of Hon. Rueben Foster, ,o-mor-
row evening. Reunions of secret societies
were held tonight at their halls. A large
number assembled on the campus TO witness
Ivy Day exercises, which were such as to please
and delight spectators. 1t is hoped this day
may be observed in like manner in future
years.
The trustees have much work before them
before completing their labors. The finan-
cial condition of the University is such as to
excite the apprehension of the more timid.
The Grafton by Prof. VIM. Mathews was
a mastery one in its happy hits and fine
Illustrations. His theme was Literary
Style" The speaker began by saying that
within a few years fresh interest has been
awakened among writers and critics in liter
airy architecture. 1t is the manner in which
ideas are to be fitted together into a symet-
rieal and harmonious whole, as well as
adorned ana embelished. That, quite as
much as the ideas themselves, constitutes the
work of an essay. An Grafton is poem.
Another reason for the growing estimation of
style is that in this age of steam presses and
electrotype printing it is fast acquiring new
utilitarian value. Style was next defined
and pronounced the most vital element of
literary Immortality. The few books which
have been kept afloat on the stream of time,
while millions have sunk into oblivion, have
owed their buoyancy to this quality. In
works of art or pure literature it is only in
his style that writer can show originality.
The power of genius lies not in finding out
new material, but in imparting new life to
whatever it discovers, new or old. The great
thinkers of every age differ from the little
ones not so much in having different thoughts
as in sitting, classifying, and focalizing the
same thoughts
Give to two painters the same pigments
and one of them will produce a transfgura-
ton and the other will exhaust his genius on
the signboard of country tavern. So out
of the same stones may be reared the most
beautiful or the most unsightly of cdifices
the Panthenon of Athens or the Chicago
courthouse. The value of style is still fur
Their seen by comparing the literature of diff
ferent countries. As thinkers the Germans
have no equals to-day on the globe, but all
these advantages are neutralized to a great
extent by the frighttulness, heavness and in
credible clumsiness of the German literary
style. The speaker next showed how a
writer's style records his character. betraying
his tastes and idiosyncrasies, even when he
tries hardest to mask them This was illus
trated by examples from the writings of Ba-
con- Milton, Swift, Addison and Charles
Lamb. The absurdity of trying to form a
which the five leading elements of the literary
art were designated, namely: simplicity, ar
rangement, freshness, choice of words and
careful preparation and finish. We some
model style. The perfect writer, so far from
having any one ideal style, will have a hun
dred styles, shifting and varying with every
variation of his ideas and his feelings. There
is a mystery in style of which we cannot
pluck out the heart. Like heavenly music or
sweet odor, it spell is subtle and impalpa-
Bile, battling all our attempts to explain it in
words. Condemning the definition of style
as ''the dress of thought" whereas it is the
incarnation of thought, the speaker showed
by several illustrations that there is often
striking analogy between the costume of
period and its literary style The peaked
beard the starched collar, the trunk hose and
the quilted doublet of Bacon, Sidney and
Spenser are i'm singular keeping with the
giant fancies and the rich decorations of
their style. The powers of the orator are
iHlSHtN, put Htiisiidplt- Ilis "oihs may w
preserved. but the attitude and the look the
voice and the gesture are lost forever. Not
so with those utterances which the printing
press has preserved from destruction, framed
in cunning and attractive forms. A master
of composition, they may sway the world
when the tongue is frozen and the hand is
paralyzed. The popular writer is the medi-
ator between the speculative thinker and the
uncultured man. With an earnest exhorta-
ton to the members Of the literary societies
to cultivate early the art Of expression and to
study the magnificent mystery of words, de-
precating the tendency in some of our col
leges to neglect rhetoric as synonym for
the shallow and the SNOWY, with a glowing
tribute to the richness and expressiveness of
the English language. and with the express
sion of wish that his hearers would jealous
ly guard its purity, maintain its ancient idoms
and develop its inexhaustible resources, the
orator concluded.
Death Of Physician.
PORTLAND, July %. Samuel II. Tewks-
hurv a leading Portland rhysician died at