Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1894-06-29

followed it. covering . period of sevel
years, we find the names Of men of sue
eminence as jurists, physicians, authors
teachers, and divines, statesmen and ora
tors, as would render any school illustriou.
Among them were seven members of tn
Senate of the United States. of whom tw,
still survive, one of them, born the veg
that witnessed the entry of the first class
we welcome to this centennial of the col
| lege, on which he has reflected so mucl
honor, and to which he has given the faith
full service of these many years And botl
before and after this particular period
graduates of the highest distinction, some
times rising singly rather than in constella
tons, have given our Alma Mater JUS
cause for honest pride.
Obviously a roll of alumni upon which
appear President and niue senators of the
United States, speaker of the National
House, % members of Congress, many
governors, foreign ministers, and member.
of state Legislatures, attests marked adap
tatinn to participation in political affairs and
the consequent acquisition of prominence in
that direction, in respect of which it may be
added that there has recently been nothing
to indicate any diminution.
We need not dwell on that-When We
run over the list of our gracuates-the
number of college presidents, of professor:
in colleges, theological seminaries and med
ical schools; of those who have given
themselves to the ministry of the gospel
the practice of law and of medicine: to
teaching and to journalism; review the re.
cord Of their useful lives and consider the
far-reaching influences for good they have
exerted upon the community, we may well
congratulate our Alma Mater upon results,
the achievement of which has been aided
or rendered possible through her nurture.
1t has been said that college education
units for practical life and business affairs ;
but it is difficult to see why in any walk of
life, in any field of exertion, in any depart
ment of trade, of commerce, or of business
the trained intellect and disciplined mind
should not be sure TO tell, although, of
course, there will be educated men who
fail, but not by reason of their educa-
ton. If Cyrus Hamlin was qualified
here to found college amid the
greatest difficulties in far-off land. did not
his Bowdoin training likewise enable him to
literally superintend the actual erection of
his college buildings; to bake bread for d.
visions of the Crimean army to wash the
clothes from the army hospitals? Was that
education unavalling when he cast his own
steam-pipe for his mill, and shut himself
up with his forge, good charcoal, a can of
oil, and Ure's Dictionary of Arts, and tenn
pered the points of his steel picks? Are
not the interests of science and industry
Identical, and is this any the less so because
to obtain the highest ends, truth must be
sought for its own sake?
When after less than seventy years of
the century of the college had passed, the
integrity of the nation was threatened, and
the experiment of selfgovernment on an
imperial scale trembled in the balance, was
there any facilitating influence derived from
the cultivation of letters or the possession
of academic education, that withheld the
sons of Bowdoin from their country's call?
Did not the lessons they had been taught
here, the lessons of duty, the lessons of
patriotism. the lessons of that spiritual wis
dom that finds its central truth in self-sacri-
fee, bring forth abundant harvest in that
hour of peril?
Let the names of Howard and of Cham
berlain and of all those inscribed on yonder
walls reply while on the graves of those
who died we found a stronger faith in i'm
mortality.
The record so briefly sketched is one of
excellent and progressive teaching; of
wise AM faithful training; of successful
and honorable results.
With president and corps of teachers
young, vigorous, in grasp of the accumulat-
ed treasures of the learning and experience
of the past and in touch with I'll, spirit of
the time; With boards acting in harmony
aud numbering in their membership now
as always, men eminent in letters
and in the exercise of public func-
tiors, and devoted to the cause of
higher education; with needed endowments
gradually being bestowed as the usefulness
of the college becomes more widely recog-
niz d, and the esprit de corps of its alumni
becomes more and more awakened; we look
forward in conf renee that much as che
may fairly claim to have already accom-.
plished, the future of our Alml Mater will
be still more useful and beneficial and
crowned with still greater renown.
But the duties AMI responsibilities resting
upon the college as it advances into its Sec
ond century have increased in importance
with the increasing gravity of the questions
WHlCu uHeAdibPiSu PioSiSsS III itS hist HAS
necessarily evolved.
The men who signed the d eclaration and
framed the Federal Constitution regarded
equality and the rights to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness, as attainable, not
through violent and causual forces, but by
the effective power of law exerted through
a definite scheme of government so ordered
as to best secure that sober second thought,
whose operation FINDERS popular govern
ment possible. .....
And by written constitutions, national
and State, the people themselves set bounds
to the ir own power as against the sudden
impulses Of mere ajorities, and m ide the
protection Of life and liberty the sacredness
of contract and the stability of private
property the basis of the State.
Perhaps the most striking incident in
Governor Bow doin's career was the sup
preston in 1856 of the armed outbreak
against constituted authority in Massachu-
sets, which sprang from the discomfort en-
gandered by the miseries succeeding the
close of the Revolution, and which so
alarmed Washington, among o. her reasons,
because, as Knox wrote him, the insurgents
declared for agra,ian laws and the snnihila-
ton of all debts, public and private, ''easily
to be effected by means of unfuuded paper
money, hich shall be tender in all cases
u whatever"
In 1894, Washington. in the second term
of his presidency, moved at the head of