The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1894-05-18
THE PSI UPS.
Judge symonds's Address at the Session I'm
Brunswick,

Brunswick, Me-, May 1.-The public liter
airy exercises of the Sixty-first annual con-
vention of the Psi Epsilon fraternity were
held in Memorial hall, Bowdoin college this
afternoon. Gilbert's orchestra furnished
music Hon. W. D. Northend, Bowdoin, '53.
of Salem, Mass, presided in graceful and
easy manner After prayer had been
offered by Rev. j. e. Adams, SO, of Bangor,
the grafton was delivered by Hon. Joseph
W. S ymonds, go, of Portland. Rev. Edward
A. Rand, 81 of Watertown, Mass, then
read the poem He paid glowing tributes
to Bowdoin's illustrious graduate s. including
Longfellow and Hawthorne. and to the
speaker of the day A large number of
alumni and delegates to the convention
were present at the exercises. This evening
there was reception and ball in Memorial
hall
In his address, Judge Symonds spoke
warmly of his personal recollections of the
Psi Epsilon society in college and of its
value as social influence. He said:
s'In these early experiences of hesitation,
distrust and half-conscious depression, what
welcome aid the Psi U gave us, what relief
from ourselves, from the brooding mists of
our own sensibility, what satisfaction in the
best society and the best associations in
college, in the meetings in the old hall,
frightened by the presence of men whose
society made the pleasure of those years
that too soon were gone, where good
scholarship and good fellowship went hand
in hand as now, the traditions of the society
storehouse of pleasant recollections, more
than pleasant some of them, precious as the
memories OF the dead, itself the influence
under which class feeling and exclusiyeness
disappeared, the invisible bond among all
the classes, under the charmed potency of
which a freshman might even look upon
senior. Far greater service it rendered to
us than we appreciated, giving US compan-
ionship in culture, the benefit of a true
social intercourse, an Observation-Disclosures
in some respects stronger than books teach
ing us to measure our strength with others.
to become conscious of our own limitations,
of our true sphere and capacity, giving
poise and self-command, making US to
know ourselves, refining tastes and
tendencies, and warming life with the glow
of social feeling.
s'In no retrospect of life will our Psi U
society, with all It's good cheer, be over
looked among the Influences that have ex-
cited and strengthened the love of letters
and learning and made the margin of life
outside the daily text something else than
blank.
ssBut culture is not for itself or its
possessor alone. It owes it's service to
society and the state. 1t has it's own stake,
and large one, in the welfare of the COM
munity, in the good of the whole. DeQuincy
deyotes some passages of brilliant chapter
to show that Rome was barbarized not from
without, but from within; that barbarism
was not like flood rolling in upon the glory
of classical antiquity, but rather like a
noxious growth springing up in the midst OF
the Roman civilization and oyershadowlng
the empire. He argues this from the death
or disappearance during the later centuries
of all genuine literature, from the oblivion
which swallowed up all private and public
transactions, and from the increasing
trivialiUy and brutality of Roman life. How
much of truth and how much of extrava-
gance there may be in this do not know.
but there are circumstances and conditions
in the history of our own times which are
sufficient to remind us that the foes of a
civilization are very likely to be they of its
own household; that disintegrating lnfiu-
ences are forever at work undermining the
structure of institutions, however strong
or fair they may be; that in our society
threatening and dangerous forces are
present which, if unopposed, would drag our
modern civilization down to later barbar
ism more terrible than that out of which it
arose that the wickedness of two conti-
nents, of all the continents, settling down
in great Cities may arise in exhalations to
poison the vital air of the republic, and that
the fact of the permanency of the form of
institutions affords no security against open
corruption and debasement or the subtitle
and insidious influences of evil and peril.
All governmental forms-this is a lesson the
ancient classics taught us early-an govern
mental forms may remain the same long
after the spirit and life has departed from
them, long after the character of the
people-the vital thing-has radically
changed"
Women on Strike.