The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-06-25

| Aalc bnu khSN oiu- I ries-Old EIi's Praises From the Lips
 of an Honored Member of the Class
 of '52 and Former New Haven Resi-
 dent.
 i Orange N. J., spoke for his class, the | class of '52, at the Yale alumni meeting
 yesterday forenoon. Colonel sprague ! was a resident of New Haven for q time
 years ago. Before the war he was prin-
 Cipal for short time of the Webster
 public school here. After the war he was principal of the State Normal school, New Britain. He served for years as principal of Boston's high school for girls and later was profess sor of rhetoric and English literature
 at Cornell university, He was later
 principal for years of the Adelphi
 academy of Brooklyn, N Y. He is at present delivering courses of lectures
 before various noted organizations In
 the civil war he went to front as a captain in the Thirteenth Connecticut Volunteers, rising to be major and then lieutenant colonel and he was brevetted
 colonel for bravery at Port Hudson. His
 address at the alumni meeting yester-
 day was as follows:
 Within the last two weeks our bril-
 liant and well meaning, but somewhat
 impulsive, president of the United
 States declared to a large audience at
 West Point as follows:
 This institution has completed it's
 first hundred years of life. During that century no other educational institution
 in the land has contributed as many
 names as West Point contributed to the
 honor roll of the nations citizens.
 claim to be a historian, and l speak
 simply as a reciter of facts when l say
 what I have said; and more than that, not merely has West Point contributed a greater number of men who stand highest on the nations honor roll, but I think beyond question that, taken as a whole, the average graduate of West Point during hundred years has given a greater amount of service to his coun- try through his life than has the aver- age graduate of any other institution in this broad land"
 Here, 1t seems to me, our enthusias- tic president adopts the theory of Lord Bacon, who in his essay on the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates, de- clares, But above all, for empire and greatness, it importeth most that na- ton do profess arms as their principal honor study and occupation"
 Bacon holds up Spain as a shining example. Had be foreseen the present condition of the once mighty Spain he would have thought less of military glo- " and more of the Masters saying; 'They that take the sword shall perish by the sword"
 I think Yale might safely accept the challenge, The nations honor roll our good presidents asseveration, I venture the assertion that during the last hundred years Yale has contributed to the nations roll of honor far more names, yea, ten to one, than West Point.
 Two or three days ago I examined the last triennial catalogue of Yale. Every page without exception, for hundred years past, has upon 1t names worthy of immortal honor.
 West Point has graduated during the last hundred years just forty-one hun dred men. Yale has graduated during the same period more than four and a half times as considerably over eighteen thousand I took pains to ex- anime the catalogue. I had not time to look at the last twenty-five years but In the first quarters of the nine teenth century, that is from 1900 to and including 1875, Yale had graduated as Bachelors of Arts, 1883, who had after wards become ordained ministers of the | gospel Among them are some of the | most honored names in American histO- | ry. I asked myself Is the service of | these soldiers of the cross, who strive to | save suman souls, bearing aloft all their | lives the banner of the Prince of Peace, | less useful than that of the soldiers Of | he Union who for a few days or weeks | pr months, in just or unjust war, | fight furiously under the flag of the re- | public to destroy human bodies? And | IS to honor rolls, is it not recorded by | 1ne greater than Bacon, "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the irmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever?"
 I found further in Yales triennial cat tlogue that during those three-quarters # century ending with the year 1875, Yale has contributed to the nations list if splendid men seventy eight justices if supreme courts; among them three if the present supreme court of the United States, Justices Shiras, Brewer md Brown. Besides these seventy
 tight, Yale has given to the nation sev- nteen chief justices of supreme courts, III men of vast learning, profound wis lom and perfect integrity. I need not ay that among these are some of America's greatest and best.
 During the same quarters of century five hundred and forty K of Yale Bachelors of Arts have won he additional degree of Doctor of Med cine Here too, are many illustrious ames Is it not as honorable and use u to save life as to destroy?
 In the first half of the century Yale thirty-nine governors of tates and thrty-eight United States enators; some of them in the foremost ank of statesmen, and all of them