Produced by David Widger
By Charles Dudley Warner
Delivered before the Alumni of Hamilton College, Clinton, N. Y.,
Wednesday, June 26, 1872
Twenty-one years ago in this house I heard a voice calling me to ascendthe platform, and there to stand and deliver. The voice was the voice ofPresident North; the language was an excellent imitation of that used byCicero and Julius Caesar. I remember the flattering invitation—it is theclassic tag that clings to the graduate long after he has forgotten thegender of the nouns that end in 'um—orator proximus', the grateful voicesaid, 'ascendat, videlicet,' and so forth. To be proclaimed an orator,and an ascending orator, in such a sonorous tongue, in the face of aworld waiting for orators, stirred one's blood like the herald's trumpetwhen the lists are thrown open. Alas! for most of us, who crowded soeagerly into the arena, it was the last appearance as orators on anystage.
The facility of the world for swallowing up orators, and company aftercompany of educated young men, has been remarked. But it is almostincredible to me now that the class of 1851, with its classic sympathiesand its many revolutionary ideas, disappeared in the flood of the worldso soon and so silently, causing scarcely a ripple in the smoothlyflowing stream. I suppose the phenomenon has been repeated for twentyyears. Do the young gentlemen at Hamilton, I wonder, still carry on theirordinary conversation in the Latin tongue, and their familiar vacationcorrespondence in the language of Aristophanes? I hope so. I hope theyare more proficient in such exercises than the young gentlemen of twentyyears ago were, for I have still great faith in a culture that is so farfrom any sordid aspirations as to approach the ideal; although the younggraduate is not long in learning that there is an indifference in thepublic mind with regard to the first aorist that amounts nearly toapathy, and that millions of his fellow-creatures will probably live anddie without the consolations of the second aorist. It is a melancholyfact that, after a thousand years of missionary effort, the vast majorityof civilized men do not know that gerunds are found only in the singularnumber.
I confess that this failure of the annual graduating class to make itsexpected impression on the world has its pathetic side. Youth iscredulous—as it always ought to be—and full of hope—else the worldwere dead already—and the graduate steps out into life with an ingenuousself-confidence in his resources. It is to him an event, thisturning-point in the career of what he feels to be an important andimmortal being. His entrance is public and with some dignity of display.For a day the world stops to see it; the newspapers spread abroad areport of it, and the modest scholar feels that the eyes of mankind arefixed on him in expectation and desire. Though modest, he is notinsensible to the responsibility of his position. He has only packed awayin his mind the wisdom of the ages, and he does not intend to be stingyabout communicating it to the world which is awaiting his graduation.Fresh from the communion with great thoughts in great literatures, he isin haste to give mankind the benefit of them, and lead it on into newenthusiasm and new conquests.
The world, however, is not very much excited. The birth of a child is initself marvelous, but it is so common. Over and over again, for hundredsof years, these young gentlemen have been coming forward with theirspecimens of learning, tied up in neat little parcels, all ready toadminister, and warranted to be of the purest materials. The world is notunkind, it is not even indifferent, but it must