Title 
 
 Class 
 
 Qsi.y 
 
 Imprint — 
 
 Book 
 
 mi 
 
 ISS — 30BM*-l SCO 
 
loo with a student at ope end 
 andJtarkfopKin* at fheofljer 
 is a college. 
 
 0arfield. 
 
PRESS OF 
 
 Pittsburgh Printing Co. 
 
...REPLY TO THE TOAST. 
 
 Trinity 
 College 
 
 AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE 
 PRINCETON ALUMNI ASSO- 
 CIATION OF WESTERN 
 PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 y By 
 
 JOS.^BUFFINGTON, 
 
 trinity. class of 1875, 
 United States District Judge, Pittsburgh. 
 
 Sketches by 
 FREDERICK EARL JOHNSTON. 
 
 PRINTED AT REQUEST 
 OF THE PRESIDENT OF TRINITY 
 COLLEGE FOR CIRCULATION 
 AMONG THE ALUMNI. 
 

 5 s 
 
 \ 
 
 THIS LITTLE PAMPHLET IS FEELINGLY INSCRIBED 
 
 TO THE TRINITY PROFS. 
 
 AND 
 
 THE FOREBEARS OF THE TRINITY BOYS. 
 
 THEY GAVE THEM. IN YOUTH 
 
 WHAT IN MANHOOD NO MONEY 
 
 COULD BUY FOR THEM AND NO 
 
 SHERIFF SELL FROM THEM: 
 
 A COLLEGE COURSE. 
 
 J.itBfcmt 
 i|0'02 
 
R. TOASTMASTER and Gentle- 
 men of the Princeton Alumni 
 Association of Western Penn- 
 sylvania : From the warmth of 
 your greeting I judge the tiger 
 is in ; indeed the depth and 
 volume of his growl leave no room for doubt 
 on that point and, the tiger being in, why of 
 course, Princeton's Inn ; of that I am morally, 
 if not indeed immorally, certain ; for in the 
 words of oracular wisdom of Captain Jack Buns- 
 by, "Whereby; why not? If so, what odds?" 
 From your keen appreciation of this spiritual 
 sentiment I feel encouraged to proceed and yet 
 I cannot but express the wish that in these 
 later times, so prolific in societies for number- 
 less suppressing purposes, we could to them 
 add yet another suppressor. It would be a 
 boon to humanity at large, to say nothing of 
 its effect on digestion in the individual. To 
 organizations for the suppression of vice and im- 
 morality, of treating, of hazing freshmen and 
 of cruelty to other children I would add one 
 which should be styled THE S. A. D. S. In 
 spite of its lugubrious name its mission would 
 be one of deep cheer and unbounded joy> 
 for these lachrymose letters would 
 
for the; suppression of after dinner spouters.' 
 
designate the society for the Suppression of 
 After Dinner Spouters. Need I say in the 
 presence of this, already harassed, assemblage 
 that a long-suffering public would crowd its 
 membership and its waiting list be as long as 
 the moral law. Paradoxical as it may seem it 
 would draw to its folds the spouter as well as 
 the suffering spoutees, for if any man here 
 thinks it is an enviable thing for one to sit 
 through a long- dinner and ruin his own diges- 
 tion by fears and anticipations of the outcome 
 of his forensic effort at its close, and when he 
 finally gets on his feet, realize that he is then 
 ruining the digestion of the other fellows who 
 have to listen, if any such man is here and 
 within his breast is an envious feeling, a cov- 
 etous or desiring sort of a wish, to fill another 
 man's patent leathers at this particular instant, 
 if he imagines for a moment for example that 
 your humble servant is riding on oiled springs f&i 
 and cushion tires, let him accept from my 
 whole heart the invitation of that sonorous 
 morning monotone which those of my own 
 craft will recall in the nasal in- ^ 
 
 vitation of our worthy court crier, 
 " Oyez, Oyez ; come forth and ye 
 shall be heard. God save the United 
 States and this honorable court. " 
 
 After some acute personal suffering 
 
IS TO PREPARE YOUR SPEECH, ANTE-PRANDIALLY. 
 
from this after dinner speaking malady and close 
 observation of the symptoms in others, my diag- 
 nosis is that the best way to avoid one phase 
 of the trouble, to wit, harrowing one's own 
 peace of mind and preventing the satisfactory 
 working of one's digestive organs, is to pre- 
 pare your speech, ante-prandially. This has the 
 warrant of hornbook law, for the written must 
 always prevail over the oral, sworn to though 
 the latter be. I know in one way such a course 
 seems cowardly ; but it has redeeming features. 
 I know its a mean advantage to take of a help- 
 less stenographer, but you can experiment on 
 her initially. She has to listen. She can't get 
 away. She can't sit and smoke and let her 
 thoughts wander to the stock market, the Met- 
 ropolitan Opera we are to have next week, the 
 outcome of the Quay trial or a dozen other of 
 the delightful diversions now chasing through 
 your brains. No; that stenographer has to drink 
 in, attentively, appreciatively, submissively, all 
 your eloquence. It's her business to listen. It's 
 bread and butter and therefore life to her to 
 listen, even if thereafter it prove death to others. 
 But if she does listen and like T. Jefferson "still 
 survives;" if she prove shot proof on this trial 
 test, then you may safely train your oratorical 
 howitzers on your audience with the reasonable 
 assurance that there will be no need of an am- 
 
"you can experiment on her initially. 
 
bulance being on call, or of the assiduous ser- 
 vices of Coroner Heber McDowell at the morgue 
 or Sampson at the mortuary chapel. 
 
 Apropos of this self-same Heber, I am re- 
 minded of the talk I had with him lately on 
 the street. If you have occasion hereafter to 
 come within the range of his "administrative 
 functions" you will find him a kind-hearted and 
 considerate man in spite of the fact that his 
 coronial duties lead him to spend most of his 
 time sitting on his fellow men. But in justice 
 be it said that much as he sits on them he was 
 never known to hurt their feelings. I had occa- 
 sion to do him a favor and met him shortly 
 afterwards. He stopped me and expressed his 
 grateful feelings. As I passed on he doubtless 
 thought he ought to make some return, and 
 said, " Can't I do something for you ? " And a 
 vision of him "sitting," with the aid of his 
 twelve good men and true, and doing something 
 for me arose before me, and I faintly gasped, 
 "Thank you; nothing at present — not just 
 now." Doubtless he thought me strangely un- 
 appreciative, possibly abrupt, even rude. I left 
 him and hurried back to my place of work, for 
 better, thought I, the modest seclusion of a third 
 floor room of a post ojficc than to be on the 
 ground floor and fill a leading part in a post 
 mortem. 
 
But to return to the subject in hand, which, 
 as I recall it, was the desirability of preparing- 
 your remarks before the feast. My ! the comfort 
 when it's done ; the deep sense of serene, angelic 
 peace that pervades your being as you sit at 
 the table after having once nervously reached 
 to your coat-tail pocket and found the precious 
 document — like the Star Spangled Banner — 
 "still there." The calm that comes from know- 
 ing that however other virgins are off for ole- 
 aginous supplies, your lamp wick is ready for 
 contact with a lucifer ; the thought of your 
 Mauser loaded and with a magazine full up ; all 
 these enable you to think with philosophic com- 
 placency of some brother orator possessed of 
 but a broken popless pop-gun. For enjoyment, 
 for rest, for peace of mind and soul at a din- 
 ner, give me the speech safely esconced in the 
 caudal marsupium of a claw hammer. I know 
 some prefer to tuck theirs in the grey matter of 
 the cerebellum, but for me the pocket plan, first, 
 last and meanwhile. Still others choose the 
 extemporizing, spur-of-the-moment mode, but 
 candor compels me to say that when the truth 
 is out the brilliant extemporizer goes on the 
 theory the more brilliant and extempore the 
 speech, the more carefully it should be com- 
 mitted to memory. And for me that would be 
 the acme of torture ; for from blue points or 
 
SAFETY ENSCONCED IN THE CAUDAE MARSUPIUM OF A 
 CLAW-HAMMER. ' ' 
 
little neck clams to coffee and cigars I should 
 have ringing through my fearful soul that sad 
 wail which you can recall from your " inner con- 
 sciousness " (Sir William Hamilton's Metaphysics, 
 please), that wail that has been yours to vent, 
 that is you who are married men, that speech- 
 less fear which first found expression in the 
 mouth of an uncrowned laureate of Anglo-Saxon 
 verse, as crossing the threshold of his then 
 humble and unknown home and clutching the 
 letter which his even-again-confiding wife had 
 given him to post, and with the 
 : missive in his hand and fear of 
 forget in his heart, he gave 
 voice to that sentiment which 
 has made him famous : " Lest 
 we forget; lest we forget." 
 
 Now some one may say 
 this is all talk, and that in 
 fact I am glad to be talking, indeed 
 some malevolent person might say that 
 being-, as I would have you know 
 I am, an honorary member of the Whig 
 Society of Princeton, I could not help 
 but make a speech. But that is unjust 
 to me and unfair to that venerable body. 
 I am here from a stern sense of duty. I am 
 talking to-night because I have to do so, for 
 my tag reads u R. S. V. P.," and having this 
 
burden laid upon me I felt I must do some 
 downright hard work and prepare a careful, 
 scholarly effort, fit to grace, as your worthy 
 Doctor Patton would say, " this highly interest- 
 ing function of social intercourse." I felt I 
 owed it to Princeton. When Totten your 
 tempter came first and said, I would simply 
 have to say a few words, I weakly yielded, 
 feeling the inspiration of the moment, not to 
 mention that of the In(n)cidents, with some 
 extempore froth thrown on top to hide the 
 emptiness of the schooner, would suffice. But 
 when Siebeneck, your scribe, gave me a formal 
 notification, when he enclosed a card of invita- 
 tion with his pen suggestively run through the 
 cost mark of the dinner, I realized that it con- 
 veyed to me and, " with malice aforethought 
 then and there intended," was meant to convey 
 to me the warning that if I got my doughnuts 
 without dollars, I must render a quid pro quo 
 aliunde. There remained for me naught save to 
 
 Take up the Speech man's burden, 
 Give ye the best I breed, 
 And bind my brain to labor 
 To serve your Tiger need. 
 And when my goal was nearest, 
 (The speech for Princeton got), 
 Watch sloth and heathen folly 
 Mark all my jokes — a naught. 
 
 But my brother collegians let no man charge 
 Princeton with parsimony. When the orator of 
 
the Platte opens the very flood gates of 
 verbal vastness for a "Dollar Dinner," 
 how generous of Old Nassau to ple- 
 thorize the roomy caverns of Yale and 
 Harvard orators with a four dollar 
 feast for retailing to them 
 the glories of EH and John. 
 
 But perchance some irrev- 
 erent, saturnine listener will 
 remark about this time " Why 
 don't he get down to his own toast and mas- 
 ticate it ? " That is a home thrust, or in the 
 classical slang of the Roman Arena, " Habet." 
 But, gentlemen, that is "a way we have at Old 
 Trinity." Because we get a chance to talk to 
 you of our alma mater we have no idea of 
 crowding the mourners in a recitation of her 
 virtues. Collegiate egomania is not a Trinity 
 malady. If you think I am slow in getting 
 down to my text I venture you will have no 
 occasion to complain in that regard of either 
 John or Eli — especially Eli. And if you don't 
 believe by the time said John and Eli are 
 through with you that you labor under a men- 
 tal hallucination in regard to the result of 
 last fall's foot ball season, and that the 
 Tiger was number three, neither am 
 I a prophet or the son of one. 
 
 But I am called to respond to 
 
the toast of Trinity and with these few pre- 
 liminary "obsarves," as the Pennsylvania-Ger- 
 man member of the Legislature said, and in 
 answer to the imperative request from the 
 bleachers which yon used to hear when yon 
 missed a fly or failed to stop a hot grounder, 
 I will now, "Get into the game." 
 
 They tell me that Trinity is in great com- 
 pany to-night ; that old John Harvard, with the 
 self-satisfied serenity which he generally carries 
 in his clothes, is here ; that old Eli Yale, with 
 his equal serenity of self-satisfaction, has for this 
 evening, at least, stopped telling everyone where 
 he hails from, et omnia or /era, abides with yon, 
 and is going to spend a real modest evening ; 
 that the big tiger, good humored now that he 
 is feasted, all unite to form an awe-inspiring col- 
 legiate trio. In the presence of these mighty 
 chanticleers of the collegiate barnyard, I presume 
 the Trinity bantam should feel outclassed, possi- 
 bly if he took yonr estimate of yourselves and 
 yours of him he would. Bnt I tell yon, my fel- 
 low chanticleers, that the Trinity bantam has 
 been brought up in the Trinity barn yard on 
 different principles, and the most marked out- 
 come of his collegiate training is the fostering 
 of a habit which leads him to size things from 
 his own standpoint, and not have somebody else 
 size them for him. The Trinitv bantam ever 
 
THE IvATK DAGO LAUREATE." 
 
feels that whatever company is fit for him to 
 be at, he is entirely fit to be there, or as the 
 Amherst man said in looking around a Trinity 
 table, " Yon Trinity fellows seem to fill your 
 clothes." You will therefore understand, gen- 
 tlemen, the spirit in which the Trinity bantam, 
 game from comb to spur, crows at your door, 
 hops in, shakes his tail feathers, and with a 
 sociable nod to the venerable John, and a good 
 natured " Howd'ydo " to the ponderous old Elihu 
 steps into the collegiate cock pit, makes his best 
 bow to the tiger, says he is glad to be here, is 
 not a whit abashed at your hugeness, is satisfied 
 with himself and his own particular coop, feels 
 he is up to date, no bats in his belfry, and in 
 deference to this scholastic and erudite company 
 informs you in the classic and patristic vernac- 
 ular, which you will of course recall, of Quintus 
 Horatius Flaccns, the late Dago laureate: "O 
 Tiger, puleherrimus, saffronisi?nus, pulsans pilam 
 pedibus: O Johannes et Elihu, venerabillisimi ; saluto 
 vos. Felix sun/ edere et bibere cum vobis. ,y 
 
 My fellow collegians : Before closing I pass 
 from these thoughts of lighter vein to say a few 
 earnest words on my toast of the evening, my 
 alma mater. The collegiate world is a world of 
 its own kind. Those of us who so beneath the 
 
surface, who seek for the influences which mould 
 and shape men in the most formative years of 
 life, who know that when a boy finishes his col- 
 lege course, instead of him going through col- 
 lege, the college has gone through him, posi- 
 tively or negatively, for weal or woe : those of us 
 who look at facts not fads, at realities not names, 
 know that each one of these older colleges of 
 our eastern land — and I by no means restrict my 
 remarks to them — has an individual character as 
 marked and defined as that of each individual 
 home. And just as the subtle, indefinable influ- 
 ence of a home, whatever it be, is more keenly 
 marked, exerted and felt, than is the influence of 
 a great hotel, so we know that the influence 
 and individuality of our middle-sized colleges are, 
 in their several spheres, more marked and acute 
 than in our great universities with their thou- 
 sands. Who that has known Dartmouth has not 
 felt the rugged sturdiness of her sons that from 
 Webster and Rufus Choate down has made them 
 overflow into Massachusetts, and among the over- 
 powering numbers of Harvard grasp a dispropor- 
 tioned share of the prizes of the battle of life? 
 Who that has known Williams has not felt the 
 scholarly, gentlemanly, rounding influences that 
 have sent from the Berkshire Hills our Garfields, 
 our Fields, our Hopkins et id omne genus? Who 
 that has appreciated the literary and reflective 
 
in the coeeegiate barnyard. 
 
 Unci,e Sam — 
 
 "Naw, on course, Brother Tiger, I'll grant these banties 
 don't crow as loud as them Plymouth Rocks, but when 
 it comes to usin' their heads and spurs I'll back 'em 
 agin' any chicken on the farm." 
 
spirit that has marked Brown in the past, who 
 that has known her students with their broad, 
 generous and catholic training has not felt that 
 the genius of the catholic-spirited Roger Williams 
 yet hovered in her class rooms? Who that has 
 known the splendid spirit of Amherst, seated in 
 the beauties of the rural surroundings of her 
 New England home, has not felt that a Beecher, 
 or a Seelye was the logical and to-be-looked-for 
 outcome of her training? Who that has thought- 
 fully contrasted the fewness of Bowdoin's sons 
 with the wide range of her product has not been 
 impressed with the training that has touched a 
 gamut of widely different chords in the poetic 
 imagination of a Longfellow or Hawthorne, the 
 scholarly jurisprudence of a Chief Justice Fuller, 
 the lion strength of a Speaker Reed? Who that 
 has studied the colleges of old Uncle Sam has 
 not recognized how from the limit of the three 
 hundred to which, even in his hour of sorest 
 need he has always restricted his West Point 
 and Annapolis, have come, by reason of the 
 man-moulding and character-building he there 
 works out, the Grants, the Shermans, the Sheri- 
 dans, the Farraguts, the Porters and last but 
 not least the Deweys that have made us proud 
 and entitled to claim them as brother and fel- 
 low middle-college men. 
 
 It is of one of these middle colleges, whose 
 
place in the world's great canvass is not large, 
 but whose influence on those who call her moth- 
 er is all potent, I would speak to-night. If you 
 ask me what is her peculiar work and excel- 
 lence, what the fruitage of her training, what 
 the excuse for her existence, I can but answer 
 you in the words of one of our public men and 
 leaders, a man with no interest in or connection 
 with my college, save that of a thoughtful man, 
 alive to the moulding influences of American 
 Colleges, who tersely said in discussing them, 
 "Trinity stamps her men with individuality." 
 L,ay aside for a moment the picture of your col- 
 lege homes which you dearly and justly love, 
 and bearing in mind the thought that from the 
 door of some quiet home on a side street may 
 come children who may be more blessed than 
 those from the portals of the more pre- 
 tentious mansion on the avenue, bearing | 
 in mind that the half dozen children 
 in your own homes are not wholly 
 to be pitied because they are not J% 
 numbered among the hundreds of 
 Brigham Young, I ask you to 
 come with me to-night and from 
 her Northam Towers look down 
 on my alma mater. There, near 
 the City of Hartford, one of the 
 fairest, most cultured and refined of m> 
 
New England's fairest cities, she stands, high- 
 seated, o'er looking from her vantage point of 
 view the broad expanse of a restful and typical 
 New England landscape. From her stone mul- 
 lioned windows is seen a matchless reach of 
 mingled city and country, of man and nature, 
 of hill and plain, things which in themselves 
 suggest and foster that breadth and all-rounded 
 character which her instinct, her teaching, her 
 motherhood seek to give her sons. Within her 
 walls are gathered, not so many, but those she 
 has she draws from as many different sections 
 of our land as any university represented here 
 to-night. It has ever been her policy in seek- 
 ing instructors not to confine herself only to 
 those who have been trained by her or known 
 Trinity traditions alone, but in a broad and 
 catholic spirit she has sought and kept, not 
 only her own sons, but in large measure grad- 
 uates of other places. She seeks wherever she 
 finds men worthy to be the makers of her sons. 
 I think I am safe in saying that in a way pe- 
 culiar to herself Trinity has above all American 
 colleges drawn within a relatively narrow com- 
 pass, the most divers and different both of stu- 
 dents and faculty. It is this fact, joined to 
 other influences to which I shall allude which 
 has enabled her to put the stamp of her indi- 
 vidual, peculiar motherhood upon her foster and 
 
fostered sons. Here young men, representing 
 widely scattered localities and different surround- 
 ings, trained by those who have gained their 
 learning under many systems, by men of no 
 one school or faith (but thank God always 
 of some faith) such young men I say, can and 
 never will be aught but men of individual in- 
 dividuality. They learn to themselves measure 
 men, weigh opinions, reach truth, in the light, 
 not of what may be popular, not what a great 
 mass around them would dictate, but by their 
 own individual standards. It is not what the 
 college mass dictates but what the individual 
 man himself thinks. It is not what the popular 
 wave of the hour and the crowd may prescribe, 
 but what the quiet reason of the individual 
 thinks for himself. To him the college is a 
 means, not an end. When to these potent fac- 
 tors we add others which alone come from a 
 college of its location and size, we can see how 
 these helps to individuality and the upbuilding 
 of individual strength are accentuated. Each 
 man may not know so many as in your thou- 
 sands, but those he does know I think he 
 learns to know better. Here men are not mas- 
 ses or even classes, but the individual unit, and 
 to his instructor the student is not a mere name, 
 a place on a bench, one of a changing kaleido- 
 scope of numbers, but he is himself, his name, 
 
character, life, yearnings and inspirations are 
 known, recognized, studied, aided, moulded, made. 
 Who can count the priceless influence on the 
 character and lives of those who, during the 
 four most formative and plastic years of a 
 spirited boy, cnt loose from the ties of home, 
 fatherhood and motherhood, and not yet held 
 bv the after-coming anchors of wife and child, 
 have the personal interest, companionship, and 
 friendship of his college professors. Not one 
 man in half a million in America has heard 
 even the name of William Small, a long ago 
 forgotten professor in the little college of Wil- 
 liam and Mary. Yet his grateful student, Jeffer- 
 son, was wont to say that he owed more in 
 the making of his life to William Small than 
 to any other influence. He it was who during 
 Jefferson's collegiate life moulded the mind 
 which ten years later guided the hand that at 
 thirty-one penned the matchless declaration 
 which changed the world for freedom. Unself- 
 ish, thankless, forgotten work, that of such real 
 teachers is to be sure ; its story is written in 
 no book except in the lives of those who in 
 the heat and fire of life's daily battle are the 
 nobler and better men because they called, and 
 were permitted to call, such men their friends. 
 U A log, with a student at one end, and Mark 
 Hopkins at the other, is a college," said Gar- 
 
"a log with a student at one end — " 
 
field. " Tell me," said ]\Irs. Browning to 
 Charles Kingsley, " how yon have made so 
 much of your life ? " "I had a friend," was 
 the reply. To the friendship and warm per- 
 sonal interest of such men the Trinity student 
 owes, shall I say much ? I might almost say, 
 everything. 
 
 In a wise and conservative spirit allowing 
 electives for the later years my alma mater has 
 clung tenaciously to those time-tried foundations 
 which have trained and made men in the past ; 
 the classics, mathematics, English Literature, 
 history and philosophy. If he sees fit to do so. 
 there is permitted in the later years of the stu- 
 dent's course, a wide range of electives which 
 I venture to suggest that as a freshman he is 
 too fresh to wisely select. The moderate num- 
 ber of her sons affords them a welcome to the 
 homes of Hartford, and from such sources they 
 gain that happiest possession in our intercourse 
 of after life, comfort and ease under any sur- 
 roundings. And if his taste or means do not 
 lead him to take advantage of what I regard 
 as a real benefit to a boy, intercourse with such 
 cultured people, he is none the less moulded 
 and shaped by the reflex influence of those who 
 do and acquires that true, gentlemanly spirit 
 which in its highest sense is part of Trinity 
 training and life, and which I say with pride is 
 
one of the characteristic earmarks of her sons. 
 It is in such scenes and amid such influ- 
 ences, surroundings where mere raw money is 
 made to feel its just worth, where manly 
 sports are recreation not occupation, this happy 
 blending of the teacher and the taught, of the 
 moulded and the moulding, the Trinity man 
 drinks in, for life is the vintage of environment, 
 that personality and individuality which send 
 him forth not brilliant but full developed, self- 
 poised and able to hold aloft, unsullied, the 
 standard of the blue and gold, full abreast with 
 those who carry the crimson, the orange or the 
 blue. He is full of that characteristic " Trinity 
 sand," which in under graduate days is wont 
 to lead the bantam on the gridiron and the dia- 
 mond to measure spurs with those a dozen 
 times his size, and though over-powering num- 
 bers may down him he will not stay downed 
 and the game fight he makes is an earnest 
 that he has already learned, the greater half of 
 life's great school book — to fearlessly face any 
 thing. Indeed his training, life, instruction, and 
 motherhood all unite to make him, when the 
 call for duty comes, answer "Adsum." 
 
 The Trinity way, the Trinity tradition, the 
 Trinity man I can no better picture than to tell 
 you briefly the story of my college men when 
 the country's call to arms came last spring. 
 

 
There was no gush over it, but all the same 
 the record is one for which in proportion to 
 numbers I throw down the gauge to all comers. 
 If the o-reat universities sent from their gradu- 
 ates and under graduates the same proportion 
 in numbers to answer the call to duty on sea 
 and land Trinity did, each of the institutions 
 here represented would have between six and 
 seven hundred men in the service. I know not 
 how many others sent, but I know Trinity's 
 quota overflowed. I know that when our old 
 Uncle Sam, who has a way of laying his hands 
 on the right man at the right time, wanted to 
 plant the New England coast with submarine 
 engines of destruction he passed by even the 
 technical schools, went to the Trinity labora- 
 tory, put his hand on a quiet Trinity man, put 
 him in charge, and said do this, and he did it. 
 Did it quietly, unostentatiously, and after it was 
 done went back to his scholastic work without 
 knowing or thinking it was any thing but duty. 
 I know that when that same old Uncle Sam 
 wanted to gain a landing foothold down yon- 
 der at Guantanamo and our Country, yes the 
 world, was watching to see whether it would 
 be a foothold or a failure, when he sought a 
 man to lead the "six hundred" who were to 
 hold the ground in that hell fire of guerrillas 
 and Mausers, he gave the great honor not even 
 
to one of his own sons trained at West Point 
 and Annapolis, bnt to a quiet, self-reliant, Trin- 
 ity-trained hero, and said hold it. Have you 
 read how when the two heroes stood on the 
 top of the breastworks amid a storm of flying 
 bullets, and wig-wagged messages to the ships 
 in the offin°\ the Colonel in command mounted 
 beside them and helped with the signals. You 
 have read how the officers in the trench be- 
 low begged him to come down. How he an- 
 swered "I'm in no more danger than the man." 
 Stephen Crane has given you a word-picture of 
 the scene, the man and the words that deserve 
 remembrance as a motto for those who lead. 
 I will tell you that was Trinity training, Trin- 
 ity sand, the acts and word of a Trinity man;. 
 Colonel Huntingdon, of the Class of 1864, in 
 command of the Marine Corp at Guantanamo. 
 A glance at the Trinity roll of honor shows 
 her sons were with Sampson and his captains 
 helping to add to the unrivalled submarine 
 navy of Spain which Dewey started at Manilla; 
 with Shafter in the trenches at Santiago ; with 
 Woods and Roosevelt astride the bronchos of 
 the Rough Riders, with Miles at Ponce ; with 
 Lawton in the Philippines, where even to-night 
 I doubt not with the score or more of the sons 
 of old Nassua who are there, they are singing 
 the college songs of Home, Sweet Home. And 
 
{ %: 
 
 "i'm in no more danger than the man." 
 
 Bv Courtesy of McClure's Magazine, Copyrighted 1899, by the 
 S. S. McClure Co. 
 
when the other clay the bodies of our dead 
 were brought, from the fetid fever fields of 
 the Queen of the Antilles, home to rest neath 
 the folds of Old Glory, I know there was one 
 at least who trained in life under the blue and 
 gold of Trinity had in his death proved fealty 
 to her legend " Pro Patriae 
 
 You will pardon me, Princeton friends, if 
 loyalty to my college mother has lead me to 
 speak at undue length. I thank you one and 
 all that you have asked me to be with you 
 to-night and in the midst of your rejoicing 
 over the glories of Old Nassua in which I join, 
 and these college songs which have stirred 
 many sleeping memories and brought back many 
 an absent face, you will appreciate the feeling 
 that carries me from your own hospitable board 
 in memory back to my own old college mother, 
 and as my heart goes out to her and her sons 
 with a fervor the fleeting years have only made 
 more stable, can you question my right — my 
 pleasure — my filial duty at this mid-night hour 
 to voice the prayer " Floreat Trinitas, mater 
 mini, semper alma et benigna." 
 
n * H