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IJUNE, 47, 1877.
JOHN BASCOM.
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BACCALAUREATE SERMON
Prov. 4:7.  Wisdom is thle principal thing; thierefore get wisd,m: and
with all thy getting, get understanding.
This injunction, which sprang three thousand years ago
out of the best wisdom of that time, has been gathering
clearness in the consciousness of all true men, in the consciousness of all progressive nations, ever since. Wisdom
is our most comprehensive expression for excellence; our
wise man is our best man.- Science and religion both take
it in at their point of intersection, and are both included by
it. Wisdom remains the centre at which all knowledge and
all virtue meet, and from which they take their departure.
We mean by wisdom the knowledge which gives a mastery over physical forces, the insight which discloses the
constructive laws of mind and society, and that living
obedience which puts itself in perfect harmony with this
innermost truth of things. This wisdom is for men and for
States the principal thing.   Accepting  the  proposition,
Wisdom is the principal thing, we accept the corollary, and
would obey the injuction: Get wisdom; and with all thy
getting, get understanding.
The applicability of this precept to us in our collective
capacity, the State, suggests our theme. We propose to
discuss Education and the State.  We  thought at first of
entitling our topic, Higher Education and the State; but
further consideration made  us unwilling to seem thus to
divide knowledge, and to disintegrate discipline;  and  -o 
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assign a portion here and a portion there, to give one less
and another more according to our notion of the wants of
men. Wisdom is one, and is passing always into a higher
and yet higher unity.. This wisdom it is, not arithmetic or
geography, which is the principal thing; which we are to
labor after, each of us according to our capacity. There is
no more opportunity in education than in wisdom itself to
divide acquisition into primary and higher, and to bid the
State and so to bid the masses halt at the line of separation.
All knowledge is for the sake of all knowledge, and is for
all: and knowledge is so valuable because it gathers up fact
and fact, relation and relation, in endless sequence. The
community in its books, papers, discourses, discussions; in
its arts, commerce and government, is the true school of the
citizen; but it can remain this school only as there is
poured into it freely from all quarters every available form
of knowledge, from the lowest to the highest. These fountains of wisdom by the wayside, at which all are to drink,
must be fed from large areas, near at hand and remote,
from deep places and high places, from broad plateaus and
far-reaching mountains, and so be made pure and perennial.
The community is the school of the citizen, his abiding
instructor; but that it may be this, constantly and wisely
this, two things are necessary.  All inquiry, all truth must
be passed over to the community by school and college, by
pulpit and press, as a common possession; and, as a supplement to this, every citizen must have the means of instruction so open to him that he shall be brought in living
contact with this knowledge. In this process, by which
enterprise and thought percolate the community as flowing
waters, and come to the surface everywhere for every one
as refreshing knowledge, higher schools, in all their grades,
are of just as much moment as the most primary ones.
We do not learn the alphabet for its own sake, but that we
may climb by it into science, philosophy and literature.  No 
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more do we learn grammar and arithmetic for their sakes,
but only as continuations of our lines of ascent into intellectual manhood. Good citizenship, intelligence, virtue are
held as a living spirit in the entire nation, must be held and
nourished in the nation, and be gotten by the individual
from the nation. Our national life measures our national
strength, and our national instruction measures our national
life. There are here no bounds of knowledge, no divisions
of advantage. The highest truths must be found in descent, as a beam of light, to the lowest social ranks; and
from the lowest social ranks every clear eye must be directed upward, drinking in the radiance of the higher air.
Claiming, then, that our inheritance in wisdom is one of
indivisible and inseparable portions, we ask, Is instruction a
function of the State, a function which it ought to take up,
and which it can discharge advantageously?
Nothing in government is absolute. Its functions, though
lying in certain general directions, are changeable with circumstances. While we answer, therefore, our triple question on general principles, we wish also to answer it as
modified by the existing condition of the Western States.
The first branch of our inquiry is, Is education a function
of the State? A theory of government has sprung up, in
reaction against the meddlesome, mistaken and tyrannical
tendencies of the past, that the proper, the almost exclusive,
province of civil government is protection. This view is
much too narrow, not only for all experience hitherto, not
only for the functions which governments are daily and
beneficently exercising, but also for any sufficient estimate
of their powers and duties.  Governm.nt is the offspring of
human wants; and needs, in its action, no other justification
than that offered by a skillful and successful supply of those
wants. Government may do all that it can advantageously
do, advantageously do with a broad forecast of immediate
and remote results.  A  good action in the State, as in the 
person, requires no other commendation than its goodness.
The first portion of our question, therefore, Is education a
function of the State? is answered in the affirmative, if the
two remaining portions are so answered. If education is
shown to be a demand which the State can meet, and one
which is not likely to be well met without it, then the State
has no occasion of hesitancy as to its right to do what it
can do for the welfare of its citizens.
The first duty of a government is, indeed, the protection
of its citizens in the fiee exercise of all their rights, but the
second duty, and one for which in large part we perform
the first duty, is to provide those common conditions of national growth which lie beyond the reach of individual and
corporate action. In fulfillment of this obligation, governments construct roads, establish postal systems, open harbors, erect light-hou,es, make internal improvements, and
provide all needful conditions of national activity. A  government cannot hesitate to enter on this second class of
duties without emasculating itself, and dwarfing the nation
whose powers it is called on to develop. The collective
community, represented in its government, possesses the
most royal rights; and it cannot neglect them  or lay them
aside without irreparable loss.  It is, indeed, a mistake of
great moment for the government to overshadow the citizen,-1 to push him from his footing, and so to mar the units in
its own make-up; but this fact does not alter the other fact.
that there are forms of large and generous activity which
devolve on the combined energy of the nation, and serve
pre-eminently to develop  and  establish the national life.
These two forces, individual life and  nationtl life, are held
together and skillfully harmonized in the healthy State.  In
this second class of duties, too important to be overlooked,
and too great or too urgent  bfor individual strength, we
w~o}tSl:'place education.  The  duty of education is put by
those wnho object to ay large entrm-ce on the labor by the
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State on too narrow a ground. It is said to be a measure of
self-defense, not a measure of national development. This
cannot be true in a republic.  A  government which is of
the people, by the people, and for the people, can need no
defense against the people.  Such a government has no life
which it has any wish or right to defend against those who
institute it. Education is not, then, with a republic a measure of self-defense, but one of national development.
In the same narrow way a division is attempted between
primary and higher education, and the first only conceded
as a right to the State. It is said, the State may not tax its
citizens for expenditures whose returns reach to a small
portion of the population. This assertion is wrong in every
bearing of it. It underrates the breadth of the advantages
that accrue from higher education, and it equally underrates the rights of the State in its own up-building. Is there
any more inequality of returns to the people in a university
than in a light-house? in a college than in a common school,
to a man without children, or to one who chooses to send
his children elsewhere? Has the State no right to tax its
rich citizens for the commonweal, and has it the right to
marshal its poor citizens into its armies, and bid them lay
down their lives for that same commonwealth? No such
narrow calculation of personal gains will guide us correctly
in dealing with a great public interest. The State may do
what the State needs to have done, and it may put its hand
on all the means and the men required for the accomplishment of its purpose.
We come, then, fairly to the second portion of our- inquiry, Is edncation a duty which it is necessary ior the State to
take up? If it is not such a dutty, it is not for one or
other of two reasons. Either the importance of education
is not sufficient to commend it to the State, or it is a work
that may be adequately done by private citizens. I need
not lose time on the first point.  My text is too deeply im 
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bedded in our convictions. Wisdom is the principal thing.
Observe, also, the ways in which national wealth and national energy run to waste when this form of activity is denied them: the forts and the prisons, the navies and the
armies, the wvars and the tyrannies, the intrigues and jobbery which come in to drink up the national life, turned
from its true channels.'I'he nation, like the individual,
must have a higher life, if the brutal one of violence and
bloodshed is to be kept down; if the narrow, astute and
unscrupulous impulses ot commerce are to be enlarged; it
the craft and cunning of men, emulous only of power, are
to find correction. Indeed, the only consideration at issue
among patriots is the second one, Can and will the citizen
do this work of education sufficiently well?
Here arises another division of sentiment. Quite a portion of our citizens would remand all education to private
effort, would commit it more especially to religious bodies,
to be guided and fostered by them.  A second class would
sustain the primary schools as a public institution, and leave
higher instruction to private munificence, to the guidance
and support of the churches. We shall consider the second
opinion only; not because it is the most consistent one, but
because it is the most influential one, and has somewhat the
force of a tradition with us. If, moreover, we show higher
education to be a duty of the State, that position will carry
with it primary training.
Higher education as developed by the churches is unsystematic, partial, feeble, divided. It is unsystematic. The
churches are not in agreement as to the extent or methods
of this work, and there is not even the appearance of consultation between them on any of these questions. Each
religious body pursues its own purposes in its own way,
and thus there is neither completeness nor harmony, so far
as the efforts of others, or the wants of the community, are
concerned. Such instruction is partial, It is too much to 
hope that every church will thoroughly care even for its
own. Some churches have an inadequate notion of what a
sufficient provisicn implies. But if the children of its own
membership could be safely entrusted to each church, there
ri-emains a large number of citizens who are not attached to
any faith, and to whom sectarian institutions are distasteful.
These citizens are not provided for, nor are they in any
condition to provide for themselves.  Higher education, as
controlled by churches, is feeble, often very feeble.  The
best of these institutions in the West nriot only admit this
tact, they daily urge it as a reason for aid. There are very
few among us who can make the large gifts necessary for
the endowment af a college.  The result is, that sectarian
institutions in the West are inadequately supported, and are
compelled to drag on in poverty, and beg funds in the East
to be expended in communities too rich to need the gift, and
too proud properly to acknowledge it. Sectarian colleges,
feeble as they are, are unreasonably multiplied, and made,
by very numbers, aggressive on each other. A Congregationalist, in love with his own institutions, forgets that he
is not equally pleased with Methodist instriiction; and both,
urging their own claims, fail to remember that they look
askance at a Lutheran school, or with aversion at a Catholic college, resting on the same basis with themselves. A
Congregationalist would be likely to say ot a State university, that it is to be preferred to a Catholic college; and a
Catholic would as naturally reply that a State institution
has the field as opposed to heretical institutions. Thus, in
a State like Wisconsin, no one person can find himself in
sympathy with any considerable portion of private education, but rather ready to contend with much of it for possession of the field. The result is, that in religious education there is the same wasteful effort to pre-empt the Kingdom of Heaven which we see in our churches. A small
village has three spires where  it should have but one,
and five where two were better.
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Thus, sectarian education, not withstanding its commendable self-denial, has shown itself, taken as a whole, in the
West incomplete, uneconomical and uninfluential. An advocate partially confesses thie fact, and covers it with the
remark, "Looking over the numerous State institutions in
our country, we believe that, taking them as a whole, they
show no better educational results than those colleges that
have owed their origin to the voluntary principle." So far
as this statement is a reflection on State universities, it is
sufficient to say, that hitherto church training has so divided
public sentiment, that State institutions have not been honestly treated in their funds, heartily trusted in their instruction, or carefully watched over in their development. The
public temper is changing at this point, and very memorable results, as in Michigan University, are being reached
It is not the past, not even the present, but the future which
belongs to public education.
To this general objection of divided effort in the voluntctry method, multiplying semi-hostile institutions, is incident
the equally grave objection, that the unity of an educational
system being lost, the fragment which falls to the State in
common schools is left utterly unsupported. One of two
results is alone possible. Either the common schools will
inciease in strength, conquer for themselves the grammar
school, the high school, the normal school, and so open a
way up to the university, the last link of the chain; or, losng hold of the public mind, they will sink into insignificanice. A system of education is a living thing, and will
win the field that belongs to it, or wither away. In the
Eastern States this tendency of strength has been very discernable.  The public schools have vanquished the academies, and taken possession of intermediate instruction.  In
some of the older States, universities, I doubt not, would
have been organized, had not the field been adequately occupied by quasi public institutions, like Harvard and Yale. 
On the other hand, the difficulty with which common
schools, left to themselves, confront a tendency on the part
of the influential classes to private instruction, is seen in the
Southern States. The public school is not a power in those
States; because it is so limited in its uses, and does not command the sympathy of the upper classes. If education in
higher branches is wholly private, if the line of division is
complete here, the attendant spirit of disintegration will
work its way downward, set apart the common schools to
a labor disparaged in public sentiment, and dishearten them
and burden them in every eflrt and every argument by
their inferiority. No system of education defensible in each
member, and strong with a common strength, is likely to
be constructed out of the jarring elements of public and
private schools. The one or the other must conquer, and
be made the organizing power, while the defeated element
will become an incumbrance.
An equally weighty reason for maintaining public education is found in the division of our national lite between nationalities, between sects, between classes; a division sure
to vex and weaken us unless we systematically remove it.
The hopeless anarchv of the South has its foundations here.
In the West, similar forces are in full operation. Our prosperous development must depend on our ability to assimilate, in full citizenship, all nationalities, all sects, all classes.
There are with us such class divisions of race, religion and
social impulses, separating the community into portions
relatively equal, that nothing but the most vigorous and undisturbed national life can overcome them, and build us tip,
one State.  All other influences combinted are not comparable with public instruction as a means of reduction and assimilation; and in it the continuity of discipline, from its
commencement to its close, is of chief moment   Churches
and nationalities that fear this reconstruction, instinctively
attack the public schools.  If each sect and nationality is to
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reclaim its children as soon as possible from public instruction, to train them in its own way for its own ends, we shall
baffle the constructive forces that work for us, and abolish
the conditions of success. If each church, each party, shall
struggle to capture the State for itself, rather than stand together on common grounds, we shall substitute weakness for
strength, discord for harmony, and convulsion for progress.
This consideration of national unity may seem remote,
but it is one of the last importance in these Western States.
In no higher object, in no nobler work, can our various
populations and diverse religious bodies be united than in
this of complete, public education; and if they reiect this
union, they reject it in behalf of strife and dissension.
In no way can the coming generations secure such unity
of feeling and strength of common footing as by one, protracted and thorough irntellectual discipline. This division
of our national life, this distraction of social sentiment, this
waste of educational resources can be immediately reduced
and ultimately removed by extended and systematic public
instruction.
Guided by the experience of the East, wve are constantly
forgetting the changed conditions of our Western development. The Eastern States grew up slowly, with no sudden, transcendent demand for education: material growth
and institutional growth were deliberate, spontaneous and
concurrent. In the West, a single generation of strangers
from all quarters of the globe construct a large, powerful
and populous State, whose institutions must be framed at
once, and put in operation.
In the East, there was, during the formative periods, comparative harmony of religious thought, and one prevailing
nationality; in the Western States, more than half the
population may be, as it is in Wisconsin, of foreign extraction, with a corresponding diversity of religious faith and
social customs. In the East, there were a harmony and
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concentration of educational forces unknown to us. flarvard was built up conjointly under public and private action, with no diversity of feeling. Yale, in the same way,
for a long time expressed the strength of a colony and of a
State.  In other institutions, as in Princeton, there has been
a concurrence of effort not again possible. The last exceptional concentration of religious energy in a college, is
ihat which founded Oberlin. Private effort in the West has
shown haste, division and weakness. In the East, there is
much accumulated capita] and a spirit of systematic benevolence; in the West, wealth is diffused, there is commercial
pressure everywhere, and the passion for money-making
burns unabated.
It is not, therefore, the true policy of the West, with its
abundant yet scattered resources, to rely for education on
an ambling, halting voluntaryism, but to lay hold of its own
wealth by taxation, and to build for its motley population
common and sufficient institutions, in which the young life
of the State can be at once aind vigorously shaped, and so a
new era ushered in.  It is the duty of the West, to rear
her institutions, not with narrow jealousy between sect and
sect, section and section, blt on her own broad foundations,
with large-hearted emulation, and so to become a stately
column of strength in the social development of the new
world. For these Western States to divest themselves of
their grand prerogatives, and beg at the hands of their own
citizens or elsewhere what they only can adequately do for
themselves, is to cripple and dishonor the public life.
Education has also somewhat changed its character in
the progress oft years.  Instruction in the physical sciences
has taken new forms, and assumed new importance. But
this instruction demands expensive appliances, and hence
la:ge endowments.  The  feebler institutions of the West,
previously unable to compete with the prestige of Eastern
colleges, can do it under these new conditions with still 
14
greater difficulty.  To leave our youth dependent on poorfs
endowed colleges, is to consign the most ambitious of thenm
to the East for education, to sti11 further depress our home
training, and affix to it a permanent stigma of inferiority
There is but one institution in the West, Michigan University, that really competes in public patronage with the older
Eastern colleges, Michigan has shown us the only way in
which  a truly conmmanding  university can be built  up
among us.
We  have been speaking simpIy of two methods of education, and of their respective value. Nothing, therefore,
that we have said is to be construed into disparagement of
particular institutions.   The  weakest  sectarian colleges
have some value, and the best great value.  Instruction of
a high order and of the best spirit is often given in them.
We only regret that in so many instances it is poorly supported by surrounding conditions, and does not rest on a
foundation from which it can reach the entire community.
We believe that experience filly confirms the view now
taken.  When the States west of New York began to be
settled, the voluntary principle was in the ascendant. Not
till recently has the opposite opinion gained much favor,
and it still only divides public sentiment. State universities,
up to the present time, owe their strength chiefly to the
general government.  They have rarely received honest, to
say nothing of liberal, treatment from the States themselves.
This feeling is changing and to change, but their present
condition is not a just presentation of the system. Yet the
educational power of the West is largely in them, and passing over with each year to them. One great success has
been achie'ed. Other universities are encouraged by it, and
are pressing forward into the same rank. As these institutions shall gain ground, they will justify themselves by their
efficiency, economy and comnmanding power.  Let us look
at a few facts which point to this result.  The colleges of 
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'Ohio have been founded under the conviction that higher
education is to be entrusted to voluntary effort.  She is a
wealthy, powereul State, with every advantage of position,
and a relatively homogeneous and educated population
What is the result of the voluntary principle operating under these favorable conditions without check? She has nine
universities and thirty-three classical colleges   Of these
torty-two institutions scarcely one can be said to have a national reputation, and the most of them are not known beyond their own immediate vicinity   Harvard alone exerts
far more general influence than they all combined. The
educational strength of Ohio in higher departments, notwithstanding her excellent public schools, is subdivided to
the last degree of weakness.  Her own influence barely
passes her borders, while her sons wander East and West
in search of an education that imparts stimulus and carries
power. Yet these torty-two institutions occupy the time of
three hnndred and twenty-five instructors, and, while nearly
all are miserably poor, they conjointly consume a magnificent revenue.
A college can hardly justify its permanent existence that
has not one hundred and fifty students.'rhe necessary
initial outlays, and the time of a fill corps of professors, are
not paid for in public advantage by such a college, while its
students, if well taught, lose the incalculable gains of large
associations, and the sense of surrounding power. No man
can be educated by feeble contact, any more than he can
be guided by a glow-worm.
Yet  the colleges of the United States average  only
seventy-four students, a mark far below the minimum  ot
admissibility. Herein is a sad squandering of labor and reduction  of educational values.   Concentration, accumulation, vigor are our first demand.  We  have frittered away
our time, our resources, and our national life, by the petty
and divided eflorts of sects and localities. 
Look at the result of the opposite policy as now bei'rrg
developed in Michigan.  She has one university and nine
colleges. The university contains about the same number
of young men as do the colleges conjointly, and commands
an influence and concentrates an educational energy compared with which the power of any one of these institutions is insignificant. Yaet, by the census of seventy, the
income of the university is given as less than that of the
colleges, while her professors number only one-half theirs
A similar result is being rapidly reached in this State.
Many elements, indeed, enter in to modify comparisons oftthis sort, and make  them  illusory.   The  Universitv of
Michigan contains a large per cent. of professional students,
and the nine colleges add to these young men half as many
more young women. On the other hand, the grade of
scholarship in some of these colleges will bear no comparison with that of the University, and many of their students are in preparatory work. We cannot, however, be
mistaken in the primary fact, that the educational power
of Michigan finds grand expression in h-r university, and
there only.
While many of the advantages now claimed for public
instruction would be admitted by its more candid opponents, there are two very grave objections urged against
it. These difficulties are real, are not to be denied or
evaded, but are to be met and overcome in a manly spirit.
The first of them, and to my mind the greatest of them, is
the inability to secure a large-minded, firm and frugal administration of public instruction. It is the form of that
pervasive difficulty which belongs to) all our national action,
and, indeed, to human progress. Yet i~ is the struggle
with this danger and like dangers that brings to life its
noblest duties and rewards; it is a victory over this difficulty and like difficulties which constitutes the best triutmphs of the constructive force of human society.; If we
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give ground for such a reason as this, we shall deserve the
stinging reproach,'-A people inferior to their institutions."
We are not to lose time in regretting such obstacles.
We are to meet them again and again, till success crowns
our eflforts. It may easily happen, it does happen, in every
grade of instruction, that those to whom the interests of
education are committed are ready to say, Here is power,
here is honor, let us enter into them; and so they forget the
single high end they should pursue. The time will come,
and public education will hasten it, in which educational
men will gather influence within their own field, and be come the servants of the State to counsel action as well as
to carry it out. To conciliate and affiliate the best educa tional and the best political sentiment in the one work of
public education is a victory of constructive order second in
value only to the object to be accomplished by it. Educa tional, like judicial, action, demands and will secure a sacred
enclosure ot public sentiment, which will put it beyond the
invasion of private interests.
A second objection more persistently urged is, that the
subject-matter of higher education requires a discussion of
moral questions, and questions that have a religious bearing, and that these discussions cannot be entered on freely,
fairly and fully in a public institution; and that no sufficient
religious safe-guards can be thrown about young men in a
State university. This, also, we look upon, not as one of
those obstacles which simply block the way, and do noth
ing to repay the labor of removal, but as one of those
supreme moral conflicts in which it is the very purpose of
our lives to overcome, their only proper nobility. We admit the danger, we see the difficulty, we address ourselves
to it as wise and faithful men, and we fully believe that a
most complete and incomparably valuable success is possible to us.  We would have good men and able men, earnest men and men of various tendencies and views, as our 
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instructors, and then we would give them freedom; and
our young men and young women, just passing into manhood and womanhood, freedom under them, and, on the
whole, with the constant and careful correction and recorrection of experience, we have no fear of the results.  It is
a bigoted and unworthy claim that nothing which has a religious bearing shall be discussed in a public institution, a
claim of the same narrow character as the claim that certain convictions, and those only, should be enforced in a college. Either method is one of fear and bondage. Many
things stated on many sides by many good men, nothing
urged beyond the conviction which earnest thought always bears with it, this is our method, a method safer and
better, we believe, than instruction that is narrowed down
to a single dogmatic system, and enforced on all sides as an
authoritative belief. We would stand, in the completion of
our educational work, as God puts us, on the great plains
of truth, and on its high mountains, in contact with many
things, and gathering instruction and impulse from them all.
If we build up our faith as a castle, and set up our doctrines
as its gates, and gather in whom we can as camp-followers,
and leave the many to shift for themselves, we run the
silent, subtle risk, which has been the crowning risk in the
world's history hitherto, that of narrowing dogma, stifled
sympathy, interior corruption and slow decay. Nothing is
safe; the nearest approach to safety is the honest effort to
make all things safe on common grounds of advantage, and
this means public instruction.
With all cordiality, then, toward all good instruction
everywhere, we still feel that a public system commends it self to these Western States by the immediateness, suffi ciency and economy 9of' its action; by the harmony under it
and consequent strength, of all departmnents of education;
by the unity of the national life which it expresses and
nourishes; by the increased breadth of popular thought 
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which it promotes; by the enlarged and patriotic impulses
which it calls forth, crowding back narrow incentives, and
assigning the nation its true position; and by the wise, patient spirit with which it overcomes administrative difficulties, and unites all interests in one large and liberal work.
Members of the Graduating Class:
You may not fully accept what has now been said, but
whether you do or do not, having taken at the hands of the
public a great gift, you are doubly pledged to the action of
intelligent, patriotic citizens. The State has educated you
for yourselves and for it. The two things are not in conflict,
but they can only be harmonized by a noble life. To such
a life, at least in its social bearings, you are pre-eminently
bound. You have no right to seek your own weal, if your
own weal doos not include the public weal. Chicanery and
fraud with you will bear the further stigma of ingratitude
and treachery.
It may be, however, that you assent fully to the value we
have attached to public instruction. If so, your faith should
not be a dead letter. See clearly the dangers of such a
system, and the aid it calls for, and courageously confront
those dangers, and cheerfully bring that aid. Inscribe on
your banners, God save the commonwealth, and remember
that his first salvation is always wisdom, wisdom.  I trust
to see many strong workmen, and in the foreground
among them you, building patiently, intelligently and generously our public institutions, and, as chief over them all,
our educational institutions.
So will you redeem your lives.  As men and women you
can only redeem your lives by making themn parts of a
larger and better life. The human soul is grafted on to
the race in the love of the race; on to God in the love of 
God, and so shares their immortality. As the ylears pass,
the University will be presenting its justifications, malking
up its treasures of work, may your names come distinctly
out in that list of the wise and faithful who have been given
to the world by public instruction in the State of Wisconsin.
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