Oak Street 
 UNCLASSIFIED 
 
 MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE BULLETIN 
 
 VOL. II. NO. 4. 
 
 THE 
 
 INAUGURATION 
 
 OF 
 
 John Martin Thomas 
 
 AS 
 
 PRESIDENT OF MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE 
 
 WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 1908 
 
 MIDDLEBURY, VERMONT 
 
 JULY, 1 908 
 
 Published by the College four times a year, December, February, May, and July. 
 Entered as Second Class Matter at the Post Office, Middlebury, Vermont, 
 under Act of Congress of July 16, 1894. 
 
INAUGURATION EDITORIALS 
 
 MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE 
 
 T HE city of Burlington and the University of Vermont extend congratulations 
 and good wishes to the town of Middlebury and the ancient and honorable 
 institution of learning which adorns and dignifies it. Middlebury College celebrates 
 its 108th Commencement under the most favorable auspices, and inaugurates to-day 
 a new President under whose administration a great advance may be confidently 
 looked forward to. 
 
 It is a gigantic programme which President Thomas detailed in his inaugural 
 address to-day— a great extension of the endowment of the college, the modern- 
 ization of the course of study, with what is in effect the addition of a school of 
 science, and the extension of the women’s department to an extent commensurate 
 with its importance. More money, more departments, more professors, more 
 buildings — this is the burden of President Thomas’s discourse. 
 
 The times are auspicious and the new President is the man to carry out his 
 programme, extensive as it is. As to the old cry about the consolidation of 
 Vermont colleges, it is sufficient to say that it is a condition and not a theory that 
 confronts us, and, such being the case, all will wish President Thomas a realization 
 of his brightest dreams. May his incumbency of his office be long and prosperous ! 
 
 Burlington (Vt.) Daily News, June 24, 1908. 
 
 A HOME OF THE HUMANITIES. 
 
 T HE change of Presidents at Middlebury College, Vermont, calls fresh attention 
 to the honorable history of that institution, which eight years ago celebrated 
 the centennial of its service. The new head, Rev. Dr. John M. Thomas, is a man 
 on the sunny side of forty, and progressive, as becomes his years. His inaugural 
 address glorified the consecrated spirit in which the college had its birth and 
 recalled the names of the men who brought it into being. “ American education 
 has no more heroic story,” he said, “ than the record of the consecration of Painter 
 and Chipman and Storrs to the work of establishing a home for learning in this 
 frontier wilderness.” He paid tribute to what men of the Stale had done for it out 
 of their poverty. “ Humble farmers, in hard, trying times, their every shilling 
 gained by severest labor, while little children, some of whom have since become 
 pillars of the nation, crowded their hearthstones, subscribed hundreds of dollars that 
 the college, the pride of their fathers and the hope of their growing boys, might 
 continue its beneficent life.” 
 
 A college of this kind, which has been built up and maintained through great 
 sacrifice and severe self-denial, powerfully appeals to the affections of those most 
 familiar with its history. It has a peculiar mission. The passion for education has 
 developed more rapidly and widely than the means of gratifying it and that passion 
 is frequently strongest among those to whom the doors of opportunity seem close 
 shut. The sons of rich men have no trouble on that score. The boy to whom a few 
 hundreds a year can be spared can take his course in comfort, but what were once 
 considered the inexpensive colleges are steadily growdng few^er. Middlebury is 
 richer in scholarships than in means of maintaining an adequate teaching force. 
 As President Thomas expressed it, “ we are doing our educational work at a cost 
 to the college of less than $150 a year for each student. I dare to boast that 
 there is not a college in New England where funds count for more, dollar for 
 dollar, in educational results.” 
 
 He is evidently a friend of the humanities in their more spiritual sense. “ The 
 study of classics in college is not to make classical scholars chiefly. The real object 
 is the mastery of the qualities of mind and spirit embodied in classical literature.” 
 All studies, he holds, whether of science or letters, should not be pursued for 
 purely utilitarian ends, but “with a view to the larger development of manhood.” 
 
 Boston Transcript , June 27, 1908. 
 

 
THE INAUGURATION 
 
 OF 
 
 John Martin Thomas 
 
 President of Middlebury College 
 
 WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 1908 
 
 MIDDLEBURY, VERMONT 
 JULY, 1908 
 
ORDER OF EXERCISES 
 
 The Hon. JOHN WOLCOTT STEWART, LL. D„ presiding 
 
 INVOCATION by the Rev. Henry Woodward Hulbert, D. D., of the Class 
 of 1879 
 
 HYMN “ O God, our Help in Ages Past ” 
 
 ADDRESS AND DELIVERY OF THE CHARTER AND KEYS by President 
 Ezra Brainerd, D. D., LL. D. 
 
 ADDRESS on behalf of the Alumni by the Rev. Junius Edson Mead, D. D., of 
 the Class of 1890 
 
 ADDRESS on behalf of the Faculty by Professor Walter Eugene Howard, LL. D., 
 of the Class of 1871 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS by the President, John Martin Thomas, D. D. 
 
 HYMN “ Lord of all Being, Throned Afar ” 
 
 CONFERRING OF HONORARY DEGREES* by the retiring President, Ezra 
 Brainerd, D. D., LL. D. 
 
 DOXOLOGY 
 
 BENEDICTION by the Rev. William S. Smart, D. D. 
 
ADDRESS AND DELIVERY OF CHARTER AND KEYS 
 
 BY PRESIDENT EZRA BRAINERD, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 Honored Sir: It is with great pleas- 
 ure that, on retiring from the Presi- 
 dency of Middlebury College, I am 
 permitted to greet you as my suc- 
 cessor, and to transfer to you the in- 
 signia of office. We are glad to call 
 to mind that you are an Alumnus 
 of the College, as was your esteemed 
 father before you ; to know that you 
 were born and bred in the worthy 
 traditions, and in the Christian ideals, 
 of the venerable institution over which 
 you are to preside ; that you are 
 familiar with the good work that 
 she has done in the past, and 
 with the special opportunities as well 
 as the special difficulties of the 
 present ; that you enter the service 
 of your Alma Mater with the loyal 
 devotion of a son. It is a further 
 privilege for me to think of you also 
 as a former pupil, who was foremost 
 in scholarship, who even in under- 
 graduate days disclosed the traits of 
 character that have been so widely 
 recognized and appreciated in recent 
 years. With sentiments of personal 
 esteem end affection I welcome you 
 to the responsible office to which the 
 Trustees have unanimously elected 
 you ; and I pledge for them their loyal 
 support and hearty cooperation in the 
 good work that you may undertake 
 for the advancement of Middlebury 
 College. 
 
 I would first of all place in your 
 
 hands this ancient parchment, the 
 charter of the College, granted by the 
 State of Vermont nearly one hundred 
 and eight years ago. Its provisions 
 are so wise and so broad, that in all 
 these years it has admirably served the 
 growing needs of the College ; and 
 this, notwithstanding the great changes 
 that have meanwhile taken place in 
 social and religious life, the country’s 
 vast increase in material prosperity, 
 the marvelous growth of science, and 
 the world’s new ideals of education. 
 Let me call your especial attention 
 to its broad catholicity towards the 
 creeds of theology. Though the found- 
 ers of the College were men of earnest 
 religious character, who held to the 
 teachings of the old New England 
 divines, they deemed it quite unnec- 
 essary to prescribe any special religious 
 service or any tests of creed upon 
 those who after them should be 
 called to serve the College as trustees 
 or as teachers. They had such con- 
 fidence in the power of truth to main- 
 tain itself in the generations to 
 follow, that they disdained all arti- 
 ficial attempts to bolster up their 
 beliefs, such as were sometimes made 
 use of by other institutions. They had 
 read the noble plea of Milton in 
 defence of liberty of thought and 
 discussion, and held with him that, 
 “ though all the winds of doctrine 
 were let loose to play upon the earth, 
 
4 
 
 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT THOMAS. 
 
 so Truth be in the field, we do injuri- 
 ously to misjudge her strength. Let 
 her and Falsehood grapple ! Who 
 ever knew truth put to the worse in a 
 free and open encounter?” We point 
 with pride to the fact that the history 
 of the College has justified this faith, 
 and that the freedom of thought and 
 action which it dictated has not been 
 misused. Free to adjust its teachings 
 and methods to the new light of 
 science and philosophy, and to profit 
 by the lessons of experience, the Col- 
 lege has nevertheless been ever faithful 
 to the high ideals of Christian charac- 
 ter that inspired the founders. 
 
 It is for you, Sir, to uphold this 
 liberal charter in its integrity. As it 
 has not been amended in the century 
 that has passed, so I believe it will 
 need no amendment in the century 
 that is to come. Maintain the con- 
 tinuity of the faith, not by dogmatic 
 assertions, or artificial restrictions, but 
 by cultivating in instructors and pupils 
 supreme devotion to the truth through 
 whatever channels it may be reached. 
 Keep up the true apostolic succession, 
 not by arbitrary rules regarding the 
 election of new members to the Board 
 or to the Faculty, but by calling into 
 the service of the College from any 
 source men of sterling character and 
 of clear intellectual insight. 
 
 I transfer to you also this key to the 
 President’s Office in the old College 
 Chapel. In this room has centered 
 for over seventy years the administra- 
 tive work of the College. To this 
 spot all the graduates of the College, 
 now living, have repaired from time 
 to time, when students, for advice or 
 admonition. Here the Faculties of 
 various periods have held long and 
 learned conferences over varied prob- 
 
 lems of college policy, or under- 
 graduate discipline. Here at rarer 
 intervals the honorable Board of Trus- 
 tees have assembled to devise meas- 
 ures for the maintenance and growth 
 of the Institution. 
 
 I need hardly remind you that 
 there is no official position in America, 
 whose duties are more varied and 
 more exacting than those of a College 
 President. He needs to be, at least 
 in a college like ours, a teacher, expert 
 not only in his own class room, but 
 competent to oversee the work in 
 other departments, and to coordinate 
 and organize the various courses of 
 instruction in the curriculum. To 
 him the Trustees must largely look 
 for the selection and maintenance of 
 an efficient Faculty. The College 
 President needs to be a wise discip- 
 linarian, of exhaustless patience, of 
 kindly sympathy, of keen insight into 
 human nature, of unflinching courage 
 and inexorable decision. The College 
 President needs in these days to be a 
 man of business ability, an economist 
 in matters of expenditure, as well as 
 an inspirer of liberal benefactions. 
 The College President has responsible 
 duties to the general public : he is in 
 demand for all sorts of public address ; 
 his counsel is sought in all organized 
 efforts for social and religious better- 
 ment ; his opinions are solicited re- 
 garding most varied questions of public 
 policy. 
 
 These are the important duties to 
 which your Alma Mater has called 
 you ; she has faith in your ability to 
 perform them. I congratulate you 
 that you enter upon your responsible 
 work under such favorable auspices. 
 You will have the best of material to 
 work upon in the earnest, ambitious 
 
GREETINGS FROM THE ALUMNI. 
 
 5 
 
 youth that gather here from the quiet 
 hills of New England. You will have 
 the loyal support of a Faculty whose 
 ability and fidelity have been tried 
 and not found wanting. You will 
 have for your counselors and patrons 
 an experienced Board of Trustees, 
 men eminent in various fields of pro- 
 
 fessional life, who will not be disposed 
 to “ tangle you up with instructions,” 
 but will simply insist on this, — that 
 your work prove a success. That it 
 may be eminently such, is the sincere 
 prayer of him who now most cordially 
 salutes you as the President of Middle- 
 bury College. 
 
 GREETINGS FROM THE ALUMNI. 
 
 BY THE REV. JUNIUS E. 
 
 Dr. Thomas : On behalf of the 
 Alumni of this College I extend to 
 you a most hearty greeting. When the 
 Trustees made this wise selection, we 
 were delighted that you accepted the 
 office, although we knew that other 
 and inviting fields were open to you. 
 You have had a wide outlook on life, 
 but the office you this day enter will 
 require all your experience and all 
 your talents. Eighteen years ago, 
 when we sat in yonder class-room, 
 Professor Eaton spoke his farewell 
 words to us. Pie said something like 
 this : “ Young gentlemen, you may 
 
 not see the reason for all you have 
 learned in this College, but some day 
 in the years to come there will be a 
 critical hour, the crisis of your life, 
 when you will need all you have 
 learned, if you are then to be master.” 
 My dear friend, I believe that hour 
 has come in your life, and that all you 
 have gathered of knowledge or expe- 
 rience will be here needed. 
 
 You have been elected to this posi- 
 tion because of your broad culture, 
 your keen executive ability, and your 
 strong Christian manhood. But while 
 you have come to the place on the 
 basis of merit, the element of friend- 
 
 MEAD, D.D., CLASS OF 1890. 
 
 ship is not wanting. Robert Louis 
 Stevenson once wrote : 
 
 “ It’s an overcome sooth fo’ age an’ youth, 
 
 And it brooks wi’ nae denial, 
 
 That the dearest friends are the auldest 
 friends, 
 
 And the youth are just on trial.” 
 
 You are an old friend, a brother 
 beloved, and your period of probation 
 is long past. Your friendship and 
 worth have been tested by the great 
 body of the Alumni. If a stranger 
 had come to take up this work, he 
 must needs have waited to become 
 acquainted. You can begin your work 
 tomorrow. You have begun it already. 
 You understand us and we understand 
 you. 
 
 The Alumni rejoice that you have 
 not come to the College in a timfe of 
 decadence. It was otherwise when 
 the honored man who steps down 
 from the President’s chair to-day took 
 his place. Then the college lacked 
 students, lacked buildings, and, worst 
 of all, lacked courage. The past ten 
 years especially have been marked by 
 great advancement. He has left a 
 monument behind him. You have 
 come to Middlebury College in a 
 time of opportunity. And great as has 
 
6 
 
 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT THOMAS. 
 
 been the achievment of the past, that 
 of the future must be greater. We 
 believe in the kind of evolution that 
 has visible movement in it, that makes 
 each to-morrow better than to-day. 
 College halls are no longer dreary 
 cloisters, but are pulsing with a new, 
 practical life. The next ten years 
 should mean very much to the College, 
 while she keeps in the front ranks of 
 progress. 
 
 We profoundly believe in the crea- 
 tion of a strong College spirit. Better 
 one man who goes out proud of his 
 Alma Mater than a thousand who are 
 ashamed of her. It is not always 
 largeness that counts. We do not 
 expect Middlebury to be among the 
 greatest of Colleges numerically, but we 
 expect her to be among the best, and we 
 want every man and woman who goes 
 from this platform to know that as a 
 fact, and to be filled with the thrill of 
 it. It is said that the gallant Sheridan 
 was once so borne away by the enthu- 
 siasm of a charge that he got ahead of 
 his troops, and leaped his horse over 
 the breastworks among the Confed- 
 erate gunners. One of the enemy 
 was so taken by surprise that he forgot 
 to fire his gun, but looked admiringly 
 at Sheridan, and said, “ How many 
 more of them are there like you?” 
 As they go out from this College in 
 the years to come, rank by rank, may 
 they catch from you a spirit of loyalty 
 and enthusiasm for their Alma Mater. 
 
 You will not find this altogether a 
 rainbow path. The great men who 
 have occupied this chair for more 
 than a hundred years have had their 
 problems, and you will have yours. 
 However, I will not magnify or dwell 
 upon the difficulties of your position, 
 for these are the things that help 
 to make us men. 
 
 “ For life is not as idle ore, 
 
 But iron dug from central gloom, 
 
 And heated hot with burning fears, 
 And dipped in baths of hissing tears, 
 And battered with the shocks of doom 
 To shape and use.” 
 
 We of the Alumni want you to feel 
 that we are with you. You are bone 
 of our bone and flesh of our flesh. 
 We believe in your strong, virile man- 
 hood. We believe in your courage 
 and in your plans for a larger and 
 better College. We pledge you our 
 fidelity and assistance to the measure 
 of our ability. If, like Sheridan, you 
 ride on well in advance, we want you 
 to feel that in devotion to this College 
 there are many more like you who are 
 close behind. Some one has said, “ I 
 should have been proud to have held 
 the spy-glass for Columbus, to have 
 picked up a fallen brush for Michael 
 Angelo, or to have carried Milton’s 
 bag.” If we can give you a little 
 assistance wdth spy-glass, brush, or 
 bag, we shall be proud to render the 
 service. 
 
GREETING FROM THE FACULTY. 
 
 7 
 
 GREETING FROM THE FACULTY. 
 
 BY PROFESSOR WALTER EUGENE HOWARD, LL. D. 
 
 President Thomas: As President 
 Brainerd has been my teacher and I 
 have been yours, I have become by the 
 mere lapse of time a kind of “tertium 
 quid” to span the chasm of the years; 
 and so, because I am an older soldier, 
 not a better, the agreeable duty has 
 been assigned to me of speaking for 
 my colleagues this day and extending 
 to you the welcome of the Faculty to 
 the Presidency of this College. To-day 
 President Brainerd comes to the end 
 of his long and honorable service. 
 Tenderly we unbuckle his armor and 
 bid him rest awhile after his long 
 campaigns. To-day you put your 
 armor on. Surely, as one who puts 
 his armor off, he has richly earned the 
 right to say, “ I have fought a good 
 fight, I have kept the faith.” And 
 you, — young, ambitious, full of hope 
 and zeal and courage, — surely you 
 without boasting may face the future 
 with a steadfast heart. We thought it 
 a happy circumstance, Sir, that the 
 Trustees of this College could find 
 within our own family circle one whom 
 talent, scholarship, and achievement 
 so well fitted for the honorable and 
 responsible office of President of this 
 venerable Institution. You, Sir, are 
 to the manner born. You are a son 
 of the College, as was your honored 
 father; and by all the ties that men 
 hold dearest you are bound in love 
 
 and loyalty to our Alma Mater. You 
 are familiar with her traditions, proud 
 of her history, jealous of her fame. 
 In your strong hands, with the bless- 
 ing of God which I believe still rests 
 upon us, her future is secure. For 
 more than a hundred years Middle- 
 bury College has stood for scholarship 
 and for virtue. You, Sir, who have 
 the scholar’s mind will not be faithless 
 to the scholar’s hope ; you, who have 
 yourself heard the apostle’s call, will 
 not be forgetful of the Christian’s 
 faith. To this exalted service then, 
 to its cares, its duties, its responsibili- 
 ties and its honors, to its opportuni- 
 ties and its rewards, the Faculty of 
 this College give you most earnest 
 welcome. And whatever wisdom, 
 whatever judgment, whatever experb 
 ence we may have withal, as they have 
 been at the service of President 
 Brainerd in the days that are past, so 
 shall they be at your service in the 
 days that are to come. As we have 
 been loyal to the College in his 
 administration, we will be loyal to the 
 College in yours. And I can wish 
 nothing better for the College, and I 
 can wish nothing better for yourself 
 than that you may cast as long a 
 shadow when the sun goes down. 
 
 President Thomas, the Faculty of 
 Middlebury College bids you Welcome 
 and Godspeed. 
 
8 
 
 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT THOMAS. 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 SALUTATORY. 
 
 Senator Stewart: Before under- 
 taking the more formal duty you have 
 just assigned me, I find it in my heart 
 to say a word or two in response to 
 these kindly greetings. And first, Sir, 
 to you. By whomever it may be ten- 
 dered, no dearer honor can come to any 
 College man than the Presidency of 
 his Alma Mater. I count myself most 
 happy that in receiving this high com- 
 mission I take it from the hands of 
 one who for fifty years has rendered 
 honorable service to the Corporation 
 of Middlebury College. 
 
 President Brainerd : I shall never 
 cease to be grateful for the kindly and 
 cordial manner in which you have 
 welcomed me. I am here because 
 you asked me to come, because you 
 summoned me to take up the burden 
 you have sustained so honorably and 
 so long. You were one of the first to 
 press this duty upon me, and I know 
 that in no manner can I show my 
 gratitude more acceptably to you than 
 by successful endeavor to promote the 
 interests of the College you have 
 served so well. 
 
 Doctor Mead : My honored class- 
 mate, 1 thank you for the pledge of 
 co-operation and good-will in behalf 
 of the Alumni of Middlebury. I shall 
 need their help, and I shall rely upon 
 it in fullest confidence. 
 
 Professor Howard : My teacher and 
 my friend, spokesman of a united and 
 harmonious Faculty, I thank you 
 
 from my heart for your assurance of 
 loyalty, which in the light of your 
 record I can not doubt. If any other 
 College stirs affection in deeper meas- 
 ure than our own Middlebury, I do 
 not know it. With the passion and 
 patience of that affection we shall 
 work together in the coming days, 
 shoulder to shoulder, and the joy and 
 reward of our life, and full compen- 
 sation for its burdens, we shall find in 
 the advancement of the work to which 
 we put our hands. 
 
 My friends : That I may tell you 
 the spirit in which I undertake my 
 task, I ask your attention to the topic 
 “ Religion and the Higher Education ” ; 
 later in the hour I shall present the 
 condition and needs of Middlebury 
 College, as I understand them. 
 
 RELIGION AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 
 
 Education is the outgrowth of the 
 religious spirit. With body frail and 
 subject to a thousand perils, with 
 knowledge and understanding suffi- 
 cient to but a trifling fraction of the 
 mysteries that beat in upon his life, 
 with the universe of the far stars and 
 the mighty sun crushing him with its 
 greatness, man would yet rise in 
 majestic self-assertion to the victory 
 of the spirit over all things and forces 
 in space and time. This heroic 
 endeavor after permanence and per- 
 sonal worth is Religion. 
 
 It is an essential and primary act 
 of man, the necessary expression of 
 the higher qualities that constitute his 
 manhood. A creature of dominion in 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 9 
 
 a baffling world, man must seek unto 
 powers above him. With a heart that 
 will have the victory beating in a 
 frame which returns to dust, he is 
 forced to faith for the maintenance of 
 his very being. He will not be the 
 victim and sport of things he seems to 
 be, and that will is the guaranty of 
 religion, which is therefore part of the 
 ambition of our manhood, as native as 
 hunger or love. 
 
 Religion is not disinterested. The 
 savage seeks unto his fetich that he 
 may attain power to conquer his 
 enemy, or otherwise advance his inter- 
 ests. The heathen in his blindness 
 bows down to wood and stone, because 
 to him the wood and stone are 
 symbols of the powers that control his 
 life. Even in its higher manifestations 
 and noblest form, Religion directs 
 itself unto the attainment of blessings. 
 Art must seek beauty for beauty’s 
 sake alone ; philosophy must love the 
 truth simply because it is the truth ; 
 morals at their highest declare com- 
 mandments without argument and 
 without promise of reward ; but relig- 
 ious feeling, in distinction from these, 
 beats unshamedly at the temples of the 
 gods in the greatness of its desire and 
 and in the bitterness of its need. By 
 his faith a man will before all things 
 be saved, and some form of individual 
 redemption is the goal of every variety 
 of piety. 
 
 Religion, therefore, as the search 
 for the means of greatest blessing, the 
 quest of the higher and the mightier, 
 has ever impelled men out into the 
 regions of wonder. Faith dwells con- 
 tinually on the borderland of knowl- 
 edge. She retreats from that which is 
 analyzed and described, and takes up 
 her home anew in that which is still 
 
 mysterious. No man prays at an 
 oracle whose utterances are reduced 
 to system, nor continues long his 
 habits of devotion when their effect is 
 fully explained by psychological laws. 
 In vain they bid us call an “act of 
 God ” that which is perfectly under- 
 stood. If God thunders by law, the 
 thunder is not his voice, as the old- 
 time children of the forest heard it. 
 The dryads no longer fill the recesses 
 of the wood ; we know the woods too 
 well. The nymphs departed from the 
 waterfalls when men grew bold to 
 explore them. The divine is ever in 
 the unknown and mysterious, upon 
 which the common hands of investiga- 
 tion have not yet been laid. Faith is 
 the pioneer that pushes out into the 
 regions of mystery, and brings back 
 vague and marvelous reports, which 
 challenge inquiry and form new sub- 
 jects for investigation. 
 
 Men at one time worshiped fire. 
 How marvelous the flame, flashing 
 from the sky, at places belching from 
 the earth, tearing up great trees, con- 
 suming the grass of the far-stretching 
 plains ! With awe and wonder the 
 early peoples sought to receive good at 
 the hand of fire, and to save them- 
 selves from harm at its hands : they 
 designated men to care for it, to pre- 
 pare their offerings to it, and to pro- 
 pitiate it. Thus they learned to con- 
 trol the fire and use it, and when the 
 fire became their servant, they sought 
 another god Worship led to knowl- 
 edge : religion advanced civilization. 
 
 In the great plain of Babylonia, 
 where the circle of the earth is so vast 
 and the inhabitants but as grasshoppers, 
 men worshiped the stars, believing 
 that the heavenly bodies controlled 
 the destinies of individuals and nations. 
 
IO 
 
 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT THOMAS. 
 
 They studied the movements of sun 
 and moon, and the laws of planetary 
 motion, in religious longing to attain 
 good and assert the rule of the spirit, 
 and from that study, with its religious 
 motive, the sciences of mathematics 
 and astronomy came into being. 
 
 In primitive times, wnen tribes of 
 hunters or herdsmen roamed the 
 forests and plains, they thought of their 
 clan as the descendants of a particular 
 deity, who would avenge upon the 
 tribe a wrong committed by any mem- 
 ber of it. Thus arose the very idea 
 of public right. In its earliest stages 
 law is all intermingled with religious 
 concepts and usages. Faith laid 
 the foundation of the temple of 
 justice. 
 
 Through long centuries the priests 
 were the only physicians. The super- 
 ficial observer points to the horrors of 
 priestly magic in the attempted cure 
 of disease, and the superstitions that 
 plague us still because of the confusion 
 of physical healing with religious faith. 
 More carefully studied and more justly 
 observed, the science of medicine had 
 its beginning in the crude attempts of 
 religious men to deliver humanity from 
 its enemies. The impulse was reli- 
 gious ; in religion medicine had its 
 birth. 
 
 Chemistry betrays its religious origin 
 in the superstitions of alchemy. 
 Sculpture was at one time piety, music 
 was worship, all art was devotion to 
 the gods. Religion has been the 
 mother of beauty and the resourceful 
 pioneer of progress. In his heroic en- 
 deavor to conquer the world, in his 
 resolution to attain good despite all 
 powers of evil, man has reduced to 
 law one after another the provinces of 
 information to which his attention has 
 
 been attracted, pressed ever farther 
 back the borders of the unknown, 
 made himself continuously master of 
 new arts, a victor in new fields. 
 
 They are vigorous and independent 
 children whom religion rears, and they 
 refuse to abide under the surveillance 
 and authority of the mother who 
 brought them into being. Astronomy 
 set out on her own way at length, and 
 in the prison of Galileo wrote her de- 
 claration of independence. Art, the 
 awkward infant that drew in every 
 particle of her early nourishment from 
 religion, long since grew strong in her 
 own right, and beauty, which once had 
 no life apart from the gods, has won 
 such place in human affection that her 
 lovers give her form for her own fair 
 sake alone. The law is independent, 
 and medicine also, although it proves 
 to be most difficult for religious people 
 to keep their fingers off the humane 
 endeavors of the healing art. Since 
 Immanuel Kant it has been recognized 
 that even the moral law must learn to 
 do without religious sanction, that no 
 man is thoroughly good until the right 
 commands his will by its own inherent 
 majesty. 
 
 It might seem that the religious 
 spirit has served its purpose in educa- 
 tion, and is no longer needed to furnish 
 objects of inquiry or to stimulate 
 achievement. The children of faith 
 appear to have reached manhood, and 
 to be entirely competent to go 
 their own way. Law is established, 
 and men can go on perfecting govern- 
 ment and social usages by the princi- 
 ples of justice already established. 
 The love of beauty will continue to 
 lead into ever fairer artistic expression. 
 Limitless fields appear on the horizon 
 in every physical science, boundless 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 1 1 
 
 opportunity for investigation and dis- 
 covery, and the heart of man can be 
 trusted not to flag in the pursuit of all 
 that is worthy and good. 
 
 Unless all signs of the times deceive, 
 religious organizations are destined to 
 have less and less to do with educa- 
 tional effort. Sectarianism in educa- 
 tion has met its certain doom. The 
 broadest fact in educational history in 
 recent years is its increasing seculari- 
 zation, using that word in no deroga- 
 tory sense. In the Middle Ages the 
 Church did all the educating, and the 
 monks were the only school-masters. 
 The first universities were as much 
 religious institutions as the cathedrals 
 which grew at their side. All our 
 early American colleges, in their in- 
 ception, were religious enterprises. 
 When the clergymen of the New Haven 
 colony gave their books for the found- 
 ing of a college, they but created a 
 symbol of the religious spirit with 
 which from the first American educa- 
 tion has been permeated. But very 
 gradually and very steadily the Church 
 has gone out of the educating business. 
 The clergyman has retreated into the 
 background in educational endeavor. 
 The older colleges, built by godly min- 
 isters, which have met with largest 
 favor, have lost most of their religious 
 manner. The institutions lately 
 founded through religious enterprise 
 are often small and feeble, struggling 
 in competition in narrow territories, 
 while by their side Universities of large 
 equipment, with which the cleric has 
 had little to do, are steadily over- 
 topping them. On the surface at 
 least it looks as if our colleges had 
 forsaken the mother which bore them, 
 and, while recognizing religion as an 
 innocent enloyment for those who are 
 
 inclined thereto, depend no longer 
 upon the religious motive. 
 
 But, in the meantime, the facts of 
 our human nature have not changed. 
 We are still creatures of desire, per- 
 meated with the ineradicable convic- 
 tion that happiness and blessing are 
 our right, and pressing on therefore, 
 despite the tragic experiences of all 
 our fathers from the beginning of time, 
 to some far haven of peace and quiet- 
 ness, where the weary are at rest. 
 We are still held irresistibly to upward 
 striving; to stop it were to leave off 
 the very quality of manhood. We 
 may never desist our struggle for 
 assurance of permanence and personal 
 worth in this world of tempests and 
 earthquakes, before which our powers 
 are as the flutter of an insect’s wing 
 in the roaring of the storm. These 
 facts and forces are to be counted on, 
 as blunt, unescapable realities, impel- 
 ling us to deeds. 
 
 Now, in the region of personal values, 
 the industries and arts in which our 
 expanding science has busied us are of 
 small avail. The knowledge of things 
 can not assure the triumph of the 
 spirit. It is the veriest truism to 
 declare that man’s appetite for bless- 
 ings can not be satisfied with material 
 goods. Though I speak through the 
 sound waves of the upper aether, 
 though I even journey through its 
 spaces and bind its every mysterious 
 current and force to work my will, if 
 my inner manhood has not learned its 
 worth, it profiteth me nothing. A man 
 is no more than his soul, and all the 
 inventions we call so great do not 
 leave our real manhood one whit 
 better advantaged than was theirs who 
 hung on the lips of Socrates. Man is 
 still the measure of all things. 
 
12 
 
 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT THOMAS. 
 
 Moreover, the worlds science has 
 to conquer are limited, and there is 
 tragic sighing of spirit at their end. 
 There is no ultimate for the human 
 soul in the conquest of knowledge. 
 There is ever yet more to learn, and 
 in that sense no end to science ; but 
 the process itself cloys after a little, 
 and testifies that it can by no means 
 lead to a satisfactory end. A man 
 may ever learn and never come to 
 a knowledge of the truth. The reason 
 is that he is not pursuing truth, but 
 acquiring facts, classifying and labeling 
 items of knowledge, which is not the 
 acquirement of truth, but the stuffing 
 of a museum. Truth is vital and per- 
 sonal ; it is fact which finds its way to 
 the soul of a man and nourishes his 
 spirit. There is no assurance of per- 
 sonal worth in the mastery of any 
 quantity of physical fact. There is no 
 real victory of the spirit in science, 
 however perfected. 
 
 If life is worth the fight, if there is 
 any hope for us beyond these few 
 years of struggle, it is not through the 
 telescope and the discovery of new 
 stars, nor yet through increased domin- 
 ion over the matter and forces of the 
 earth, but rather through communion 
 with human spirits of such grandeur 
 and worth that life as they reveal it to 
 us is inherently majestic and grand, 
 and perchance also immortal. If, in 
 the face of discouragement and the 
 thousand difficulties of life, the heart 
 of us is still to rule in courage, if 
 manhood is not to perish but to 
 increase in honor and heroic hold on 
 right, the hope once more is in knowl- 
 edge of human life, the good and the 
 great who have lived our life nobly 
 and conquered all baseness. 
 
 The religious spirit, therefore, which 
 
 impels man to seek his highest per 
 sonal good, is a present and permanent 
 force in education. It serves to hold 
 us fast to those earnest studies of the 
 human spirit, in its noblest manifesta- 
 tions in all forms and in all ages, 
 which develop personal power and 
 teach the old-time triumphs of men 
 who knew their worth. My funda- 
 mental need as a man is not to know^ 
 how things are made and put together, 
 nor how they act and react on one 
 another, but rather how I, physically 
 the veriest atom of the universe, may 
 rise superior to the entire sum of the 
 mass of matter, and be myself, despite 
 the boundless universe of form and 
 stuff. Therefore I must study chiefly 
 the victors who have gone before me : 
 I must study history, because it is the 
 story of victors in the realm of action ; 
 I must master the literature of great 
 peoples, that from them I may draw 
 in the courage by which they over- 
 came ; I must study religion also, 
 because it is the work of heroes of 
 belief, and faith, in this world of diffi- 
 culty, has helped men most to 
 overcome. 
 
 We learned long since that we can 
 put nature under our feet, and we 
 have consumed no little useless energy 
 of late in glorying in that triumph. 
 For how vain is the victory while the 
 contest is still so terrible within our 
 own soul, while millions of our broth- 
 ers go down under the onslaught of the 
 same old passions that have cast down 
 many mighty since the days of Samson 
 and David. Humanity’s contest is 
 within, and the weapons that tell are not 
 carnal, not physical : they are the truth 
 the prophets have forged out of life ; 
 the songs the poets have opened their 
 hearts to hear; the visions the martyrs 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 i3 
 
 have caught from God ; the words of 
 spirit and life which men of thought 
 and insight of all creeds and times have 
 written for the learning of those who 
 would hold their human heritage. We 
 will not let go our grip on that which 
 is high, and our upward striving 
 manhood chains us to the humanities, 
 in whose pursuit alone we can keep 
 to our human estate. 
 
 These same religious forces, the im- 
 pulse to permanence, worth, and the 
 attainment of blessings, which, as I 
 have shown, are realities which will 
 always exert their power, indicate the 
 spirit in which all studies should be 
 pursued and the object and purpose 
 which must be sought in them. All 
 branches of knowledge should be fol- 
 lowed in a college in a humane spirit 
 and unto a human end. The study 
 of the classics in college is not to 
 make classical scholars chiefly. It is 
 not to be counted a failure if twenty 
 years after one can not read Homer 
 or Horace. The real object of classic- 
 al study is the mastery of the qualities 
 of mind and spirit embodied in the 
 classical literatures. It is the soul of 
 Homer we are after, not the language 
 of Homer. The boy for whom the 
 words of his Latin text are so many 
 awkward ways of spelling English 
 ideas wastes his time over Vergil. 
 Plain English is far more useful than 
 English served up in the form of a 
 Greek or Latin puzzle. But if, by a 
 little use of will and application, which 
 has its own intrinsic benefits, a young 
 man works his way through vocabulary 
 and syntax, so that he comes to feel 
 at last the untranslatable beauty and 
 force of the ancient masters, who creat- 
 ed the very idea of literature, there 
 will be no question of its benefit to 
 
 him. That is what I mean by the 
 study of the classics in a humane spirit 
 and unto a human end. 
 
 Geology is a pure science. It has 
 to do with the facts concerning the 
 earth on which we live, the history and 
 manner of its construction, the forms 
 of life it has contained in the vast suc- 
 cessive ages. It can be made a mere 
 catalogue of facts, a dry chronicle of 
 happenings that have been a very long 
 time dead. It can also be made a 
 marvelous story of the childhood of 
 the world, days of tremendous physical 
 catastrophes and changes, through 
 the long ages beside which our little 
 human history is the tiniest moment 
 of a child’s afternoon. How then the 
 mind is enlarged, and the vision of the 
 eye is lengthened ! A man then 
 acquires a sense of proportion, a reali- 
 zation of his size, and takes to him- 
 self becoming reverence and humility, 
 as a creature of but a moment of the 
 great eternities. So taught, geology 
 becomes a humanity. 
 
 The question for present education 
 is not whether science or letters should 
 be chiefly pursued, but whether science, 
 and letters also, shall be followed in a 
 utilitarian and materialistic spirit, or 
 with a view to the larger development 
 of manhood. One may study me- 
 chanics and physics and become 
 merely a machine ditch-digger, of 
 ditch-digging manhood, superior only 
 in the quantity of dirt that is handled 
 at a scoop. If a man is concerned only 
 with the transportation of things, it 
 matters little whether he build a cart 
 to be hitched to a donkey, or an elec- 
 tric system of a thousand cars at sixty 
 miles an hour. Things are things, and 
 their size is of little moment. But it 
 is possible to study physics and learn 
 
14 
 
 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT THOMAS. 
 
 something more than the material 
 properties of objects, and the mighty 
 forces and currents which may be set in 
 motion in physical bodies. Descartes 
 observed that “scientific truths are 
 battles won”. There is a personal side 
 to every physical law and discovery. 
 Somebody found it out ; somebody 
 gave patience and love to its discovery, 
 sought for it, not for lucre’s sake, but 
 for fair truth’s beauty. The bio- 
 graphical side of every science is of 
 exceeding importance. Many a stu- 
 dent who is dull and dead to mathe- 
 matical formulae and principles could 
 be made to thrill with interest if the 
 history of the science could be brought 
 to his notice. No department of 
 study has a larger and nobler story of 
 devotion and severe labor; none has 
 done more to expand the mind of the 
 race : none is more richly dowered 
 with tales of romance, of heroism, 
 even of martyrdom, than this pro- 
 verbially dry and difficult science. 
 Only a small number of students will 
 ever become mathematicians, and few 
 will employ its principles in their after 
 life. The notion that its problems 
 furnish the principles of reasoning in 
 life’s practical problems is a baseles 
 superstition. The man who tries to 
 work out problems of life by algebraic 
 formulae is not right in his mind. 
 Two and two do not make four when 
 you have to do with persons. But 
 taught and studied as one of the 
 sciences that have nobly occupied and 
 uplifted the men of our race, through 
 whose mastery the student is preparing 
 to hold himself to anv question, until 
 he sees it as it is, discerning the 
 essential and neglecting the negligible, 
 and until further he arrives at a result 
 that is not approximate, not guess- 
 
 work, but correct, and capable of 
 explanation and of successful defense, 
 — so studied mathematics take on a 
 living interest and are entitled to their 
 honor also as a humane branch of 
 learning. 
 
 If these things are true, the religious 
 spirit has still much to contribute to 
 American education. By its insistence 
 on personal values it sends us to the 
 humanities, those studies in which 
 alone we discover and maintain our 
 worth. By the fires it kindles for the 
 victory of the spirit over all things 
 and forces it sanctifies our industry 
 and research in every department of 
 the physical realm. In the face of 
 our marvelous triumphs over material 
 forces, it warns us of the undubitable 
 fact that man can not live by bread 
 alone, no matter how large and rich 
 the supply. It lifts the most prosaic, 
 earthy science into the higher realm 
 of the spirit. It bids us educate men 
 as men, and not as clever brutes. 
 
 The religious spirit is something 
 very deep and subtle. It escapes the 
 confines men build for it, and in 
 places where it is unauthorized, 
 unrecognized, perhaps unbidden, finds 
 a more congenial home. Religion 
 has not lost its power in American 
 education. The sincere love of truth, 
 whatever the truth may be, is more 
 religious than the resolution to pro- 
 pogate a fixed and determined system 
 of truth. The free service of all the 
 people, without sectarian interest, is 
 more godly than partisan servk e of 
 a portion of the people. The lifting 
 of the life of a commonwealth is 
 assuredly not less pious than endeavor 
 to provide officers for a particular 
 organization in that commonwealth. 
 We are delivered in these times from 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 i5 
 
 the narrow, ecclesiastical zeal of the 
 founders of American education, but 
 the deeper, broader religious feeling, 
 which accompanied that zeal and sanc- 
 tified it, and which has its life and 
 its assurance of permanence in our 
 very nature as men, still commands 
 and dictates an education broad in 
 scope, large in spirit, and directed to 
 the cultivation of the spirit that is in 
 man and the life which he shares with 
 God. 
 
 THE CONDITION AND NEED OF MIDDLE- 
 BURY COLLEGE. 
 
 Middlebury College, one of the old 
 New England institutions of Puritan 
 heritage, the twenty-sixth American 
 college in point of establishment, was 
 founded in the fear of God. While 
 neither religion nor Church are men- 
 tioned in our charter, the religious 
 spirit of the founders can not be 
 questioned. John Harvard’s gift of 
 half his estate and his entire library, 
 the founding of Yale by the clergymen 
 of the New Haven colony, were not 
 more distinctly acts of religious devo- 
 tion than the planting of our own 
 Middlebury by the pioneers of this 
 village. They boast at Princeton of 
 their origin in the “ Log College of 
 Neshaminy”, which Gilbert Tennent 
 built with his own hands, a hut twenty 
 feet square, where for twenty years he 
 instructed boys in the principles of 
 divinity and in classical learning. We 
 have yet greater cause for glory in the 
 old Addison County Grammar School, 
 where our college began its life, a 
 frame building of fair proportions, 
 built by men who themselves still lived 
 in log houses. American education has 
 no more heroic story than the record 
 of the consecration of Painter, and 
 
 Chipman, and Storrs, to the work of 
 establishing a home for learning in 
 this frontier wilderness. 
 
 The charter constituting this col- 
 lege creates it a public institution of 
 the State of Vermont. Under their 
 present charters the higher educa- 
 tional institutions of Vermont are 
 sisters on absolute equality. This 
 commonwealth does not possess a 
 State University, in the sense in which 
 the Universities of Michigan, Minne- 
 sota, and others of the West, belong 
 to their respective States. Our col- 
 legiate work is no less the work of 
 Vermont in higher education than 
 similar work performed in the sister 
 institutions of our commonwealth. 
 The State brought us into being, and 
 therefore has a right to expect of us 
 useful service for the welfare of the 
 people. 
 
 That service it is our bounden duty 
 to render. We have not on our hands 
 here a private experiment. We were 
 constituted for the benefit of the Com- 
 monwealth of Vermont, to take under 
 our intelligent supervision the problem 
 and duty of rendering to those who 
 might resort to us such intellectual, 
 moral, and spiritual training, as our 
 judgment, ever alert for the discovery 
 of new methods and new ideals, finds 
 to be best calculated to make useful 
 citizens and worthy men. The State 
 of Vermont set us to be an American 
 College, and if w r e can thank her thus 
 far for but small equipment, we may 
 at least be grateful to her for a large 
 and inspiring work. 
 
 Perhaps, however, Vermont has done 
 for us more than we realize. I have 
 seen lists of benefactors of this College 
 which no man with any heart in him 
 could read without deep feeling. 
 
i6 
 
 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT THOMAS. 
 
 Humble farmers, in hard and trying 
 times, their every shilling gained by 
 severest labor, while little children 
 crowded their hearth-stones, some of 
 whom have since become the pillars 
 of this nation, subscribed $100, $300, 
 $500, and sometimes more, that this 
 College, the pride of their fathers, the 
 hope of their growing boys, might 
 continue its beneficent life. Any man 
 who says that no work has ever been 
 done for Middlebury simply does not 
 know. By the bare face of the records 
 President Labaree must have traveled 
 literally thousands of miles, by car- 
 riage, up and down this State, that the 
 boys of its farms might have a chance. 
 He used to like to tell how the farmers 
 of this county would speak of “ our 
 college ”. 
 
 The obligation imposed by that 
 heroism is not to be cheaply dis- 
 charged. We can pay the debt only 
 when we put our utmost strength to 
 keep our work to the highest standards 
 of American education. Our one tra- 
 dition must be service. If any cus- 
 tom of the fathers prevents the best 
 work of to-day for the men of to-day, 
 it must follow the path our fathers 
 chose for their outgrown encum- 
 brances. We must know no prejudice 
 but the prejudice of hard w T ork to 
 meet the problems and difficulties that 
 confront us, according to the best 
 light which any one any where has 
 gained. 
 
 Our situation geographically has 
 changed. Modern transportation has 
 made us entirely accessible to the 
 great centers of population in the 
 eastern part of our country, and we 
 share the common responsibility and 
 common field of the sisterhood of 
 eastern Colleges. I do not take up 
 
 this work with the idea that the field 
 of Middlebury College is Addison 
 County, or Western Vermont, or even 
 the Champlain Valley. The field of 
 Middlebury is wherever there is a 
 young man or young woman who 
 needs her work. I belong in any city 
 or hamlet, west or east, where the 
 representative of any College belongs, 
 for the towns are without number, 
 large and small, far as well as near, 
 where there are boys and girls who 
 need the Middlebury encouragement 
 to go to College, and whom Middle- 
 bury can serve with higher education 
 more economically, more efficiently 
 for them, and therefore with more 
 help and less handicap for their after- 
 life, than any other institution they 
 would be likely to find. 
 
 The limitation of our work to a 
 narrow field would be criminal. Our 
 location in a frugal agricultural region 
 favors economy. The standards of 
 living in our beautiful village are quiet 
 and plain. The climate is one of the 
 most healthful and vigorous in the 
 world. The advantage of four years 
 in the country is itself worth more to 
 many a city youth than the cost of an 
 education here. It is the body behind 
 the blow that tells. The limit of our 
 growth need never be the numbers 
 whom we ought to reach ; it need only 
 be our ability wisely to care for them. 
 If some one this day could stir ambi- 
 tion in a thousand boys in the stifling 
 cities to prepare for our Vermont 
 College, he could not serve them 
 better. 
 
 We men of Middlebury need to lift 
 up our hearts, that we may see. Our 
 College is too great for any restricted 
 sphere of influence. If we extend our 
 service, boys by the hundred will 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 i7 
 
 thank God that we enabled them to 
 enlarge their lives by contact with the 
 world’s masters of truth ; if we fail of 
 breadth of outlook, we shall deny the 
 privileges of the higher life to thou- 
 sands whom we ought to help. 
 
 I assume that we shall continue to 
 have in our hearts the dominant 
 desire in the hearts of our fathers, 
 to have here a College where the 
 youth of humblest homes are on an 
 absolute equality with those whom 
 fortune has more highly favored. 
 When Middlebury forgets the boy who 
 has a hard time to get a start, she will 
 have forgotten her glory. I would 
 not call her the “poor man’s College” 
 for there are many sensible folk — 
 thank God — who still desire to fortify 
 their children by simple living in their 
 early days. Plain standards of life, 
 with strict democracy, will not keep 
 from our halls the scions of the most 
 privileged American homes, at least 
 those of them that are worth edu- 
 cating. Simple ways and democratic 
 principles, coupled with high scholar- 
 ship, thorough training, and nobility 
 of ideal, will rather attract them. No 
 American College should set itself to 
 serve any particular social class, either 
 poor or rich. But may God forbid 
 that we should ever cease to search for 
 the hesitant, backward boy, of the 
 home that knows severest hardship, 
 that we may establish him an equal in 
 the company of those who seek for 
 truth and self-mastery under the 
 guidance of the world’s greatest spirits. 
 I invoke the independent spirit of 
 Vermont to keep us from silly aping of 
 the worser features of collegiate life 
 elsewhere, and to hold us true to our 
 Puritan democracy, remembering our 
 own timid, clumsy knock at Alma 
 
 Mater’s gate, and the sweetness of 
 hope when it dawned on our own 
 early life. 
 
 The need of work like this is im- 
 measurably great. The truly critical 
 period of American history has not 
 yet come. We have been exploiting 
 a continent, the broadest and richest 
 ever allotted to any people. A horde of 
 plunderers, we have swept down upon 
 its treasures, consuming ruthlessly its 
 forests, impoverishing its soil, strewing 
 its meadows to the seas, and burning 
 its treasured mountains as our bar- 
 barian forefathers burned the hills of 
 Rome. As robbers we have succeeded 
 tremendously. That has been hitherto 
 our success. We have had but one 
 Emerson. The great Americans have 
 been Edison, Morse, Fulton, and their 
 like, together with the masters of 
 business who have heaped up the 
 largest fortunes the world has known. 
 Were all America to be blotted out, 
 past and present, the loss to the world 
 of culture, thought, and beauty, would 
 not equal the loss of one small year of 
 Athens, or of one man of a dozen that 
 might be named who lived their 
 life with God in the hills of little 
 Judaea. 
 
 The time is surely coming when we 
 can live no more by plunder, but must 
 set ourselves to build and to plant, and 
 to renew our life from within. That 
 time came long since to some of the 
 lands beyond the sea. When the Em- 
 pire of Prussia was all battered down 
 by the onslaughts of Napoleon, when 
 12,000 Germans lay dead on the battle- 
 field of Jena and 15,000 were taken 
 prisoners, in the midst of deepest 
 humiliation the Prussians founded the 
 University of Berlin, convinced that 
 the secret of national renewal lay in 
 
i8 
 
 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT THOMAS. 
 
 superior intelligence supported by 
 education, that if the fatherland were 
 to rise from her degradation it must 
 be by the force of men who know and 
 men who think. 
 
 The day of our reckoning will also 
 surely come. We can not much longer 
 grow rich by devastation, nor even 
 live by it. America’s wealth must 
 come from her men, and in the 
 making of men you must begin at the 
 top and work down. It is the leader 
 who is all important, and with one 
 leader a whole countryside blooms 
 fresh in vigorous life. 
 
 In the making ‘of leaders the small 
 community is of highest importance. 
 There are strange, personal currents 
 where masses throng together, draw- 
 ing individuals irresistibly into the 
 same course of life and thought. 
 Ideas flow from mind to mind ; 
 beliefs from soul to soul ; feelings 
 from heart to heart. The vast city 
 concourse, plebeian or proletariat, is 
 monotonous, stupidly similar, and 
 tame. In small communities you find 
 individuality and independence. The 
 mountains, where men live in hamlets, 
 have ever been lovers of freedom. 
 Great men have not risen from the 
 hordes of Persia, Babylonia, or the 
 valley of the Nile, where mathemati- 
 cally the chances were so great, but 
 from little Greece, tiny Palestine, and 
 sequestered England, lands all sepa- 
 rated into isolated communities by 
 mountain ranges or indenting seas. 
 The greater the aggregate, the less the 
 power and intensity in the individual 
 man. If you would make a master, 
 remove him from the confusing, stifling 
 crush of the masses who are too busy 
 to think. The city University has its 
 justification, but the making of men 
 
 of might will remain the honor of the 
 country College. 
 
 For the fulfilment of this high call- 
 ing our resources must be largely 
 increased. Our productive endow- 
 ment is but $420,000, and our 
 entire income but little more than 
 $28,000 a year. We have less than 
 a third the endowment of Williams, 
 less than a fourth that of Amherst, less 
 than a fifth that of Dartmouth. Col- 
 leges with five times our income are 
 caring for scarcely more than twice 
 our number of students. We are doing 
 our educational work at a cost to the 
 college of less than $150 a year for 
 each student. I dare to boast that 
 there is not a College in New England 
 where funds count for more, dollar for 
 dollar, in educational result. 
 
 In scholarships we are comfortably 
 well-to-do, but in Prof essorships we are 
 distressingly poor. Only one chair is 
 fully endowed. We have but $76,000 
 specifically for Professorships, a sum 
 barely sufficient to sustain two men. 
 Our first and most immediate need is 
 added endowment for increase of the 
 teaching force. We should have at 
 once $100,000 for this purpose. We 
 could then do two things. First, 
 we could increase the efficiency of our 
 Professors by narrowing their field. 
 It is not extravagant to call that con- 
 secration heroic in which men of high 
 scholarship and personal worth have 
 continued year after year doing the 
 work of our College, striving to main- 
 tain their scholarly position in their 
 chosen field, while enforced to cover 
 too many subjects. I am not moved 
 so much by multiplied hours of service ; 
 a maker of men ought to work hard ; 
 bnt he ought to be allowed to work in 
 his own calling, and to keep himself 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 l 9 
 
 at his best in that field to which he 
 has given his life. Men have given 
 their lives for Middlebury. William 
 Wells Eaton gave his life for her. 
 Men who are now here, and others 
 who will come after them, will not 
 refuse the same sacrifice, but we 
 should at least allow them the joy of 
 their own branch of learning, and what- 
 ever compensations they may derive 
 from practice in its higher reaches. 
 
 Secondly, with more men we could 
 broaden our course, and meet the 
 unquestioned demand of the times 
 for a Scientific Course, without re- 
 quired Latin. We are to-day the most 
 strictly classical College in New Eng- 
 land. We are the only one in which 
 Latin is required for more than one year, 
 and one of four which it is impossible 
 to enter, in any course, without Latin. 
 We should not turn this College into a 
 technical school; we need not try to 
 make ourselves a University ; but we 
 should have a College that makes men 
 by whatever studies the men that are 
 needed in these times can best be 
 made. The boy is not made for the 
 College, but the College should be 
 made for the boy. It is no shame 
 to ask the student what he wants ; but 
 it is a shame, within reasonable limits, 
 not to give it to him. Unquestion- 
 ably the scholar, the man of highest 
 culture, the student skilled in philoso- 
 phy, literature, or historical research, 
 must have Greek as well as Latin. 
 Of the two the Greek is the more 
 valuable, for it enshrines a nobler 
 literature and the soul of a nobler 
 people. A small College, training 
 every student in Greek as well as 
 Latin, specializing in literature, his- 
 tory, and philosophy, would have 
 indeed a high calling. But it should 
 
 first be secure of a large endowment, 
 since the support of the classics can 
 not to-day be made a popular appeal ; 
 and should also resign itself to the 
 care of a very small number of stu- 
 dents, deliberately sending elsewhere 
 those whom God never made for 
 linguistic skill. We have not the 
 endowment, and with good conscience 
 we have not the privilege of serving 
 only a certain type of mind. Students 
 do not seek a College because they 
 feel that they are peculiarly gifted for 
 its particular work, but because of per- 
 sonal influence, and, in our own case, 
 often for reasons of location and 
 economy. Therefore we must not 
 rest content until there is work here 
 that will interest and enthuse students 
 of varied types of mind, not merely 
 the classical and the literary, but also 
 the practical and the scientific. We 
 must not ease our conscience until 
 every boy who has pursued in good 
 faith and industry four years of study 
 in a good secondary school is entitled 
 to continue his work with us, on the 
 same terms on which he might enter 
 other colleges of equal rank. A 
 preparation that is good enough for 
 the first Universities of America ought 
 to be good enough for us. 
 
 We can not make this advance with- 
 out large increase of endowment. We 
 need move Professors in Modern Lan- 
 guages, in History and Political Sci- 
 ence, and in the Natural and Physical 
 Sciences. With $100,000 more we 
 could double our efficiency, increasing 
 both the number of students, particu- 
 larly of men, and the income from 
 tuition. I am convinced that this is 
 the first need of our College to-day. 
 
 Owing to the generosity of Mr. Ezra 
 J. Warner, we have laboratories in the 
 
20 
 
 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT THOMAS . 
 
 natural sciences scarcely surpassed by 
 those of any American small College. 
 But no science remains stationary ; 
 continual additions of apparatus are 
 needed for the best results. We must 
 not send students out familiar only 
 with the methods of past decades, and 
 in the natural sciences it costs to 
 keep up-to-date. We should have 
 special endowment for the perpetual 
 care of our scientific laboratories. 
 
 Our beautiful Library, bearing a 
 name no Middlebury man can too 
 greatly honor, is inadequately sus- 
 tained out of the general funds of the 
 College. The care of books, and the 
 guidance of students in the use of 
 books, is in our time becoming a pro- 
 fession. A collection of books is not 
 a library in the modern sense ; it does 
 not become a library until it is scien- 
 tifically arranged, classified, and cata- 
 logued, and there is constantly at the 
 service of the reader expert counsel 
 and direction in any branch of investi- 
 gation. The student should be able 
 to put his hands promptly upon every 
 item in every book on the shelves that 
 bears in any way upon the topic he is 
 studying. He should be encouraged 
 to compare authority with authority, 
 taught how to run down errors to their 
 source, delivered from the superstition 
 that all is gospel that appears in print, 
 trained in methods of investigation 
 that will stand him in good stead in 
 any branch of future study, and im- 
 pressed with that first requisite of an 
 educated man, — appreciation of the 
 proper connotation of the words, I 
 know. We should have not less than 
 $3,000 a year for library purposes, and 
 until endowment for that purpose is 
 had, the most essential part of our 
 equipment will rest insecure. 
 
 This Commencement is the twenty- 
 fifth anniversary of the opening of 
 Middlebury College to women. When 
 in 1883 the Corporation voted that 
 the privileges of the College should 
 be open to women on the same terms 
 as to men, there was doubtless con- 
 templated only the sharing of class- 
 room privileges by a few women from 
 the vicinity, whose presence would 
 not complicate college problems, nor 
 increase appreciably the labors of 
 instruction. We are now ten years 
 beyond that situation. While there 
 are to-day a third more men than 
 women, there are also twice as many 
 women alone as there were men in 
 College when women were admitted. 
 We have a Women’s College larger 
 than the entire Middlebury when the 
 first woman came. Women are here 
 in force sufficient to make separate 
 classes necessary in the non-elective 
 courses. In some departments an 
 entire duplication of work is a neces- 
 sity. With inadequate endowment for 
 a College for men, we are to-day 
 sustaining a College for women also. 
 
 During these twenty-five years we 
 have received but $2,000 specifically 
 for the education of girls. No monies 
 have been received for the general work 
 of the College because of the presence 
 of women as students. The position 
 might therefore be taken that since 
 the needs of the men over-tax our 
 resources, the action of 1883 should be 
 retracted and the doors closed to 
 women. I have looked longingly and 
 affectionately at every argument tend- 
 ing in that direction. No man of 
 common-sense could do other than 
 hesitate to undertake the administra- 
 tion of two Colleges with half the 
 endowment of one. But consider the 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 situation. We are just at the begin- 
 ning of the movement for the higher 
 education of women. There will be 
 more women’s Colleges, larger and 
 better ones, more specifically adapted 
 to their work. In all northern New 
 England and New York there is no 
 College distinctly for women. The 
 excellent institutions for women to the 
 south are already insufficient for those 
 who seek them. Expenses there are 
 necessarily large. The daughters of 
 the frugal homes of New England can 
 no longer attend the institutions spe- 
 cifically founded for them. We can 
 not shut our doors in the face of such 
 need and opportunity. We have gone 
 too far to go back. We must go on to 
 build up a College for women, suitable 
 to the needs of women, with no fear 
 lest it become too prosperous, but at 
 the same time strengthening and 
 broadening our work for men, and 
 keeping our rank and station as a 
 College for men, not by keeping the 
 women down or out, but by bringing 
 the men’s work up. A good woman’s 
 College, under the liberal charter of 
 1902, will not injure us, nor detract 
 from our time-honored position ; a 
 poor one, treated with scant jus- 
 tice, will forbid us always that self- 
 respect with which alone we can con- 
 tinue our way to success. 
 
 The first step must be a building. 
 We would all like to see a beautiful 
 residence hall for women, near the 
 campus, not less attractive than other 
 recent buildings of the College, costing 
 perhaps $50,000, serving as a center 
 for the social life of all the girls of the 
 College. Such a building is to-day 
 within our grasp, and with it a consid- 
 erable increase of endowment. I hold 
 in my hand letters from one of the 
 
 2 r 
 
 most generous benefactors of Ameri- 
 can education, Dr. D. K. Pearsons of 
 Chicago. These letters are so charac- 
 teristic and of such unique interest 
 that I wish to read them just as they 
 came to me. In reply to my appeal 
 for $50,000 for a Woman’s Building, 
 Dr. Pearsons wrote on May 6 : 
 
 “ President Thomas : How much 
 endowment have you? How many 
 teachers? How much do you spend 
 yearly? How long have you had 
 co-education ? 
 
 Are you certain that the College is 
 needed ? Are you certain that it can 
 live? I have never heard much about 
 the College. What church controls 
 the College? 
 
 Truly, 
 
 D. K. Pearsons. 
 
 Fifty thousand dollars is not enough. 
 Can you raise $100,000 in Vermont 
 and other places? Are you a good 
 beggar? It takes a smart man to get 
 money. Vermont University is near 
 you. Take a good look all around 
 you. Use good judgment.” 
 
 I replied at once to Dr. Pearsons’ 
 inquiries, and in turn received the 
 following, under date of May 1 2 : 
 
 “Dr. Thomas : You need $100,000 
 to do the work right. I will give you 
 $25,000 when you raise $75,000. If 
 you can get along with less, I will give 
 you $1 for every $3 you raise. I have 
 only one style of doing business. 
 
 Truly, 
 
 D. K. Pearsons.” 
 
 This is certainly a noble and gener- 
 ous offer. You will note that it is not 
 hampered by restrictions. All above 
 the bare cost of the building will 
 strengthen the general work of the 
 
22 
 
 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT THOMAS. 
 
 College, for men as well as for women. 
 The next step ahead for Middlebury is 
 to meet Dr. Pearsons’ conditions, and 
 that promptly. 
 
 We do well to be proud of Dr. 
 Pearsons’ endorsement, and most 
 hopeful because of it also. He has 
 not a record of giving to dying causes. 
 He has received not a particle of 
 personal benefit from Middlebury, and 
 if he can be thus generous, certainly 
 we, who owe all that we have and are 
 to the start this College gave us, 
 should rise in enthusiastic self-sacrifice, 
 and send for his $25,000 so promptly 
 that he will ask how best he can give 
 us some more. 
 
 I am aware that I am taking up a 
 great work, of large and persistent 
 difficulty, weighted with consequences 
 utterly beyond the vision of the keen- 
 est. Mistakes are inevitable, and I 
 invoke your charity. I promise you 
 my best, and I ask you for whatever 
 help you think you ought to give me. 
 I am certain that Middlebury College 
 is needed, certain that she has a work, 
 distinctive and separate, that can not 
 be done as well by any other institu- 
 tion. We have an individuality of our 
 own, which we must preserve, but 
 must also strengthen. Our entire 
 endowment and our entire plant, taken 
 together and added to the resources 
 of any other College you might name, 
 would not begin to do the educational 
 work it is doing to-day right here. 
 Our College is as fixed in the green 
 hills as the archaean rock of Camel’s 
 Hump and Killington, being anchored 
 by a quarter of a million of stone 
 and marble buildings, and by the 
 enthusiastic love and loyalty of hun- 
 dreds of friends, mostly poor, but all 
 rich in courage. 
 
 The Alumni of Middlebury do well 
 to be grateful to her, for she has been 
 most generous with them. This village 
 and this country-side have reason to 
 be proud of their College. Because of 
 her, strong men from far and near 
 turn their hearts hitherward in grate- 
 ful interest. No business here con- 
 ducted is of such direct benefit to the 
 community, financially or otherwise. 
 I would that every humblest citizen of 
 this town might learn to speak with 
 pride of “our College”. We will 
 return ten times over all that we 
 receive from tax exemptions in this 
 village, and from benefices of the 
 State, that every last Vermonter, proud 
 of his mountain State, may remember 
 in his pride the little College that sets 
 herself to the making of manhood, 
 clean as Vermont’s marble, and strong 
 as her granite. The interests which 
 appeal to-day to men of affairs are 
 many and large. Philanthropies are 
 multiplied and the obligations of life 
 are increased on every side. The sick 
 and the poor, the blind and the lame, 
 move the dullest to pity. The interests 
 of religion, with continents open to the 
 gospel, with myriads strange to the 
 piety of our fathers pouring in upon 
 us, demand largest sacrifice. Never- 
 theless I venture to declare the rightful 
 claim of education upon the bounty of 
 those who have insight to see its worth. 
 Only the brute turns aside from the 
 helpless child, freezing in the cold. 
 The most thoughtless are moved by 
 the cripple’s pitiable plea. The pas- 
 sion of religious faith wakens millions 
 to her summons. But the boy of the 
 frugal home, who stirs at ambition’s 
 call, who feels within him impulse to 
 prepare for the world’s large service, 
 waits with his more pitiable need until 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 23 
 
 we who have known like stirring in 
 the days now far away, come close to 
 him to tell him that we understand. 
 You can feed the hungry with bread 
 at five cents a loaf. You can care for 
 orphans at a few pennies a day. But 
 the hunger of the mind, the deep 
 hunger of the soul that presses out into 
 the mysteries of life — that you can 
 feed only with libraries, and with 
 laboratories, and above all with men, 
 not cheap men either, masterly men 
 sufficient to the making of masters. 
 These things cost, but they are worth 
 all they cost. It is terrible to want 
 bread ; but it is more terrible to want 
 knowledge, to want opportunity, to 
 want a grip somewhere on the world’s 
 worthy work, and not to know just 
 how to get it. 
 
 The cripple on the street corner is a 
 pitiable sight, but give me the College 
 
 I want and I will find in the hills here 
 somewhere a man who will help a 
 hundred cripples. A city laid waste 
 by floods calls for deepest sympathy ; 
 but with facilities almost at our doors 
 we might train men who would plant 
 forests to stay a thousand floods. The 
 world’s one need is men, and the 
 world’s greatest need is men who can 
 lead ; I am sure that in our College 
 we can make them still. 
 
 I have before me the thrilling vision 
 of the men of this little College, united 
 in enthusiastic loyalty, enlisted as men 
 who serve their country and their God, 
 enlarging the work of our College 
 until in the homes of the humble near 
 and far the name of Middlebury shall 
 speak hope and outlook for those 
 who would prepare themselves largely 
 to live, and by large lives bless the 
 world. 
 
24 
 
 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT THOMAS . 
 
 THE REPRESENTATIVES OF OTHER COLLEGES AND EDUCATIONAL 
 
 INSTITUTIONS 
 
 IN ATTENDANCE UPON THE INAUGURATION. 
 
 Harvard University: John Eliot Wolff, Professor of Petrography and Mineralogy. 
 
 Yale University: George Henry Perkins, Class of 1867. Professor of Natural 
 History in the University of Vermont. 
 
 Columbia University: James Chidester Egbert, Professor of Latin. 
 
 Brown University: Albert Davis Mead, Professor of Comparative Anatomy. 
 Dartmouth College: William Thayer Smith, Dean of the Medical School. 
 Williams College: Asa Henry Morton, Professor of the Romance Languages. 
 
 The University of Vermont: Robert Roberts, Class of 1869. 
 
 Amherst College: John Franklin Genung, Professor of Rhetoric. 
 
 Haverford College: Don E. Barrett, Professor of Economics. 
 
 Oberlin College: William H. Spence, Class of 1899. 
 
 Hartford Theological Seminary: Lewis B. Paton, Professor of Old Testament 
 Literature. 
 
 Mount Holyoke College: Florence Purington, Dean. 
 
 Tufts College: Charles H. Darling, Class of 1884. 
 
 Vassar College: Annie C. Taylor, Class of 1896. 
 
 Bates College: Fritz Walter Baldwin, Trustee. 
 
 Cornell University: Ernest Albee, Professor of Philosophy. 
 
 Johns Hopkins University: Edward H. Griffin, Professor of the History of 
 Philosophy. 
 
GREETINGS FROM OTHER COLLEGES. 
 
 25 
 
 GREETINGS FROM OTHER COLLEGES. 
 
 At one o’clock the Corporation 
 Luncheon was served in the Town 
 Hall, more than two hundred and fifty 
 being seated at the tables. At its 
 close President Brainerd called the 
 assembly to order and gracefully trans- 
 ferred to President Thomas the duties 
 of toastmaster. The speakers of the 
 afternoon were Governor Proctor and 
 the representatives of the various in- 
 stitutions of learning that had partici- 
 pated in the inauguration exercises of 
 the morning. A brief summary of 
 the utterances is all that is here 
 presented. 
 
 GOVERNOR PROCTOR. 
 
 Governor Proctor dwelt on the 
 genuine good of recalling college days 
 — the days of true democracy, under 
 whose influence men gather and live 
 in harmony ; the days when freedom 
 is greatest and pleasure keenest, and 
 when a man stands for what he really 
 is. We, he said, who have come 
 under that influence have not finished 
 our course ; it is a continuous course 
 of never-ending partnership. Let us 
 acknowledge our debt of gratitude, 
 and to-day, as Middlebury is em- 
 barking under a new leadership, with 
 a future brighter than ever before, 
 let every Middlebury man live for a 
 better and fuller college service. 
 
 PROFESSOR EGBERT. 
 
 Professor Egbert, speaking first as a 
 friend of Dr. Thomas, bore witness to 
 his devoted scholarship, to his breadth 
 
 as a man, and above all to his interest 
 in humanity. I do not know, he said, 
 of a more ideal man for President of a 
 college ; and he quoted, as fulfilled in 
 the new incumbent, certain words of 
 Secretary Taft regarding the needed 
 qualifications for another Presidency. 
 As a representative of Columbia Uni- 
 versity, Professor Egbert discussed the 
 opportunities of an institution like 
 Middlebury. The country college, he 
 declared, conserves education in its 
 best sense ; to such colleges we look 
 for the preservation of education for 
 education’s sake. I congratulate you, 
 he said in closing, on your new 
 President, and I congratulate him, 
 because I deem it a great honor for a 
 man to be President of his Alma 
 Mater. 
 
 PROFESSOR WOLFF. 
 
 Professor Wolff brought the official 
 greetings of Harvard and a personal 
 greeting from President Eliot to Presi- 
 dent Brainerd and President Thomas. 
 A particular reason for affectionate 
 relations between Middlebury and 
 Harvard lay in the fact that Middle- 
 bury’s third President, Joshua Bates, 
 1818-1839, graduated from Harvard 
 in 1800, the year of Middlebury’s 
 founding. President Bates’s term of 
 office had been surpassed in length 
 only twice in the history of the 
 College, once by that of President 
 Brainerd, and the speaker wished for 
 President Thomas a service as long, 
 or longer, and as successful. 
 
26 
 
 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT THOMAS. 
 
 PROFESSOR PERKINS. 
 
 Professor Perkins spoke in a double 
 capacity, having brought to Middle- 
 bury maternal greetings from Yale 
 and the cordial good-wishes of his 
 colleagues in the Faculty of the 
 University of Vermont. He expressed 
 the wish that those colleagues might 
 have heard the forceful, practical 
 address of the morning, and the 
 wonder that a man of theological 
 training could know so much as to the 
 educational problems of the day. His 
 desire was that Middlebury and the 
 University might work together as 
 sister institutions for nobler manhood 
 and truer life in Vermont. 
 
 DEAN SMITH. 
 
 Doctor Smith, pursuing the genea- 
 logical suggestions of previous speakers, 
 found Dartmouth also a child of Yale 
 through Eleazar Wheelock, and Mid- 
 dlebury and Dartmouth in a true 
 sense sisters. Boston, he said, had 
 been characterized as not a city but a 
 state of mind ; if Middlebury is the 
 state of mind set forth in the address 
 of the morning, the College is ab- 
 solutely sure of success. 
 
 DEAN PURINGTON. 
 
 Dean Purington, bringing the greet- 
 ings of Mount Holyoke, expressed 
 her belief in the college that has for 
 its aim the giving of the best educa- 
 tion, intellectual, moral, spiritual, and 
 her confidence that the very best is in 
 store for Middlebury. 
 
 PROFESSOR GRIFFIN. 
 
 Dean Griffin spoke of the high 
 regard for Middlebury prevailing at 
 Johns Hopkins, because of the well- 
 trained students she has sent there 
 from time to time to engage in 
 
 graduate work. Believing fully in the 
 function of the small college, he 
 nevertheless regretted that various 
 influences are forcing a certain kind 
 of uniformity and expressed the hope 
 that Middlebury will cherish its in- 
 dividual features, to the end that our 
 colleges may not be made all alike. 
 
 PROFESSOR GENUNG. 
 
 Professor Genung congratulated 
 alumni and students on a leader with 
 such clear ideas as to the situation 
 and its duties. He enlarged on the 
 good, old-fashioned Scripture ex- 
 pression as to seeing eye to eye. hold- 
 ing it peculiarly true of an assembly 
 like the one before him, with its com- 
 mon' language, common memories, 
 and common aims. 
 
 PROFESSOR MORTON. 
 
 Professor Morton proved that Wil- 
 liams also is a child of Yale and that 
 Amherst is in consequence a grand- 
 daughter. Williams, Dartmouth, and 
 Middlebury, then, with their common 
 inclination to the classics, might well be 
 called the three graces. As a teacher 
 of romance, he was interested in what 
 had been said about the ladies — in- 
 terested, and somewhat alarmed. The 
 ladies will do away with us ; Goethe 
 has spoken of the eternal feminine, 
 but has not a word to say of the 
 eternal masculine. But the men of 
 Middlebury can hardly fail of success ; 
 they cannot fail so long as human 
 nature, American human nature, Chris- 
 tian American human nature remains 
 fundamentally what it is. 
 
 MRS TAYLOR. 
 
 Mrs. Taylor, introduced by Presi- 
 dent Thomas as one who might be 
 able to tell something about the ro- 
 
GREETINGS FROM OTHER COLLEGES . 
 
 mance referred to by Professor Morton, 
 brought the greetings of the President 
 and Faculty of Vassar. As to romance 
 she felt that others possibly knew as 
 much about it as she ; at any rate, she 
 was not going to tell what she knew. 
 
 PROFESSOR PATON. 
 
 Professor Paton, as a representa- 
 tive of Hartford Theological Seminary, 
 spoke of the relation of the seminaries 
 and the colleges, and the need of an 
 educated ministry. The smaller col- 
 leges are in closer touch with the sem- 
 inaries, perhaps because in them there 
 is more of the ideal life led. In 
 institutions, too, where the technical 
 has not crowded out the broad ideal 
 of culture, the seminaries get the best 
 men for the ministry ; and under the 
 ideals outlined by President Thomas 
 there should be an increasing stream 
 of Middlebury men going out from the 
 college to the seminary. 
 
 PROFESSOR ALBEE. 
 
 Professor Albee, of Cornell, after a 
 few words of personal reminiscence, 
 discussed certain relations of the college 
 and the university, declaring that the 
 old jealousy between them is a thing of 
 the past, and that the universities 
 have still a good deal to learn from 
 the colleges if they would retain a 
 consistent, harmonious, and effective 
 course of undergraduate work. 
 
 PROFESSOR BARRETT. 
 
 Professor Barrett expressed his 
 pleasure at being able to bring from 
 Haverford the greetings of President 
 Sharpless and to carry away from a 
 remarkable function the spirit breathed 
 in all the exercises of the day. 
 
 MR. ROBERTS. 
 
 Mr. Roberts, speaking for the Cor- 
 
 27 
 
 poration of the University of Vermont, 
 said that no educational institution in 
 Vermont can afford to go without 
 giving its good-will to every other 
 institution in the Commonwealth and 
 receiving its good-will in return. This 
 State, he said, is changing in its 
 character — the fact might as well be 
 recognized — but our educational in- 
 stitutions are not declining. They are 
 hard up, but they are not so miserably 
 hard up as the richer institutions. In 
 concluding, he spoke of the strong 
 types of men exemplified in the early 
 Middlebury graduates, notably in men 
 like his father, Daniel Roberts, and 
 Truman M. Post. 
 
 PROFESSOR MEAD. 
 
 Professor Mead, while bringing the 
 good-wishes of Brown University, 
 spoke chiefly and interestingly as a 
 Middlebury alumnus and classmate of 
 President Thomas. 
 
 DOCTOR BALDWIN. 
 
 Doctor Baldwin, representing Bates 
 College, said that he was present to 
 testify his love for the new President 
 and his great respect for the institu- 
 tion over which he is to preside, j 
 regret, said he, that Doctor Thomas 
 is no longer to be with us at East 
 Orange, but I rejoice that he has 
 been transferred to a larger ministry. 
 He is a man who knows when to 
 laugh ; he knews when not to be cross 
 and when not to be discouraged over 
 his work. He will help your young 
 men and women. I congratulate 
 Middlebury and I congratulate him ; 
 God bless both and all of you. 
 
 JUDGE DARLING. 
 
 I have long been interested, said 
 Judge Darling, speaking for Tufts, 
 
INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT THOMAS. 
 
 28 
 
 in Middlebury College. And when I 
 learned that there was to be a new 
 President, I trembled lest traditions 
 should be broken down and Middle- 
 bury should fall a victim to the 
 present-day educational trend. Your 
 words have relieved me, Mr. President, 
 and I wish to say to you that from 
 what I heard this morning, and from 
 
 what I have heard this afternoon 
 from the educational world, I believe 
 that there is a coming back to the 
 ideals of Middlebury College ; and that 
 the day will come when you will be 
 among the first, and strongest, in 
 upholding the traditions that have 
 been here so well established.