第127章 SOCIETIES AND PUBLIC BANQUETS(11)
Mr. Beaman was very indignant and with the continuing approval and applause of the venerable doctor made a furious attack upon me. His defense of the president was infinitely worse than my attack. He alleged that I had intimated that the doctor kept tab on sick alumni of wealth and their families, and at the critical moment there would be a sympathetic call from the doctor, and, while at the bedside he administered comfort and consolation, yet he made it plain to the patient that he could not hope for the opening of the pearly gates or the welcome of St. Peter unless Princeton was remembered. Then Beaman, in a fine burst of oratory, ascribed this wonderful prosperity not to any personaI effort or appeal, but because the sons of Princeton felt such reverence and gratitude for their president that they were only too glad of an opportunity to contribute to the welfare of the institution.
The moment Beaman sat down the doctor arose, and with great intensity expressed his thanks and gratitude to the eloquent president of the Harvard alumni, and then shouted: "I never, never, never solicited a gift for Princeton from a dying man.
I never, never, never sat by the bedside of a dying woman and held up the terrors of hell and the promises of heaven, according to the disposition she made of her estate. I never, never looked with unsympathetic and eager anticipation whenever any of our wealthy alumni appeared in ill health."The doctor, however, retaliated subsequently. He invited me to deliver a lecture before the college, and entertained me most delightfully at his house. It was a paid admission, and when I left in the morning he said: "I want to express to you on behalf of our college our thanks. We raised last evening through your lecture enough to fit our ball team for its coming contest with Yale." In that contest Princeton was triumphant.
The Yale Alumni Association subsequently evoluted into the Yale Club of New York, which has in every way been phenomenally prosperous.
It is a factor of national importance in supporting Yale and keeping alive everywhere appreciation and enthusiasm for and practice of Yale spirit.
My class of 1856 at Yale numbered ninety-seven on graduation.
Only six of us survive. In these pages I have had a continuous class meeting. Very few, if any, of my associates in the New York Legislature of 1862 and 1863 are alive, and none of the State officers who served with me in the succeeding years. There is no one left in the service who was there when I became connected with the New York Central Railroad, and no executive officer in any railroad in the United States who held that position when I was elected and is still active.
It is the habit of age to dwell on the degeneracy of the times and lament the good old days and their superiority, but Yale is infinitely greater and broader than when I graduated sixty-five years ago. The New York Legislature and State executives are governing an empire compared with the problems which we had to solve fifty-nine years ago.
I believe in the necessity of leadership, and while recognizing a higher general average in public life, regret that the world crisis through which we have passed and which is not yet completed, has produced no Washington, Lincoln, or Roosevelt. I rejoice that President Harding, under the pressure of his unequalled responsibilities, is developing the highest qualities of leadership. It is an exquisite delight to visualize each administration from 1856 and to have had considerable intimacy with the leaders in government and the moulders of public opinion during sixty-five unusually laborious years.
Many who have given their reminiscences have kept close continuing diaries. From these voluminous records they have selected according to their judgment. As I have before said, I have no data and must rely on my memory. This faculty is not logical, its operations are not by years or periods, but its films unroll as they are moved by association of ideas and events.
It has been a most pleasurable task to bring back into my life these worthies of the past and to live over again events of greater or lesser importance. Sometimes an anecdote illumines a character more than a biography, and a personal incident helps an understanding of a period more than its formal history.
Life has had for me immeasurable charms. I recognize at all times there has been granted to me the loving care and guidance of God.
My sorrows have been alleviated and lost their acuteness from a firm belief in closer reunion in eternity. My misfortunes, disappointments, and losses have been met and overcome by abundant proof of my mother's faith and teaching that they were the discipline of Providence for my own good, and if met in that spirit and with redoubled effort to redeem the apparent tragedy they would prove to be blessings. Such has been the case.
While new friends are not the same as old ones, yet I have found cheer and inspiration in the close communion with the young of succeeding generations. They have made and are making this a mighty good world for me.
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