I can say very little regarding the future. I wish that I were worthy of all that has been said. I am fairly overpowered. It takes considerable to surprise me, but I am downright surprised. I have letters on my desk to-day that seem to exceed any fiction ever written. It is very kind of the people to say all these things and I can only try to live it out. It was my friend Phillips Brooks who said, when, at a public meeting, such things were told of him, "It is very kind, but it is not true, you know." It goes very far towards making these things true that you believe them to be true. The longer I live the more I exalt friendship. Friendship is the best possession in the world. I feel very rich in friends who are about me on this anniversary day. I used yesterday three verbs in one sermon. I used them very deliberately. It seemed to me that they were true. I believe I spoke the truth when I said that through all the changes, through prosperity and adversity, we have proved one another, we have believed in one another, we have loved one another. We have helped one another in many ways. Your testimony makes me very content. I am grateful for all that has been said. I am glad you want the portrait and I hope that you will enjoy it. I am glad I have this book and what is in it. I am glad I have this envelope and what is in it, although I do not know what it contains. I can trust that it is good. I can only recall to mind a very happy remark of that very able man whom I have the honor to follow, Dr. Albro, who said, “I should be surprised if it were not that the kindness of my people in the past prevents my being surprised at any kindness in the present." I appreciate and thank you for it. We will try, if you will, to go on together changing my verbs into beautiful realities, believing in one another, and loving one another, and helping one another. PUBLIC MEETING. On the evening of the day of the anniversary, Thursday, January 24, 1907, at a quarter before eight o'clock, public exercises were held in the meetinghouse, corner of Garden and Mason streets, Cambridge. For this meeting nearly four hundred special invitations were issued to the various public, charitable, religious, and social organizations with which Dr. McKenzie had been associated as an officer or member during his career, and to men prominent in religious, charitable, social, and municipal life. The special engraved invitation read as follows: The First Church in Cambridge, Congregational, invite to the Public Exercises in Celebration of the of the Installation of the Rev. Alexander McKenzie, D.D. in the Meetinghouse, Garden Street, Cambridge Thursday evening, the twenty-fourth day of January nineteen hundred and seven at a quarter before eight o'clock Please reply before Jan. 17th to Frank Gaylord Cook, Cambridge Please present this card at the door before 7.35 o'clock Accompanying each engraved invitation was the following card for an informal reception at the close of the public exercises, namely: The Invited Guests are requested immediately at the close of the In addition to these special cards, informal invitations to attend the public exercises were read on the Sunday preceding from the pulpits of the churches in the neighborhood, namely, St. John's Church, Christ Church, the First Church, Unitarian, the Old Cambridge Baptist Church, the Epworth Methodist Church, and the North Avenue Congregational Church. In response to these invitations, although the weather was excessively cold, a large audience assembled, comfortably filling the meetinghouse. The first twenty tiers of pews were reserved for the guests specially invited as above stated. The printed program of the exercises was as follows: From The Union Conference of Congregational Churches ANNIVERSARY HYMN Rev. REUEN THOMAS, D.D. Tune: St. Ann's (No. 456) Written by Rev. Abiel Holmes and sung at installations of |