For the message of the Master
Down the centuries has rolled;
And the Pilgrims heard the burning word
Like Evangelists of old;

In the cabin of the Mayflower,

When the northwind swept the seas,

In tongues of flame the message came

To the women on their knees;

To the fathers of New England,

To the bold men of the Bay,

Who lodged in the lair of the wolf and the bear,

And the red man fierce as they;

And the grave young scholar hearkened

To the Master's high behest

As he watched the day fly far away

To the darkness of the west.

And westward still he watches,
The width of our wide land,
As he sits alone on a pillar of stone

With his Bible in his hand.

Be it mountain, lake, or prairie,

Be it city strong and fair,

Be it east or west that his eyes shall rest,
He sees New England there.

Be it east or west that his eyes shall rest,

New England stands the same;

For God and the right, at the front of the fight

Are the men that bear her name.

For the message of the Master

She has breathed with every breath;
And come what will, New England still
Shall be faithful unto death.

Harvard, all hail to the mother that reared thee,

Mother whose grace and whose glory thou art! Hail to New England, who loved thee and cheered thee, Nestling thee close to her heroine's heart!

Here in the wilderness bravely she bore thee, Guarded thee, guided thee, prayed for thee then : "God in the pillar of fire be before thee;

Child of New England, be mother of men.

"Men who shall live in the light of thy vision, Men who shall welcome at duty's command Riches or poverty, praise or derision

Men who shall work, with the head and the hand.

"Not the dull heart of the meaningless stoic;

Quick with the fires of unquenchable youth, Quivering yet calm, like the martyrs heroic, Living or dying, triumphant in truth."

From the North, from the South, from the East, from the West,

They come, to be born again;

To the North, to the South, to the East, to the West,

The truth that makes men free there came a seer
With radiant smile, whose eyes profound and keen
Burnt through the mist that shrouds the wildering scene,
Of love and life and death, and saw them clear

As noonday; who, serenely standing near

To the great heart of Nature, banished fear
From all that knew his presence. Where he trod
Is hallowed ground; for, lo, he walked with God..

The truth that makes men free-behold, there came

A prophet with the poet's noblest art,

In stature like a giant, and in heart
Wide as the world, with lips and soul aflame
Christ and His church forever to proclaim;
Impetuous, kingly, true, whose very name
Wrought righteousness, whose sweet and surging voice
Lifted the saddened soul to wonder and rejoice.

From the North, from the South, from the East, from the West,

They come, to be born again;

To the North, to the South, to the East, to the West,

They go, to prove them men.

In the field, at the desk, at the court, in the mart,

With the joy in their eyes and the fire in their heart,

To struggle, to strive, to obey, to command,

To work, and to leaven the land.

Again the song the fathers sang before us!

The cheer that rings through voice and heart again!
The multitudinous, triumphant chorus !
The mighty mother marshaling her men!

O mother whose benignant arms enfold us,
O heart of all New England, bravest, best,
Whose voice, forever strong and sweet, hath told us
That life is work and work alone is rest,

God be thy guide as onward still thou farest;

Still breathe upon thy sons the hero's breath;
And still, as high and higher yet thou darest,
Fear nothing; "be thou faithful unto death."

L. B. R. Briggs, '75.

THE TRUE HARVARD.1

WHEN a man gets a decoration from a foreign institution, he may take it as an honor. Coming as mine has come to-day, I prefer to take it for that far more valuable thing, a token of personal good will from friends. Recognizing the good will and the friendliness, I am going to respond to the chairman's call by speaking exactly as I feel.

I am not an alumnus of the College. I have not even a degree from the Scientific School, in which I did some study forty years ago. I have no right to vote for Overseers, and I have never felt until to-day as if I were a child of the house of Harvard in the fullest sense. Harvard is many things in one- a school, a forcing house for thought, and also a social club; and the club aspect is so strong, the family tie so close and subtle among our Bachelors of Arts that all of us here who are in my plight, no matter how long we may have lived here, always feel a little like outsiders on Commencement day. We have no class to walk with, and we often stay away from the procession. It may be foolish, but it is a fact. I don't believe that my dear friends Shaler, Hollis, Lanman, or Royce ever have felt quite as happy or as much at home as my friend Barrett Wendell feels upon a day like this.

I wish to use my present privilege to say a word for these outsiders with whom I belong. Many years ago there was one of

1 Speech at the Harvard Commencement Dinner, June 24, 1903.

them from Canada here- a man with a high-pitched voice, who could n't fully agree with all the points of my philosophy. At a lecture one day, when I was in the full flood of my eloquence, his voice rose above mine, exclaiming: "But, doctor, doctor! to be serious for a moment ", in so sincere a tone that the whole room burst out laughing. I want you now to be serious for a moment while I say my little say. We are glorifying ourselves to-day, and whenever the name of Harvard is emphatically uttered on such days, frantic cheers go up. There are days for affection, when pure sentiment and loyalty come rightly to the fore. But behind our mere animal feeling for old schoolmates and the Yard and the bell, and Memorial and the clubs and the river and the Soldier's Field, there must be something deeper and more rational. There ought at any rate to be some possible ground in reason for one's boiling over with joy that one is a son of Harvard, and was not, by some unspeakably horrible accident of birth, predestined to graduate at Yale or at Cornell.

Any college can foster club loyalty of that sort. The only rational ground for preeminent admiration of any single college would be its preeminent spiritual tone. But to be a college man in the mere clubhouse sense - I care not of what college — affords no guarantee of real superiority in spiritual tone.

The old notion that book learning can be a panacea for the vices of society lies pretty well shattered to-day. I say this in spite of certain utterances of the President of this University to the teachers last year. That sanguine-hearted man seemed then to think that if the schools would only do their duty better, social vice might cease. But vice will never cease. Every level of culture breeds its own peculiar brand of it as surely as one soil breeds sugar-cane, and another soil breeds cranberries. If we were asked that disagreeable question, "What are the bosom-vices of the level of culture which our land and day have reached?" we should be forced, I think, to give the still more disagreeable answer that they are swindling and adroitness, and the indulgence of swindling and adroitness, and cant, and sympathy with cant-natural fruits of that extraordinary idealization of "success" in the mere outward sense of "getting there," and getting there on as big a scale as we can, which characterizes our present generation. What was Reason given to man for, some satirist has said, except to enable him