5 
 
GIFT OF 
 

 THE CENTENARY 
 
 of 
 
 ALPHA OF NEW YORK 
 
 of 
 
 PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 Celebrated at Union College 
 June 11 and 12, 1917 
 
 The Gazette Press, Schenectady, N. Y. 
 november. 1917 
 
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 THE CENTENARY 
 
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 ALPHA OF NEW YORK 
 
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 PHI BETA KAPPA ^^^/ 
 
 Celebrated at Union College, June 11 and 12, 1917 
 
 Alpha of New York of Phi Beta Kappa commemorated 
 the one hundredth anniversary of the institution of the Alpha 
 during the past commencement of Union College. Public 
 exercises were held on Monday afternoon, June 11, at four 
 o'clock in the chapel of Union follege and members of the 
 Alpha, with their guests, dined at the Mohawk Club, Sche- 
 nectady, on Tuesday evening, June 12. Dr. Alexander 
 Duane, '78, president of Alpha of New York, presided a*t 
 both meetings. The following delegates represented some 
 of the chapters in the State of New York : Gordon R. Fonda, 
 Beta of New York at New York University; Charles Sears 
 Baldwin, Delta of New York at Columbia University ; F. L. 
 S. Shepardson, Eta of New York at Colgate University ; H. 
 C. Hasbrouck, Theta of New York at Cornell University; 
 John R. Slater, Iota of New York at Rochester University ; 
 Miss Ellen Van Slyke, Mu of New York at Vassar College. 
 Professor Edwin A. Grosvenor of Amherst College, president 
 of the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, was the guest 
 of honor. The Rev. Dr. Oscar M. Voorhees, secretary, 
 represented the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. The 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 eldest member of Alpha of New York present was the Rev. 
 Dr. Alfred P. Botsford of Woodbury, N. J., who was grad- 
 uated from Union College seventy years ago with the class 
 of 1847. By his courtliness and his geniality he contributed 
 much to the pleasure of the occasion. The members of the 
 committee on arrangements were John Ira Bennett, '90, 
 Professor Morton Collins Stewart and Professor Frank Cos 
 Barnes. They were greatly assisted by Dr. Alexander 
 Duane, president of Alpha of New York, and by Mr. Louis 
 Oppenheim, '75, who collected most of the fund sought to 
 defray expenses. Alpha is grateful to many members, who 
 contributed generously, and specially grateful to Mr. Court- 
 land V. Anable, '81, who was the principal contributor. 
 
 Following is a report of the 
 
 PUBLIC EXERCISES 
 
 Dr. Alexander Duane : Members of the Phi Beta Kappa, 
 ladies and gentlemen assembled: 
 
 I greet you all here at this centennial. It is a notable an- 
 niversary. We are met to celebrate the centennial of the 
 foundation of Phi Beta Kappa at Union College. We cele- 
 brate it amid the clash of arms, and when the energies and 
 the thoughts of all are directed in preparation for the great- 
 est struggle that this country has ever engaged in, a struggle 
 against foes without, and against traitors and misled fanat- 
 ics within. 
 
 It may seem strange that amid these compelling circum- 
 stances that engage our energies and our attention we should 
 turn aside to celebrate an occasion like this. But it is not 
 strange; there is no anomaly in it. Phi Beta Kappa itself 
 was born in the midst of war. It was born when the nation 
 was struggling for the very right to live. Its founders were 
 no cloistered students ; they were no mere dreamers, but 
 men of action. They were scholars to be sure. They were 
 selected for their intellect. But their scholarship and their 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 intellect were directed to the benefit of their country and 
 for the advancement of freedom. Then, as now, the spirit 
 of democracy was in the air, urging men all over the world 
 to combat the forces that sought to enslave the world. That 
 spirit pervaded the men that founded Phi Beta Kappa, and 
 it is evident from their utterances and from their actions 
 that that was the spirit which the society they founded was 
 designed to promulgate. 
 
 Witness the charter that was issued to Harvard two 
 years after the society was founded, which begins in this 
 wise: "Whereas, it is repugnant to the liberal principles 
 of societies that they be confined to any place, men, or de- 
 scription of men, and the same should be extended to the 
 wise and virtuous of every degree, and of every country." 
 Brave words those for a period like that in which caste and 
 prejudice reigned. 
 
 Nine men assembled to form at the College of William 
 and Mary December 5, 1776, the Societas Philosophica, indi- 
 cated by the letters Phi Beta Kappa^ corresponding to the 
 Greek ^^(piXoffocpia piov Hvpepvrfrriiy^^ which our distin- 
 guished president. Professor Grosvenor, has aptly inter- 
 preted "the love of wisdom is the guide of life." It is not, you 
 observe, the love of knowledge, nor the pursuit of it that is 
 the basic principle of this society. It is the love of wisdom, 
 of knowledge applied to right uses and to the service of man. 
 Surely a motto and a guide worthy of all admiration — a 
 motto as inspiring and a guide as sure to us in these grim 
 days as they were to those brave lads in the even darker 
 days of 1776. 
 
 It would be worth while, I think, to consider for a moment 
 the character of the men and the character of the society 
 that they established at William and Mary. The men 
 themselves were of the highest character, and of much more 
 than the usual ability. Of the fifty men that constituted the 
 society of William and Mary before its extinction in 1781 
 
 3 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 there were many that were( distinguished afterwards as 
 soldiers, jurists, statesmen, and in other capacities. It would 
 be hard to find in any similar group a collective record that 
 was more brilliant. 
 
 Again, the society that they founded was in all essential 
 respects the prototype of the Greek letter fraternity of to- 
 day. It was secret; it was profoundly secret. Moreover, 
 at William and Mary it was extended to all classes in that 
 college, and the members held frequent meetings during the 
 college year. Finally, they insisted not merely upon scholar- 
 ship, nor even character, but also on friendship as constitut- 
 ing the basic principles of the society. 
 
 In 1779 the Chapter determined to form subsidiary or- 
 ganizations, although their manner of forming them seems 
 peculiar. They did not at first undertake to form chapters, 
 or branches, as they called them, in other colleges, but in 
 other towns in Virginia, and designated these chapters as 
 Beta, Gamma, Delta, and so on. Whether this was actually 
 done or not does not appear, but it furnished a precedent 
 that was extremely important, inasmuch as it was the actual 
 salvation of the society. For at that time at William and 
 Mary there was a young man named Elisha Parmelee, who 
 had been at both Harvard and Yale, but who had come South 
 for his health and had taken up his studies at William and 
 Mary. Observing this move to form new chapters, he sug- 
 gested that branches be formed not simply in Virginia, but 
 also in the neighboring states. Acting on his suggestion the 
 society determined, and he was commissioned, to form chap- 
 ters at Yale and Harvard called respectively the Alpha of 
 Connecticut and the Alpha of Massachusetts Bay. These 
 were established respectively in 1780 and 1781. In all 
 essential regards they were like the parent chapter, except 
 that almost from the beginning the membership in them was 
 confined to the senior class, with a few from the junior class. 
 
 This step, namely, the establishment of these branches at 
 
 4 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 Harvard and Yale, was extremely fortunate because im- 
 mediately afterward the parent chapter at William and 
 Mary was extinguished b}^ Arnold's invasion of Virginia; 
 the College of William and Mary was burned down and the 
 chapter, perforce, closed. The few students who were left 
 in college confided their archives under seal to the college 
 authorities with the confident expectation that, as they said, 
 the chapter would "arise again to life everlasting and 
 glory immortal." And it is interesting to note that seventy 
 years later the chapter was re-established and re-established 
 by the sanction of one of the original members who was still 
 living. 
 
 A few years later a chapter was established at Dartmouth, 
 forming the Alpha of New Hampshire, and in 1817 the fifth 
 chapter in the order of establishment was formed at this 
 college. Of the course of this chapter I will not speak. Pro- 
 fessor Bennett will tell you something of that later. But it 
 may be said that there are some misconceptions regarding 
 the formation which have led to erroneous beliefs regarding 
 the policy pursued here. Because the charter was confided 
 in the beginning to graduates, not to undergraduates, and 
 because Union proceeded to take in a large number of 
 honorary members, it was supposed that Union was the 
 pioneer in the changes that were beginning to take place in 
 Phi Beta Kappa itself, a transformation, that is, from an 
 undergraduate secret society into a graduate, practically 
 non-secret fraternity. That view seems to be erroneous. At 
 Union, at all events, the proceedings were secret and re- 
 mained so almost up to the present time, and for many years 
 the chapter proceeded on the lines of an undergraduate or- 
 ganization, frequent meetings being held during the college 
 year. 
 
 There was one thing that the establishment of a chapter 
 at Union did do, a very important thing in American college 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 life. I think there is no question at all but that the establish- 
 ment of Phi Beta Kappa here in 1817 gave the impetus that 
 resulted in the formation in 1825 and 1827 of the triad of 
 Greek letter fraternities, Kappa Alpha, Sigma Phi and 
 Delta Phi at Union. 
 
 These fraternities were in some respects — in externals, at 
 all events — modeled after Phi Beta Kappa. But that they 
 did not regard Phi Beta Kappa as in any sense a rival was 
 shown by the fact that members of all of them became mem- 
 bers of Phi Beta Kappa, although the three societies them- 
 selves were at bitter odds. It does seem likely that the 
 reminiscences of the earlier days of Phi Beta Kappa, of the 
 society as it existed at William and Mary, an undergraduate 
 secret society that laid peculiar emphasis on friendship, 
 gave the impetus to the formation of these societies at Union, 
 similarly constituted. 
 
 Up to 1845 all the chapters so far constituted had been 
 Alphas ; that is, each had been the original and sole chapter 
 in that state in which it was formed. Thus the Alpha of 
 Rhode Island was formed at Brown, and the Alpha of 
 Maine at Bowdoin, and so forth. 
 
 In 1845 Yale exercised a privilege that William and Mary 
 exercised in the beginning, that of forming subordinate chap- 
 ters in the same state, establishing one at Trinity and 
 another at Wesleyan. This example was followed by other 
 Alphas, and Union, in particular, established in succession 
 chapters at New York University, the College of the City of 
 New York, Columbia, Hamilton, Hobart, Colgate and 
 Cornell. 
 
 In 1881 at the centennial of the formation of the Harvard 
 chapter Harvard invited the different chapters to meet in 
 convention, and at this convention a new policy was in- 
 augurated. Forthwith Phi Beta Kappa from a loose con- 
 federation of distinct groups of state societies, each group 
 under its state head or Alpha, became a national fraternity 
 
 6 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 under a national organization, governed as it is now by a 
 Council, a President and a Senate, the Council meeting 
 triennially and the President and the Senate acting ad 
 interim as a governing body. 
 
 The Council now has the sole power of granting charters, 
 and that privilege is exercised with very great care, so that 
 admission to Phi Beta Kappa is a considerable honor; I 
 mean the admission of any college to a charter of Phi Beta 
 Kappa is a considerable honor given rather grudgingly and 
 only after a period of considerable waiting. There are now 
 eighty-nine chapters, all in strong institutions and all under 
 this common head. 
 
 So we see in Phi Beta Kappa, as it stands to-day, a de- 
 velopment in four stages: First, the formation of a little 
 local undergraduate secret society at the College of William 
 and Mary, conforming in all regards to the college f raternitj' 
 of to-day; second, an extension to other colleges, this stage 
 differing from the first only in the fact that the membership 
 was now restricted to members of the senior class, or at 
 most to some members of the junior class; third, the state 
 in which more and more the fraternity assumed the character 
 of a graduate organization, and of an honor to be conferred 
 at or about commencement; and lastly, the development of 
 the society into a great national organization of chapters 
 working to a common purpose and acting under a single 
 head. 
 
 Phi Beta Kappa is thus now a great and powerful organi- 
 zation, comprising many chapters and many thousands of 
 members. Shall not this society, whose basic principle was 
 the spirit of democracy and the love of wisdom, a society 
 founded in the very midst of our Revolution and in the very 
 birth year of our Republic, a society that comprises the 
 best intellect of the best colleges in the land, shall not this 
 society, I say, do now its part in the struggle in which we 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 are engaged and act to its utmost in the cause of freedom, 
 which the United States has so bravely taken up? 
 (Applause.) 
 
 Dr. Alexander Duane^ I call on Professor John Ira 
 Bennett to give us a resume of the History of 
 THE ALPHA OF NEW YORK 
 
 Professor Bennett: The Alpha of New York of the 
 Phi Beta Kappa Society was instituted on the first day of 
 May, 1817, by the concurring resolutions of the Alphas of 
 Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. A charter, 
 signed and sealed by the president, the vice-president and 
 the corresponding secretary of the Alpha of Connecticut was 
 on that day transmitted, with a preamble and constitution, 
 to the Honorable Chancellor Kent of Albany, the Reverend 
 John Chester of Albany and the Reverend Andrew Yates 
 of Schenectady. The charter incorporated and established 
 the gentlemen designated, with such others as they might as- 
 sociate with themselves in conformity with the laws of the 
 Phi Beta Kappa, into a separate and distinct branch of the 
 society to be known and called by the name of "The Alpha 
 of New York"; and it granted them and their successors 
 all the powers and privileges and benefits thereunto apper- 
 taining in as full and ample a manner as the brethren of 
 Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire enjoyed 
 the same. 
 
 By virtue of the power vested in them the Honorable 
 James Kent, LL. D., Chancellor of the State of New York, 
 the Reverend Andrew Yates, S. T. D., a professor in Union 
 College, and the Reverend John Chester, A. M., minister of 
 the Presbyterian Church in Albany, met at the house of 
 Chancellor Kent in Albany in July, 1817, (the day not re- 
 corded) and proceeded to the business assigned to them by 
 the Alphas of Yale, Harvard and Dartmouth. At that 
 time they elected twelve gentlemen to share the initial mem- 
 
 8 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 bership with them, among them the Reverend Doctor 
 Eliphalet Nott, president of Union College, and Thomas C. 
 Brownell, A. M., then a professor in Union College, from 
 which he was graduated in 1804, and later president of 
 Washington (now Trinity) College and Bishop of Connecti- 
 cut. At an adjourned meeting, held in Schenectady on July 
 22, thirteen members were elected from the senior class of 
 Union College. On July 24 twelve members were elected 
 from the distinguished class of 1818, among them Sidney 
 Breese, George Washington Doane and Alonzo Potter. At 
 other meetings the organization of the Alpha was completed 
 by the initiation of members elect, the election of officers, the 
 adoption of by-laws, the election of honorary members and 
 the drafting of a form of initiation. 
 
 The form of initiation was adopted on August 9, 1817. 
 It contains a pledge of secrecy, prescribes as the purposes 
 of the society the encouraging of friendship, morality and 
 literature, and lays emphasis upon the fraternal relation be- 
 tween the members. The New York Alpha still uses this 
 form as an interesting reminder of the past. The classic 
 section, which makes solemnity difficult, is the final address 
 by the president, who says : "Gentlemen of the Society : You 
 participate with me the pleasure which I feel at this addition 
 to our family. I therefore present to you our new Brethren 
 for congratulation." But this, like other things quaint, 
 may be made charming by dignity. A scholiast, by the way, 
 unacquainted with a once common use of the verb "partici- 
 pate," has interpolated an "in" after "with me." 
 
 In the by-laws and proceedings were some enactments 
 concerning manners, customs and decorum. On August 17, 
 1817, for instance, a law was passed forbidding any member 
 to "use intemperate or abusive language in the meeting." 
 Intemperate and abusive language has since been infrequent 
 in the meeting, being reserved for great and passionate oc- 
 casions. On July 24, 1817, it was "Resolved, that it be a 
 
 9 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 standing order of this Society, that all persons who are 
 engaged in its public exhibitions, and the presiding officer, 
 shall always appear in a gown and with the badges of the 
 Society." On July 25, 1820, it was "resolved, that the 
 treasurer be authorized to procure a toga for the use of the 
 orator of the Society." 
 
 Under the constitution transmitted by the Alpha of 
 Connecticut and the by-laws subsequently adopted activity 
 was contemplated as a literary society holding monthly 
 meetings through the college year and an annual exhibition 
 on the afternoon preceding commencement to be addressed 
 by an invited orator. The Alpha of New York so began and 
 so continued for many years. The literary exercises pre- 
 scribed by the constitution were written debate, extemporane- 
 ous debate, and declamation. These were performed with 
 varying assiduity. The subjects discussed were in general 
 those of current interest — apolitical, moral, theological, 
 literary, educational and scientific — ^with a sprinkling of the 
 favorites of many generations of youth. It is interesting to 
 note that on March 18, 1820, William H. Seward, then a 
 senior in Union College, debated on the negative and losing 
 side of the question, "Ought the Territory of Missouri to be 
 admitted into the Union without the proposed restriction?" 
 The question, "Are caucus nominations by representatives 
 consistent with the liberties of a free people?" proposed at 
 the meeting of May 8, 1824, never arrived at discussion. 
 This question seems to be before the house at the present 
 moment of time. 
 
 It does not appear that the Alpha of New York as an 
 undergraduate literary society ever met with favor equal 
 to that accorded to the other more inclusive literary socie- 
 ties of Union College, one of which, the Philomathean So- 
 ciety, was, or rather is, older than the college itself. The 
 most active interest was the election of members, conducted, 
 seemingly, without much interference from faculty or other 
 
 10 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 graduate members; contention waxed warm at times and 
 meetings were adjourned "after repeated ballotings without 
 result." The election of members from the junior class in 
 July, 1838, was referred by resolution to the faculty. Sev- 
 eral fruitless attempts the following year to elect members 
 from the junior class were the last ones; and they appear 
 also to have been the end of the activity of the Alpha of 
 New York as an undergraduate society. Doubtless the rise 
 and rapid growth at Union College of secret fraternities, 
 which added congeniality to scholarship as prerequisite to 
 membership, contributed to this result. It is worth while to 
 note in passing that the original members of the three 
 venerable fraternities at Union College, from which all others 
 are more or less directly descended, in nearly ever instance 
 were or became members of the Phi Beta Kappa, and two 
 lionored societies of scholars at Union — one of them no 
 longer extant — borrowed suggestions for their symbols 
 obviously from the Phi Beta Kappa. 
 
 A noteworthy undertaking of the Alpha of New York was 
 an attempt made in 1833 to organize all the members of the 
 Alpha in three divisions, a physical or scientific class, a 
 literary class, and a civil class, for purposes of research and 
 scholarly achievement. This organization was effected and 
 led to good results for a time ; some excellent papers, chiefly 
 scientific, were contributed by members and published under 
 the auspices of the society. 
 
 With rare intermissions orators addressed the society at 
 the annual meeting appointed for the purpose from the be- 
 ginning until the Phi Beta Kappa oration was superseded 
 by the address of the honorary chancellor of Union Uni- 
 versity. Distinguished among the orators were DeWitt 
 Clinton (1823), Eliphalet Nott (1824), the Right Reverend 
 Alonzo Potter (1839 and 1847), William H. Seward (1843), 
 Charles Sumner (1848), Tayler Lewis (1849), and John T. 
 Hoffman (1875); the last but not the least of them was 
 
 11 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 the Reverend Doctor George Alexander, who spoke in 1882 
 in memory of Tayler Lewis. Poets proved to be a shy race ; 
 many were called but few chose to come, and none of great 
 eminence. 
 
 Union was among the first of American colleges — prob- 
 ably, in fact, the first — to relax the rigidity of the classical 
 course ; a more modern alternative to that course was offered 
 from the founding of the college in 1795, a scientific course 
 was established in 1828, and a course in engineering was 
 established in 1845. Prior to 1854 no express discrimination 
 lay against any course in determining eligibility to Phi Beta 
 Kappa, but in that year it was voted that election to the 
 society be restricted to those whom the faculty deemed en- 
 titled to Latin diplomas as classical students. Since then 
 the Alpha of New^ York has continued to be a classical so- 
 ciety. Recent proposals of a less restricted rule of eligibility 
 have not hitherto met with favor, the Sigma Xi scientific 
 society, much esteemed by those who are members of it, being 
 regarded as complementary to Phi Beta Kappa in the ade- 
 quate recognition of scholarly distinction. The two socie- 
 ties hold a joint annual meeting at which an address is made. 
 
 For many years prior to the organization of the Grand 
 Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa in 1883 Alphas were vested 
 with full powers to establish chapters within their respective 
 states. The Beta of New York at New York University 
 (1858), the Gamma of New York at the College of the City 
 of New York (1867), the Delta of New York at Columbia 
 University (1869), the Epsilon of New York at Hamilton 
 College (1870), the Zeta of New York at Hobart College 
 (1871), the Eta of New York at Madison (now Colgate) 
 University (1878), and the Theta of New York at Cornell 
 University (1882) all received their charters from the Alpha 
 of New York and by it were installed. The rights of Alphas 
 were not, however, undisputed and several minutes of the 
 Alpha of New York show how the desire for closer federation 
 
 12 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 grew up. Indeed the question of local privilege was raised 
 early in the history of Alpha of New York and recurred at 
 intervals until a federal union of the society was formed. At 
 the meeting held on July 23, 1828, the following resolutions 
 were adopted: "Whereas the Alpha of Massachusetts has 
 communicated to this Alpha a copy of a new code of laws 
 which they have adopted and which, in the opinion of this 
 Alpha, embraces some new principles, therefore resolved that 
 the corresponding secretary be directed to write to the 
 corresponding secretary of the Alpha of Massachusetts in- 
 quiring how far it is deemed by them competent for one 
 Alpha without the concurrence of the others to amend or 
 alter the constitution and laws of the Phi Beta Kappa So- 
 ciety. Also resolved that a committee be appointed to draft 
 and report a constitution which shall embrace only the 
 general principles of this association." At a meeting held 
 on July 23, 1839, a communication from the Alpha of New 
 Hampshire was read, and another from the Alpha of Rhode 
 Island, "enquiring whether it was the custom for one Alpha 
 to grant charters to new branches." At the meeting held 
 on July 22, 1846, it was resolved that a committee, to which 
 a revision of the by-laws and constitution had been referred, 
 have power to confer with the other Alphas in regard to a 
 convention for bringing about a uniformity in the constitu- 
 tions. At a meeting held on July 6, 1847, this preamble 
 and resolution was proposed: "Whereas a petition from 
 Amherst College, Massachusetts, has been presented to this 
 Alpha praying its assent to the establishment of a Beta in 
 that college, the high respectability of which would amply 
 justify this Alpha in granting their assent were it not for 
 the previous existence of an Alpha at Harvard University 
 in that state, and whereas it has been heretofore considered 
 inexpedient to establish two branches of the Phi Beta Kappa 
 in the same state, therefore be it resolved that if the Alpha 
 of Massachusetts, whose privileges are most immediately 
 
 13 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 concerned, shall approve of the establishment of a Beta at 
 Amherst, in that case, upon due notification, the Alpha of 
 New York will give their full and free consent to the estab- 
 lishment of said Beta at Amherst." This resolution was 
 adopted July 28, 1847. The chapter at Amherst was estab- 
 lished in 1853. At a meeting held on July 26, 1853, the 
 corresponding secretary reported that he had written to the 
 Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth "express- 
 ing it as the sense of this chapter that the practice of cer- 
 tain colleges in forming chapters of the Phi Beta Kappa 
 Society without first obtaining the consent of all the other 
 chapters is in violation of the constitution and cannot but 
 have an injurious effect upon the standing of the Phi Beta 
 Kappa Society." Two Alphas had recently been established 
 seemingly without general sanction. The Alpha of Connecti- 
 cut replied to the corresponding secretary concurring in the 
 view of the Alpha of New York. At a special meeting held 
 on April 3, 1858, the following resolution wa^ passed: 
 "Whereas the last annual meeting resolved that the request 
 of the New York University for the establishment of a Beta 
 in that institution be agreed to if the consent of the other 
 Alphas be obtained, and whereas the Alpha of Massachusetts 
 and the Beta of Connecticut write that they think the con- 
 sent of the Alpha of New York alone sufficient, and the 
 New York University has therefore renewed their application 
 to this society, therefore resolved that the resident members 
 assembled at this special meeting, while they individually ap- 
 prove of the institution of a Beta in the New York Uni- 
 versity, do not feel authorized to anticipate the action of 
 the next general meeting by changing the conditional ap- 
 proval of the last general meeting of Alpha of New York 
 into an unconditional one." At the same meeting a com- 
 munication from the Amherst chapter was presented suggest- 
 ing the propriety of a general convention of the branches of 
 the Phi Beta Kappa Society for the purpose of forming a 
 
 14 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 more compact organization and requesting the consent of 
 the New York Alpha to such a step and the appointment of 
 a delegate. Approval was given and a delegate was ap- 
 pointed. The convention, if held, cannot have agreed to a 
 new plan for establishing chapters, and the proper mode 
 of establishing them continued in debate. Alpha of New 
 York, which had contended so strongly for a different prac- 
 tice, instituted seven chapters in the State of New York, as 
 has been related, beginning with Beta at New York Uni- 
 versity in 1858 and ending with Theta at Cornell University 
 in 1882. In September of the following year (1883) the 
 organization of a Grand Chapter, known as the United 
 Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, was effected. This Grand 
 Chapter was given full control of the establishment of chap- 
 ters, which it has exercised cautiously; and it has since ac- 
 quired large powers over all the general concerns of the so- 
 ciety. John A. DeRemer, Alpha of New York, 1857, was 
 prominent in the confederation of the society and as presi- 
 dent of the United Chapters from 1898 until his death in 
 1907 he took a leading part in constructing the policy of 
 Phi Beta Kappa. 
 
 A few various notes compiled from the minute books of 
 Alpha of New York may be of general interest. 
 
 On July 27, 1824, "the Society [i. e., the Alpha of New 
 York] concurred in the institution of an Alpha at Bowdoin 
 College, Brunswick, Maine." On July 27, 1825, it was "re- 
 solved that the badge of the Society be altered by the addi- 
 tion of another star." This star was, of course, to represent 
 the new Alpha of Maine, instituted in 1825. The badge in- 
 herited by Alpha of New York had three stars on it, sup- 
 posed to signify the three then existing Alphas of Connecti- 
 cut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. A fourth star was 
 therefore added to signify the Alpha of New York. Stars 
 continued to be added to signify new Alphas when instituted. 
 Not long since the original records of Phi Beta Kappa at the 
 
 15 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 College of William and Mary were recovered. From these 
 it was learned that the three stars had been on the badge 
 at the beginning and signified the three foundations of the 
 society, friendship, morality and literature. On the standard 
 key, recently adopted by the United Chapters, the three 
 original stars are restored. 
 
 On July 26, 1825, an invitation to attend the anniversary 
 address of the Pi Beta Phi society was accepted. It would 
 be interesting to know what the Pi Beta Phi society was, 
 and how, if at all, it was related to later fraternities at 
 Union; it antedated Kappa Alpha, the oldest fraternity ex- 
 cepting Phi Beta Kappa that has had a continuous existence. 
 Kappa Alpha was founded in the autumn of 1825. Nor is 
 this minute the only evidence of the existence at Union of 
 other fraternities before the famous triad. Kappa Alpha, 
 Sigma Phi and Delta Phi. 
 
 On October 20, 1827, it was voted "that the attending 
 members of the Phi Beta Kappa Society attend the funeral 
 of their late brother E. B. Fisk as pallbearers * * *, also 
 to wear crape on their hats for the space of thirty days as 
 a token of respect for the deceased." On February 13, 1828, 
 the society voted to attend the funeral of Governor Clinton 
 in the usual badges of mourning and to continue to wear the 
 same through the college session. Governor Clinton was an 
 honorary member of Alpha of New York. These minutes 
 are quoted as reminders that the Alpha of New York had, 
 in its early years, something of the character of present day 
 fraternities. 
 
 The society adjourned its session of July 21, 1840, to at- 
 tend the first annual meeting of the Senate of Union College. 
 This Senate, which had a life of many years, was an under- 
 graduate body organized and conducted after the manner of 
 the Senate of the United States. It had a part, and not a 
 slight one, in training former generations of Union's sons 
 for public life, in which they were eminent. 
 
 16 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 At the meeting held on July 21, 1863, a committee was 
 appointed to confer with the New England chapters on the 
 subject of lessening the number of members to secure greater 
 care of selection; Alpha of New York has generally been 
 careful. ] 
 
 Alpha of New York of Phi Beta Kappa holds three meet- 
 ings yearly, besides the joint annual meeting with Sigma Xi: 
 a meeting on the second Saturday afternoon in February for 
 the election of members from the senior class, a meeting on 
 the evening of the same day, or an evening soon following, 
 at which candidates are initiated with form and ceremony, 
 and a meeting on Monday of commencement week for social 
 reunion and for the transaction of business. At the com- 
 mencement meeting nominations for honorary membership 
 may be made. These must lie over one year and are re- 
 ferred to a membership committee for investigation. This 
 rule, with some intermissions, has been in force since 1821. 
 The election of honorary members, because of occasional 
 abuses, has grown increasingly difficult. For many years 
 the New York Alpha used its privilege of such election freely. 
 The borrowed finery was generally of the best, and the elec- 
 tion of men of note lent lustre to the Society and imparted 
 interest. Many of those chosen, however, were either gradu- 
 ates of Union College of years prior to the institution of the 
 Alpha of New York or distinguished graduates of colleges 
 in which no chapter of Phi Beta Kappa existed. It should 
 be borne in mind that no Beta chapter was established until 
 that at Trinity in 1845, which was the eighth chapter 
 ordinally though but seven were actually existing, the chap- 
 ter at William and Mary having long since ceased to be. As 
 late as 1858 there were only fourteen chapters, mostly 
 Alphas. This condition no longer obtains; but a discreet 
 choice of honorary members is still desirable. 
 
 In the winter of 1913 two members of Alpha of New York 
 were discussing ways and means of increasing the activity 
 
 17 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 and profitableness of Phi Beta Kappa in the capital district. 
 They decided to try to found a graduate association and 
 imparted their plan to Alpha of New York which appointed 
 the committee that arranged for the meeting and dinner, 
 held at the Hotel Ten Eyck, Albany,^ February 28, 1914, at 
 which the Upper Hudson Association of Phi Beta Kappa 
 was formally organized and instituted. The association has 
 grown and prospered. It holds three meetings a year, a 
 winter meeting in Albany on the last Saturday in February, 
 a spring meeting at Union College on the third Saturday 
 in May, and an autumn meeting in Troy on the last Saturday 
 in November. 
 
 The honor roll of Alpha of New York, not to mention the 
 living or graduates of colleges other than Union elected to 
 membership, includes the names of the following illustrious 
 members: John W. Taylor, 1803, Speaker of the House of 
 Representatives ; the Rt. Rev. Thomas C. Brownell, 1804, 
 first President of Washington (now Trinity) College and 
 Bishop of Connecticut; John C. Spencer, 1806, statesman. 
 Secretary of War and Secretary of the Treasury of the 
 United States ; Francis Wayland, 1813, scholar, philosopher, 
 President of Brown University ; Richard M. Blatchford, 
 1815, diplomat; John McLean, 1815, President of the Col- 
 lege of New Jersey (now Princeton University) ; Nathaniel 
 P. Talmadge, 1815, Governor of Wisconsin; Sidney Breese, 
 1818, jurist. United States Senator, Chief Justice of the 
 Supreme Court of Illinois ; the Rt. Rev. George Washington 
 Doane, 1818, Bishop of New Jersey, founder and first presi- 
 dent of Burlington College, orator, poet, prophet, author of 
 "Softly now the Light of Day," "Fling out the Banner," 
 "Thou Art the Way" and other Christian hymns; the Rt. 
 Rev. Alonzo Potter, 1818, Vice-President of Union College, 
 Bishop of Pennsylvania; Laurens Perseus Hickok, 1820, 
 philosopher, President of Union College ; Tayler Lewis, 1820, 
 scholar, author; William Henry Seward, 1820, statesman; 
 
 18 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 John W. Nevin, 1821, President of Franklin and Marshall 
 College, theologian ; Ira Harris, 1824, Senator of the United 
 States; Henry Philip Tappan, 1825, President and author 
 of the greatness of Michigan University; the Rt. Rev. 
 Horatio Potter, 1826, Bishop of New York ; Leonard Woods, 
 1827, theologian, President of Bowdoin College; Ward 
 Hunt, 1828, Justice of the Supreme Court of the United 
 States; Joseph Alden, 1829, teacher; George Washington 
 Eaton, 1829, President of Madison (now Colgate) Uni- 
 versity; John Leighton Wilson, 1829, missionar}^, scholar; 
 Silas Totten, 1830, President of Washington (now Trinity) 
 College; Roswell Park, 1831, Chancellor of Racine Uni- 
 versity, hymn writer; John H. Ra3miond, 1832, President 
 of Vassar College; Robert W. Hume, 1834, missionary; 
 Edmund Hamilton Sears, 1834, essayist, poet, saint, author 
 of "Calm on the Listening Ear of Night," "It Came upon 
 the Midnight Clear" and other Christian hymns ; John Bige- 
 low, 1835, editor, author, diplomat; Matthew Meigs, 1836, 
 founder of the Hill School; Henry Wager Halleck, 1837, 
 General in Chief of the Armies of the L^nited States ; Samuel 
 R. House, 1837, missionary; Austin Blair, 1839, Governor 
 of Michigan; Lewis H. Morgan, 1840, ethnologist; Alex- 
 ander H. Rice, 1844, thrice Governor of Massachusetts; the 
 Rt. Rev. Abraham N. Littlejohn, 1846, Bishop of Long 
 Island; John M. Gregory, 1846, first Regent of the Univers- 
 ity of Illinois ; John T. Hoffman, 1846, Governor of the State 
 of New York; Henry R. Pierson, 1846, Chancellor of the 
 University of the State of New York; Chester A. Arthur, 
 1847, President of the United States ; Silas W. Burt, 1849, a 
 pioneer, and one of the greatest of them, in the reform of 
 our civil service; David Murray, 1852, educator, principal 
 initiator of reforms in education in Japan; George Wash- 
 ington Hough, 1856, astronomer; Seaman Asahel Knapp, 
 1856, farmer, re-creator of the Southern States; James 
 Rufus Tryon, 1858, Surgeon General (later admiral) of th^ 
 
 19 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 Navy of the United States ; Chester Holcombe, 1861, diplo- 
 mat, scholar, author; Charles Emory Smith, 1861, editor, 
 statesman, diplomat; Edward C. Taintor, 1863, Inspector 
 General of Imperial Customs, China. 
 
 Dr, Alexander Duane: The basic principles of Phi 
 Beta Kappa as enumerated in the interesting essay just 
 read, are literature, that is, scholarship, morality, that is, 
 character, and friendship. On one who exemplifies all three 
 principles in their highest degree, on one known to all Union 
 men and loved by them I now call. I introduce to you Doctor 
 George Alexander. 
 
 THE CENTENNIAL ORATION 
 
 The Rev. Dr. George Alexander: Mr. President and 
 Brothers in Phi Beta Kappa : 
 
 The task which you have seen fit to assign me is too re- 
 sponsible to be sought; too honorable to be declined. To 
 have been enrolled among the orators and poets of this 
 "solempne and gret fraternite," and, after five and thirty 
 years to be again thus enrolled, is a distinction so exalted 
 as to induce a feeling of giddiness and apprehension of 
 grievous fall. 
 
 Pardon me if I indulge for a moment in reminiscence. 
 Thirty-six years ago it was my privilege to represent the 
 New York Alpha of Phi Beta Kappa at the celebration of 
 the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Alpha of Massa- 
 chusetts Bay. It was a memorable occasion ! At the morn- 
 ing session Joseph H. Choate, whose sun has just set in a 
 blaze of mellow glory, presided with matchless grace. With 
 sparkling banter, he descanted on the origin of our "ancient 
 and mysterious brotherhood." Charles Godfrey Leland, 
 author of "Hans Breitmann's Barty" read a poem. Wendell 
 Phillips pronounced his great oration on "The Scholar in a 
 Republic." Longfellow was there, Phillips Brooks, and a 
 great galaxy of scholars and men of letters. The business 
 
 20 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 session was conducted under the leadership of Edward 
 Everett Hale. At the luncheon there were several witty 
 speeches, and Oliver Wendell Holmes read a poem beginning : 
 
 "The Dutch have taken Holland," 
 
 which, in his published writings bears the title: "A Post 
 Prandial." An allusion to the castigation which the orator 
 of the morning had given to his Alma Mater may be found 
 in the couplet: 
 
 "You have whacked us with your sceptre; our 
 
 backs were little harmed, 
 And while we rubbed our bruises we owned we 
 
 had been charmed." 
 
 His greeting to Leland was: 
 
 "And you, our quasi Dutchman, what welcome 
 should be yours 
 
 For all the wise prescriptions that work your 
 laughter cures? 
 
 "Shake before taking"? — not a bit — the bottle- 
 cure's a sham ; 
 
 Take before shaking, and you'll find it shakes 
 your diaphragm." 
 
 That was a day to be remembered! The intellectual elite 
 of New England were gathered to dignify the centennial. 
 But, in some respects, the year 1817 is a more significant 
 one in the annals of Phi Beta Kappa than the year 1781. 
 The planting at New Haven and at Cambridge of slips from 
 the original Virginian stock saved our fraternity from ex-_ 
 tinction; the granting of a chapter at Union saved it from 
 provincialism and made it continental. For thirty years 
 previous Phi Beta Kappa had been confined to three centers : 
 Yale, Harvard and Dartmouth, where it had a dignified ex- 
 istence, but had shown no reproductive power. At Union, 
 the seed-thought generated at Williani and Mary fell into 
 
 21 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 congenial soil. The Alpha of New York not only became 
 the most prolific mother of societies like itself, but it un- 
 doubtedly inspired those young undergraduates, who, a few 
 years later, founded Kappa Alpha, Sigma Phi, and other 
 societies in rapid succession, thus earning for our Alma 
 Mater the title: "Mother of Greek Letter Fraternities." 
 This feature of academic life in America has served more 
 than any other influence to bind together the colleges of the 
 Western Hemisphere. 
 
 The One Hundredth Anniversary of an event so wide 
 reaching in its effects seems a fitting time to study the 
 formative principles of Phi Beta Kappa in order to discover, 
 if we may, what gives it vitality. 
 
 Wendell Phillips, in the oration to which I have referred, 
 asserted that: "Phi Beta Kappa stands now simply as a 
 representative of free, brave, American scholarship." I 
 venture to qualify his statement and to say that Phi Beta 
 Kappa has stood historically and still stands for a certain 
 type of "free, brave, American scholarship" — a type which, 
 for two generations, has been gradually elbowed out of its 
 place in the sun, but even in the shadow must vindicate 
 its right to live and thrive. 
 
 Forty years ago, Edward Everett Hale characterized Phi 
 Beta Kappa as "a fossil from the tertiary." Its subsequent 
 revival justifies the grandiloquent prophesy at the demise 
 of the parent chapter in 1781 : "The Society will one day 
 rise to life everlasting and glory immortal." 
 
 The ideal of scholarly attainment which the founders of 
 our Society intended to perpetuate was first of all classical. 
 Its motto was indicated by three Greek initials on the obverse 
 of its badge, and its object of pursuit by two Latin initials 
 on the reverse. It was to be a philosophical society as both 
 name and motto declare. Its charter and its whole history 
 stress the fact that it is a literary society. The type of 
 education which it sought to develop was liberal as dis- 
 
 22 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 tinguished from vocational. It was designed to be pre- 
 eminently humanistic — a fraternity which had for its basis 
 moral worth and capacity for unselfish friendship. It had 
 also an element of the mystical; its symbols, its grip, its 
 harmless "arcana," made appeal to the imagination of in- 
 genuous youth and to their natural craving for contact with 
 the mysterious, the unseen, the Divine. 
 
 It is not surprising that such a Society should have been 
 called "a fossil from the tertiary." The founders of out* 
 Chapter a hundred years ago had more in common with 
 Chaucer's "clerk of Oxenford" than with the college boy of 
 today. They could better understand that lean and unworld- 
 ly student who 
 
 " was lever have at his beddes heed 
 
 Twenty bokes, clad in blak and reed 
 
 Of Aristotle and his philosophye 
 
 Than robes riche, or fithele or gay sautrye," — 
 — far better than they could understand the eager, boister- 
 ous, athletic, worldly minded, pleasure seeking college stud- 
 ent, of today. 
 
 Some such change in academic ideals was inevitable. The 
 old bottles would not contain the new wine. New knowledge 
 has made necessary a new education and a new culture. Wo 
 are living in a roomier universe than our grandfathers, 
 
 "And the thoughts of men are widened with the 
 process of the suns." 
 Not only has knowledge of the visible universe become more 
 exact and extensive, but mastery of its forces has been ac- 
 quired with bewildering rapidity. Through the air and 
 under the sea man has learned to project his thoughts and 
 to project himself. The poet no longer needs to dip into 
 the future in order to see 
 
 " the heavens filled with commerce, argosies 
 
 of magic sails, 
 
 28 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down 
 with costly bales." 
 
 Those who have been engaged in wresting from nature her 
 secrets now stand in quivering expectation of disclosures 
 more stupendous that seem ready to unfold. Through such 
 a period the ancient learning could not retain possession of 
 the field that was once all its own. Classical and philosophi- 
 cal culture had already become measurably discredited by 
 its rigidity, its conservatism, its want of relation to actual 
 life; discredited too, by that contingent of college men so 
 well described in the caustic phrase of Robert Burns, 
 "they gang in stirks and come oot asses." 
 
 It is not surprising that the eyes of the human mind turned 
 from books in which are embalmed the thoughts of men to 
 study God's book written in things. How could an eager 
 soul be held to the intricacies of the subjunctive mood, when 
 others, with no greater intelligence than his own, were in the 
 laboratory untwisting the multi-colored threads of light, un- 
 yoking the atoms of the world, and watching the rush of 
 their attractions, or creating instruments to bring the ends 
 of the earth into converse and to change the whole outlook 
 of human life. If Plato and Shakespeare had breathed such 
 an intellectual atmosphere there would have been no Phaedo, 
 no Hamlet. 
 
 Confronted, then, by a present world so marvelous and en- 
 chanting why should men concern themselves about a world 
 unseen ? Lured by such dazzling prospects of a better future 
 why should they waste energy in poring over the musty 
 records of the past? 
 
 It is not difficult to trace the effect of all this upon the 
 attitude and temper of the educated mind. The modern 
 tendency has been to turn to the ancients, not to learn their 
 wisdom, but to gird at their ignorance and folly. The spirit 
 of the age is no longer retrospective or introspective; no 
 
 24 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 longer reverent or devout. It has become confident, bold, 
 masterful, secular, willful. The old ideals of Providence, 
 probation and prayer are tossed into the discard. All thai 
 we call evil is attributed to breach of physical law and the 
 all sufficient remedy is supposed to be mastery of nature's 
 secrets and the utilization of nature's forces for the better- 
 ment of human conditions. 
 
 More than sixty years ago, in an address before this 
 Society, that profound scholar, Tayler Lewis, traced what 
 he called "the generation of a vicious circle, which in the 
 end brings around the evils it affects to cure. A wrong 
 elevation of the physical in distinction from moral and 
 spiritual health tends to sink morals into physics. The 
 wrong importance attached to our worldly conveniences and 
 to the scientific inventions by which they are prompted, 
 gives rise to a universal worldliness of thought and feeling. 
 Thus, naturalism begets secularity, secularity begets selfish- 
 ness, selfishness, unchecked by that which alone can hold it 
 in, the thought of the world to come, breaks through all 
 obstacles which human morals and legislation may present 
 to the unequal acquisition of wealth at any cost or at sacrifice 
 of any principle. Gross inequality of wealth begets poverty, 
 not the healthy and virtuous nevia but diseased and vicious 
 poverty, prolific mother of all evils that infest the human 
 race. From her are born despair and ignorance and reck- 
 leckless and squalidness, and all uncleanness in respect to the 
 body and the soul, and thus the cycle is completed and 
 naturalism comes round, full circle, to its starting point." 
 
 Were that clairvoyant seer living today would he not find 
 justification of his forecast in the twentieth century develop- 
 ment of our civilization? j 
 
 The progress of the last fifty years has been stupendous, 
 but it has been in the realm of the physical. Our generation, 
 dazzled by the wealth of its discoveries and inventions, pre- 
 occupied with its tools and its toys, has thrown its in- 
 
 25 I 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 lieritance from former generations to the moles and the 
 bats, and feels itself competent to find the way of life with 
 little aid from the lamp of experience, and still less from the 
 light of Divine revelation. 
 
 Is the result quite satisfactory? Has our devotement to 
 
 a bread and butter philosophy yielded a product of which 
 
 we have reason to boast? We have glorified organization, 
 
 efficiency, the acquisition and conservation of worldly wealtli 
 
 and physical well-being, and yet civilization is today making 
 
 pitiful efforts to conserve with its left hand what with its 
 
 strong right hand it wrecks and destroys. Not only so, bu*: 
 
 that nation to which all others have been going to school, 
 
 that nation, the most advanced in the application of science 
 
 to industry, and commerce, and social welfare, has pre- 
 
 j cipitated a struggle in which her sons are being slaughtered 
 
 / by the million and her women and children pinched with 
 
 I hunger, a struggle in which half the world has marshalled 
 
 its forces to work devastation. The "vicious circle" seems 
 
 to have come round to its starting point. 
 
 Ruthlessness, frightfulness, savagery and breach of 
 plighted faith have been the products of a kultur so highly 
 developed that it has seemed to its authors worthy to be im- 
 posed by force upon all mankind. This moral perversion and 
 / chaos is not a chance phenomenon with no causal relations 
 
 that can be traced. It was a German, Heinrich Heine, who 
 wrote eighty-five years ago : "Laugh not at my advice, the 
 advice of a dreamer, who warns you against Kantians, 
 Fichteans, and philosophers of nature, nor at the dreamer 
 who awaits in the world of things to be seen that which has 
 been before in the realm of shadows. Thought goes before 
 the deed as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder 
 is indeed German, and not in a hurry, and it comes rolling 
 slowly onward; but come it will, and when ye hear it crash, 
 as naught ever crashed before in the whole history of the 
 
 26 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 world, then know that der deutsche Donner, our German 
 thunder, has as last hit the mark." 
 
 Naturalism divorced from regard for eternal verities leads 
 inevitably to moral perversion. Just as certainly it induces 
 a distortion of mental faculties. Training in science, un- 
 balanced by those elements of culture which appeal to the 
 imagination and the hearts of men, means death to practical 
 wisdom. A mechanistic logic may yield splendid results 
 when applied to things and forces, but when applied to the 
 workings of the human spirit, to the actions and institutions 
 of free men, it leads to conclusions which outrage the com- 
 mon judgment of mankind. It was an Austrian minister 
 of education who, moved to wrath by some manifestation 
 of inability to sense psychological factors, exclaimed in his 
 broken English : "Dese Germans, dey knows everyding. Dey 
 understands nodding." 
 
 The pursuit of secular knowledge without the believing 
 spirit yields a yet sorrier fruitage. It ministers to a certain 
 pessimism that robs nature herself of her charm. More true 
 than when it was penned, is the confession of Wordsworth: 
 
 "The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 
 
 Getting and spending, w^e lay waste our powers : 
 
 Little we see in Nature that is ours ; 
 
 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 
 
 * * * * Great God! I'd rather be 
 
 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn ; 
 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 
 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; 
 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 
 Let us not deceive ourselves. With eager feet we may 
 pursue knowledge in order to gain pleasure, but the spirit 
 of gladness goes out of life when we part company with 
 what Virgil calls the pii vates, the prophets who have com- 
 muned with their own souls and talked with God. 
 
 27 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 "But John P. 
 
 Robinson, he 
 
 Sez they didn't know everythin' down in Judee." 
 True, they had very little of our present knowledge of 
 forces and things. Their thinking has been called narrow ; 
 but no one can deny that it was deep and high. 
 The echoes of Sinai still reverberate in the ?unplumbed 
 depths of the human spirit, and the saying of Him who trod 
 the shores of deep Galilee is still true: "The words that I 
 speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." 
 
 It must be evident that I am not merely making a defense 
 of the classics as the basis of liberal education. That is 
 scarcely necessary since all the Presidents we have are now 
 lined up against the iconoclastic onslaught of the Rocke- 
 feller Foundation. What I plead for, and what I believe is 
 surely coming, coming more surely since our youth are once 
 more responding to the call for devotement of everything to 
 an ideal — ^what I plead for, is a revival of interest in the 
 things of the spirit, in history, and philosophy, and litera- 
 ture, in the wisdom which successive generations have 
 garnered not only from the experience of life, but from fel- 
 lowship with God, from the discovery of His ways in the 
 realm of mind, as well as in the realm of matter. Imagina- 
 tion, sympathy, and faith are forces just as real as gravita- 
 tion or chemical affinity. Any people that leaves them out 
 of its curriculum will lose their sanity and will find that the 
 "stars in their courses" fight against them. 
 
 Am I chargeable with temerity in ventilating such opinions 
 within the precincts of Union College ? Here the new.educa- 
 tion with its instruments of precision, its keen analyses, its 
 urgent endeavors to keep pace with the world's progress in 
 research and in the adaptation of nature's forces to human 
 needs, flourishes and ought to flourish ! But here also ancient 
 ideals survive, nourished by traditions and memories which 
 to some of us are inexpressibly dear. Here the past lives 
 
 28 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 around us as we sing our Union song, which confessedly 
 subjects fancy to undue strain, but which, nevertheless, 
 breathes the very spirit of Hellas. 
 
 "Let the Grecian dream of his sacred stream 
 
 And sing of the brave adorning 
 That Phoebus weaves from his laurel leaves 
 At the golden gates of the morning." 
 Here we have a college president who knows the paths that 
 lead to the forest of Arden, and can make us feel the thrill 
 of ancient minstrelsy and song. 
 
 We of Phi Beta Kappa hail the new learning and rejoice 
 in it, but we would have it mellowed and humanized and 
 hallowed by ^he wisdom which is from above. 
 
 "Let knowledge grow from more to more 
 But more of reverence in us dwell. 
 That mind and soul according well 
 May make one music as before. 
 But vaster !" 
 
 Dr. Duane: I am sure the eloquent words you have just 
 heard have brought to all of you, as they have brought to 
 me, a sense of what we are really here for. We are here not 
 to rejoice, not to show our pride in our centennial, although 
 we have much to rejoice for, much to be proud of. We come 
 here in a spirit of dedication, of dedication to a new spirit 
 and a new ideal, of dedication of Phi Beta Kappa to the 
 service of the country in its present crisis. Phi Beta Kappa 
 and the men of Phi Beta Kappa have never failed the coun- 
 try before. In the Civil War the Alpha of New York sent 
 many men into service. So shall it be today. And our Alma 
 Mater, Union, the home of the Alpha of New York, will send 
 forth her sons now with no reluctant hands. 
 
 I think I hear her voice saying, as the voices of many 
 mothers of America will be saying, in the fine words of 
 Power's, nobly paraphrasing an ignoble song : 
 
 29 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 "I did not raise my boy to be a coward, 
 J To bear with blood unstirred whate'er befalls, 
 
 To skulk, or shirk, or flinch in times untoward. 
 To stop his ears when need or honor calls. 
 
 "I did not raise my son to bide in pleasure 
 When duty summons him to suffer pain ; 
 
 To call mere easeful plenty good; to measure 
 All by the paltry rule of private gain. 
 
 "I would not have him cringe when proud ambition 
 Fares forth full-armed to work its lawless will, 
 
 To use his own upon some base condition. 
 Or look on weakness outraged and be still. 
 
 "Better, far better, that my boy were lying, 
 Foredone and shattered on the stricken field ; 
 
 Better, far better, that my boy were dying, 
 
 Where freemen, sore forefoughten, scorn to yield. 
 
 "I love him not ? Ah me ! Too well I love him. 
 To have him live at ease full-fed and whole, 
 
 A recreanl: to the righteous God above him, 
 A traitor to his birthright and his soul." 
 
 Gentlemen of Phi Beta Kappa, I declare the ceremonies 
 of this convention closed. 
 
 THE DINNER 
 
 At the Mohawk Club, Schenectady, on Tuesday evening, 
 June 12, after a good and pleasant dinner. Dr. Alexander 
 Duane, president of Alpha of New York, gave the toasts and 
 responses were made in part as follows : 
 
 Dr. Duane : Members of the Phi Beta Kappa here assem- 
 bled: I congratulate you all on this splendid assemblage. I 
 will give you no formal greeting. That will be done in better 
 
 30 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 terms by others ; but we have here members from various 
 chapters, delegates ; we have here representatives that do us 
 honor ; we have here members of our own college, of our own 
 chapter, from the youngest to one (the Rev. Dr. Alfred P. 
 Botsford, '47) who writes: "If possible I hope to attend. 
 It will be my seventieth celebration of membership, and the 
 seventieth anniversary of my graduation." I am happy to 
 say he has attended and is here. (Applause.) 
 
 We have another letter from one who could not be pres- 
 ent, but he writes in the vernacular : 
 
 (Dr. Duane here read "in the jvernacular" a postal, 
 couched in modern Greek, from Dr. Thomas Featherston- 
 haugh, '71, remarking, as he did so, that he would not trans- 
 late it as, of course, all members of Phi Beta Kappa were 
 conversant with modern Greek.) 
 
 There comes at this time a little more solemn note in our 
 proceedings ; there comes the chance of service to us all. 
 You know on board ship when there is need for some little 
 thing to be done, the officer of the deck will call somebody 
 from below; the boastwain's pipe will sound and it will call 
 up two or three men. If they need more, then the officer 
 of the deck will call again, the boatswain's whistle will sound, 
 and they will call, perhaps, the second division on the spar 
 deck. If the need is greater, if there is more to be done, 
 then the captain calls for more, the boatswain's whistle sounds 
 and they may summon the whole starboard watch on deck. 
 But in times of surpassing need, in times when the enemy is 
 at hand, then the cry is, as the boatswain's whistle sounds, 
 "All hands on deck!" Members of Phi Beta Kappa, that 
 sound has gone forth; our great captain has called; our 
 President has summoned us to aid, and the cry is "All hands !" 
 I call you all to drink to the flag. 
 
 (The guests arose and drank to the toast.) 
 
 In previous years, when I have sat among the lower seats 
 at the table, and looked up at the one who occupied this 
 
 31 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 so-called seat of honor, I viewed him with envy, with admira- 
 tion, and with dread. I find now that in this position there 
 is very little to admire and nothing to fear. The position of 
 toastmaster, in fact, is extremely easy. All he has to do is 
 to tell other people to work and they do it. And he is not 
 an easy boss ; he is not a benevolent tyrant. All he has to do 
 is to bid a better man than he stand up and speak. Thus it 
 is that I find I can devolve one of my duties, very agreeable 
 to me, on one better fitted than I ; and in expressing the greet- 
 ings of the Alpha of New York of Union College to the guests 
 here assembled I call on one eminently qualified to express 
 those greetings, on one whom I need not introduce. President 
 Richmond of Union College. (Applause.) 
 
 President Richmond (in part) ;******* 
 One hundred years is a long time, and much water has 
 gone under the bridge in those years ; things have changed 
 very much. I fancy that in 1817 the times were compara- 
 tively simple and certainly comparatively peaceful. * * * 
 Well, those were comparatively peaceful and simple times, 
 and in the meantime, because one cannot think excepting in 
 retrospect of a period one hundred years ago, men have 
 come and gone. * * * jsj^qj- gQ with Phi Beta Kappa. 
 I have been thinking today, since we emerged from this second 
 flood into sunshine, * * * of that beautiful little poem 
 about the June day : 
 
 Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright ! 
 
 The bridal of the sea and sky — 
 The dew shall weep thy fall to-night ; 
 
 For thou must die. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, 
 A box where sweets compacted lie. 
 
 My music shows ye have your closes. 
 And all must die. 
 
 B2 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 Only a sweet and virtuous soul, 
 Like seasoned timber, never gives ; 
 
 But though the whole world turns to coal. 
 Then chiefly lives. 
 
 So I say men have come and men have gone, but Phi Beta 
 Kappa remains. And her claim to immortality is neither 
 power, certainly not wealth, obviously not beauty. Her only 
 title is the title to mansions in the sk}'^, for her symbol should 
 mean that. The virtue af the mind and of the soul is the 
 mark of Phi Beta Kappa men. 
 
 And so we are living today and we are immortal; and it 
 is a good thing in these days when efficiency * * * is 
 deified and when the power of wealth is so great, it is a fine 
 thing to have an organization that stands for the imperish- 
 able. I have heard of a man who said he would give a mil- 
 lion dollars to be a member of the University Club. Of 
 course what he meant was to be qualified to be a member of 
 the University Club. I should hate to see this chapter of 
 Phi Beta Kappa subjected to such a temptation. (Laugh- 
 ter.) I am sure you feel, as we all do, that it is a proud 
 distinction to be qualified for membership in the Phi Beta 
 Kappa, and I am sure that all of us realize that it is one 
 of the things that we could not estimate. * * * 
 
 It is a great record to be able to point back to one hundred 
 years of life, of intellectual life, to be able even to mention 
 the names, as they were mentioned in succession by Professor 
 Bennett yesterday, of some of the dead men, who were very 
 living men in their age. That catalogue was a notable cata- 
 logue. * * * The record is an astonishing one, but the 
 thing that impressed me as I heard that catalogue of names 
 was the fact that those men were not hermits ; they were not 
 recluses ; they were not the selfish scholar ; they were men 
 who mixed in public affairs. * * * And in this opening 
 appeal which you made, Mr. President, which expresses our 
 
 33 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 feeling, of course, at this moment, what is keenly in my mind 
 i,? the fact that our inheritance is an inheritance not merely 
 of scholarship, but an inheritance of action and of patriotic 
 service. That was the keynote to Phi Beta Kappa in the old 
 days. It is the keynote tonight. (Applause.) 
 
 Dr. Duane: I want to say for the Alpha of New York 
 that it stands ever ready to refuse any offer of a million 
 dollars from any applicant for membership or for any other 
 purpose. ^ 
 
 Again my task is extremely easy. I shall not introduce, 
 but I shall present, one noted and known to you all, known 
 to every American; scholar, lawyer, administrator. Presi- 
 dent of the United States, and since, and not least of his 
 titles, loyal citizen, always subordinating the claims of party 
 to the needs of the Republic. I give you William H. Taft. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 Mr. Taft: Mr. Chairman, lady and gentlemen: That 
 was a Presbyterian speech* we have just heard. The Pres- 
 bj^terians have got to a point where they only deal with hell 
 in postprandial demonstrations. (Laughter.) There are 
 some, of course, who cannot get along without hell because 
 it is a necessary place to put some people in. They don't 
 know how to dispose of them otherwise. But the Presby- 
 terians are melting in that regard. Once in a while we have 
 a recurrence of enthusiasm on that subject, as we have today 
 in the Honorable William Sunday when he disposes of us 
 Unitarians. (Laughter.) He fries us, and does a good many 
 things ; but, somehow, we continue to encumber the earth. 
 
 Dr. Richmond and I have played golf together, and we 
 have had a good many confidential conversations that that 
 game elicits, and as a gentleman I expect to regard those 
 confidences. (Laughter.) I cannot give you any evidence 
 
 ♦NOTE: The reference is to some omitted remarks. 
 
 34 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 of his real belief in hell by reference to expressions that I 
 have heard on the field because it would not be fair. (Laugh- 
 ter.) His style, however, I will say, both as a golfer and as 
 meeting situations where language can cure is admirable. 
 (Laughter.) It is intense and emphatic and it satisfies every 
 requirement of Presbyterian theology. (Laughter.) 
 
 It is a great pleasure to be in Union. Union is one of 
 those colleges that mean character. It means traditions that 
 make for character in all its graduates because they are 
 inspired to be worthy of those who have gone before. I have 
 no invidious remarks to make with reference to the great 
 universities that have suddenly sprung into wonderful use- 
 fulness in this country, but here in this atmosphere one may, 
 without being invidious, dwell on the advantages of a tradi- 
 tion, of honorable history that certainly makes for the 
 advancement and the happiness of those who come under its 
 influence. 
 
 And now about Phi Beta Kappa. I don't know whether 
 I am looking into the faces of a lot of reactionaries or not. 
 I am afraid I am because I seem to feel a sympathetic atti- 
 tude. (Laughter.) I think Phi Beta Kappa is reactionary 
 as I understand it. You really are in favor of studying a 
 good many things that you do not have to use professionally 
 afterwards. You think that it isn't essential in order to 
 secure efficiency and usefulness in life, if you are going to be 
 a brick manufacturer, to confine your efforts to making 
 studies into clay and to making the best bricks. That seems 
 to be the modern tendency. Latin and Greek are to be ex- 
 cluded because they do not offer any discipline for the mind. 
 Geometry makes a better geometrician, and the study of 
 Greek would help a man to learn modern Greek. The study 
 of Latin would not help him to understand law Latin. 
 (Laughter.) Therefore we must reject that. Now, I do not 
 believe that. And when the expert teacher, or the man who 
 says he is an expert teacher, tells me that the study of Latin 
 
 35 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 and the study of geometry do not give me mental discipline 
 I am a witness myself. What I mean is, I hope I understand 
 the operations of my own mind ; I agree, that is assuming a 
 good deal ; but I hope I do to some extent. And if the study 
 of geometry, of mathematics, of algebra and of Latin and 
 Greek did not help me then I am utterly blind to what has 
 enabled me to float along. (Laughter and applause.) I feel 
 as if it is time somebody spoke out on the subject. I feel 
 that because a number of millions of dollars are arrayed on 
 the other side that it is no reason why we should give up all 
 that has been established as a means of education in times 
 past. That there are improvements to be made doubtless 
 must be admitted; but that we must reject everything that 
 we have been studying as perfectly useless and go into other 
 things under a character of teacher that never was on sea 
 or land, because you must have a genius to work out the 
 theories of instruction that are thus handed out to us as 
 necessary for our primary and secondary schools, to me — 
 well, I don't want to characterize it by any such language as 
 8 Presbyterian would use (laughter) — is unreasonable. And 
 as I understand it Phi Beta Kappa stands for a different 
 kind of education. 
 
 Now, Phi Beta Kappa represents an effort when you are 
 in an educational institution ; when you are in an institution 
 of learning its represents a reward for appreciating what the 
 object of that institution is and devoting your energies to 
 acquiring that which primarily directed you into that insti- 
 tution. I do not mean to minimize the importance of other 
 activities ; but when a man is trying to get an education, 
 when he is trying to fit himself by the training and discipline 
 of his mind in an institution, it does not seem to take any 
 more principle than you learn in geometry to prove that the 
 man who devotes most of his time and effort to doing that 
 and who does it successfully is the man who carries out the 
 purpose that was intended when institutions of learning were 
 
 36 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 founded. What I deprecate is the tone that has been assumed 
 from time to time that the man who studied here in college 
 was a man who did not appreciate what the real essence of 
 college life was. I deny that a man cannot stand high in 
 college and acquire a good education and at the same time 
 enjoy to the full all those other delightful features of educa- 
 tion in a college like this, all those associations of friendship, 
 all those lifelong bonds that hold one to the college and hold 
 those who have been through the college. 
 
 They didn't have Phi Beta Kappa in Yale when I was 
 there. For some reason or other it had been suspended. I 
 don't know why. But they took us in by a nunc pro tunc 
 entry and we are claiming it. We think it is just as good as 
 if it had been earned while we were there, with a little less 
 of the responsibility, perhaps, in carrying on the organiza- 
 tion. It is a great thing. It stimulates effort. I know 
 because I have become a college professor, and I am engaged 
 in trying to instruct the youth in the fundamental principles 
 of the Federal Constitution. I met a Presbyterian minister 
 yesterday. He says, "You are in Yale, but you don't really 
 do any work there, do you?" (Laughter.) "Well," I said, 
 "I deliver five lectures a week; how many do you deliver.'* 
 And I have a bunch of examination papers in my valise that 
 I would be glad to turn over to you and see whether you 
 think I do any work or not." Now, I have observed a sensi- 
 tiveness about youth in my class with reference to the marks 
 I give them, and I like to see it ; I like to have them wish to 
 stand higher. I think it is a sublimated theory that boys of 
 that age are to study just for the love of studying and may 
 not be properly stimulated by rewards that come from suc- 
 cessful competition with their fellows and from a good appre- 
 ciation of what they do by their instructors. I do not see 
 why we should not improve the motives of human nature in 
 helping education as nature improves, and civilization im- 
 proves, those motives in getting on, in making real progress. 
 
 87 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 I think Phi Beta Kappa represents a spirit in the colleges 
 that should be encouraged. It isn't true, statistics show that 
 it isn't true, that the Phi Beta Kappa men are the men who 
 are not useful in after life. The pecrentage of useful men 
 is far higher among the Phi Beta Kappa men than among 
 those who were not Phi Beta Kappa men. The investiga- 
 tion has been made and the result has been stated statistic- 
 ally. And it stands to reason that, when men are in college 
 for a certain purpose, the men who carry out that purpose 
 most effectively, who exercise the self-restraint and the ap- 
 plication and the resistance to the little temptations and the 
 sacrifice of some of the hours of leisure and enjoyment, will 
 be the men who, when they come to meet the problems of 
 after life, have developed in them the spirit that makes for 
 success and usefulness. You do not have to argue it out 
 elaborately. It seems to follow as an easy inference. 
 
 Now, of course, those of us that are Phi Beta Kappa men 
 are said to get together and jolly each other with mutual 
 congratulations that we are better than other people. Well, 
 perhaps there is something in that. (Laughter.) But the 
 basis for our getting together and jollying has much more 
 substance in it than a good many things that get men together 
 and lead to mutual congratulation. And we don't hurt any- 
 body else. We don't hurt anybody any more than the Pres- 
 byterian hurts a Unitarian by consigning him to hell. 
 (Laughter.) He has no particular power of disposition. 
 (Laughter.) It is merely, so far as he is concerned, a brutum 
 fulmen. It helps the gentleman who makes the disposition 
 psychologically and subjectively and it doesn't hurt the 
 object at all. (Laughter.) 
 
 But, gentlemen, excuse me ; I have no right to occupy your 
 time. I sympathize with the president of the university in 
 having during these busy days of commencement week to 
 make so many speeches that he protests each time he rises 
 against the custom that makes him speak, and then, as we 
 
 38 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 have seen tonight, makes a better speech, so that it gives rise 
 to a little bit of suspicion of insincerity when he makes such a 
 successful appeal as he has made to us tonight. The president, 
 the distinguished president, of this association, the national 
 president, is here, and he has forbidden me to listen to his 
 address of an hour which he proposes to make. (Laughter.) 
 He apparently thought that I had not had the principles of 
 Phi Beta Kappa sufficiently imbedded in me to stand that 
 test because I was not an active member during college, and 
 so he pushed me on lest that hour might result in some quips 
 on my part. I beg to assure him that I could have stood it. 
 We used to have forty minute and hour sermons in college 
 when I was there, and I think I am a better man on account 
 of it ; not so much because of the contents of the sermons, 
 but because of the moral character that it developed in main- 
 taining open eyes during the test. 
 
 I felicitate Union on her great history and on her growth 
 under her present president ; and I felicitate her that she has 
 the oldest Phi Beta Kappa chapter in New York. It is 
 proper that she should have. It is a type of what Union- 
 made men are. I had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance 
 with President Arthur. I was the recipient of an appoint- 
 ment from him so far back that even President Richmond 
 cannot recollect it. He appointed me Collector of Internal 
 Revenue when I was twenty-three, and I served him for a 
 year, and then concluded that it was wiser to go back to my 
 profession; but it brought me into personal contact with 
 him, and gave me a delightful reminiscence of a very delight- 
 ful gentleman and useful public servant, a graduate of Union. 
 I thank you. (Applause.) 
 
 Dr. Duane : Certainly we are extremely glad to have had 
 greetings to the Alpha of New York from the Alpha of Con- 
 necticut, as voiced by Mr. Taft. 
 
 "Westward the course of empire takes its way" ; but I have 
 noticed that the course of empire takes its way back east 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 whenever a Union man has carried it west, and particularly 
 so about commencement time. We are fortunate that that 
 has been the case this year, for now we shall listen to an 
 alumnus of Union who has returned for his reunion, the Right 
 Reverend Irving P. Johnson, Bishop Coadjutor of Colorado 
 and member of the class of 1887. 
 
 Bishop Johnson : Whenever a man in England is ap- 
 pointed to the episcopate and goes to the wilderness and 
 returns to the land that sent him forth they always call him 
 a returned empty ; and so I have come back to you tonight 
 in that capacity. I feel a little embarrassment over my mem- 
 bership in Phi Beta Kappa for it was not even honorary. As 
 I recall the four years of my college course, I may be said to 
 have reached first on a scratch hit, was sacrificed to second 
 bj' my chum, who knew all the mathematics there w^as to be 
 known, and reached third on an error of the faculty, for I 
 did not do any stud^^ing in my junior year yet pulled my 
 highest marks, and slipped home by a close decision of the 
 umpire. I owe my Phi Beta Kappa to the fact that an '86 
 man came back to '87 and graduated with it ; so that I can 
 scarcely call it an earned run. 
 
 However, I feel very glad that I slipped in, in a way, and 
 what I wish to say tonight is by way of endorsement of the 
 principles that underlie Phi Beta Kappa in the face of a 
 combination of central powers that seems to me to have sub- 
 marined our high schools and thrown bombs upon our uni- 
 versities and injected poisonous gases into our youth. And 
 I wish in the few moments while I speak to you to endorse the 
 principle that I have never lost sight of, though I have prac- 
 ticed it very slightly, that the classics arc the foundation of 
 that triple alliance of culture, art and religion which seems 
 to me infinitely preferable to a mechanical w^orld that the 
 central powers of material wealth and material science try 
 to force us to live in. If they are successful in creating such 
 
 40 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 a world as they seem disposed to create, I should be very 
 glad to be relieved from the necessity of living in it. 
 
 To my mind life is a thing of three dimensions. There is 
 no such thing as a straight line ; it is a mathematical fiction. 
 There is no such thing as a plane ; it is simply without sub- 
 stance. The only thing that really exists is the thing of 
 length and breadth and height ; and it seems to me that a 
 life without length and breadth and height loses its reality, 
 and ceases to be that which the Creator intended it to be. 
 Education is the drawing out of life, not merely in the acquis- 
 itive qualities of the fox, nor the predatory habits of the 
 w olf ; nor is it merely the cunning of psychologic information 
 about things that have been created, and which man after all 
 only discovers ; but life is the accumulation of those three 
 qualities of reverence^ which I think is placed suitably as a 
 first petition in the Lord's Prayer and without which there 
 can be no other life, sympathy, — sympathy for the inefficient 
 — and an eternal purpose, instead of the mere opportunism 
 of temporary gain. I feel that education in this country 
 under its present dominion is succeeding admirably in every 
 particular but one, and that one is that it fails to educate. 
 I feel that the record of the various countries of the world in 
 which, in the matter of solid and substantial books printed, 
 the United States is at the bottom of the list, except Spain, 
 and if you put Portugal with Spain is at the bottom of the 
 list, in a country that boasts of universal education is an in- 
 dictment upon the subversion of education from the true 
 purpose of giving length and breadth and height to human 
 character into merely training men into a kind of mechanical 
 Frankenstein. 
 
 We have it in all departments of life. I won't refer to 
 Presbyterians particularly. I differ from the former Presi- 
 dent of the United States. Most of the people that have 
 consigned me to those regions that he referred to I am sure 
 were not Presb^^terians because their language was of a char- 
 
 41 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 acter to indicate that they were very far from having any 
 religious tendencies or sympathies ; but my own judgment and 
 feeling is that we as a fraternity have a great function, in 
 the face of the present conditions of education in this coun- 
 try, to stand as I myself stood with regard to my own sons 
 and as I hope every member of Phi Beta Kappa stands with 
 regard to his : to maintain that whether they go on in a class- 
 ical education or not is their own responsibility, but that it 
 is my responsibility to see that they have the foundations of 
 it and know what it is so that they can go on with it if they 
 want to, and to maintain that a classical education is the 
 basis of culture and art and religion so far as its intellectual 
 side is concerned. 
 
 I know that when my mind goes back in retrospect over my 
 own college course and the various professors and instructors 
 rise before me in that reality which to those who have been 
 away some time and come back is the only reality (to me 
 the personality of those men who instructed me and those 
 men who prepared me for life's battle is real, and those who 
 now occupy the chairs may be realities to others, but they 
 are fictions to me) and as I recall those professors and in- 
 structors who prepared me there stands out, as I think there 
 stands out to every alumnus of Union of the days whereof I 
 speak, not so much the figure of those who prepared us in 
 natural science, not so much the figure of those who prepared 
 us in English literature and in geometry and differential cal- 
 culus, but there stands out in my mind tonight as I think of 
 my college course the figure of one who was the noblest Grecian 
 of them all, (applause) who more than any other member 
 of the faculty inspired reverence in his class room, reverence 
 when he took the service in chapel, reverence when we walked 
 with awful steps into his august presence ; and yet he did not 
 give us, I presume, any particular information that we have 
 used since, nor did he give us anything that seems to have 
 much connection with modern life, though to me it has a real 
 
 42 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 connection. You know it is a curious thing. Training hasn't 
 much relation as a rule to the thing you are trying to do. If 
 you were ever in a flat and listened to somebody above you 
 playing the scale on a piano you did not see much reference 
 to the symphony that you pay two dollars to go and listen 
 to in a music hall, and yet we all know that it is the discipline 
 of the scale that makes the accurate musician. And so I 
 believe in this case it was a love for truth, and insistence 
 upon accuracy in phrase and thought and expression, and 
 refusal to allow us to be slovenly in the rendering of a recita- 
 tion or in the way we conducted ourselves in the recitation 
 room that impressed us ; it was to my mind the love of truth 
 for truth's sake, not the love of truth because we were going 
 to make a few dimes by it, not the love of truth because we 
 were going to build a concrete dam by it, not the love of truth 
 because we were going to be promoted over our fellow men 
 by it, but the love of truth because truth is beautiful, and 
 because truth is truth, and because all error is abominable, 
 as we were told on many occasions when we made errors. I 
 believe that every person who attended Union and was privi- 
 leged to be under the instruction of Henry Whitehorne knows 
 in the bottom of his heart that it was the classical training 
 that he received that compelled him in after life to try to be 
 true to fact, and in the presentation of truth, whatever he 
 did, not to be slovenly. (Applause.) 
 
 In my gratitude to old Union, and in my embarrassment 
 that I feel in the position that I occupy as a member of Phi 
 Beta Kappa I am reminded of what he said to a brother of 
 mine who was the student of the family — I was not ; he said 
 to him, "You know your brother got along fairly well in col- 
 lege but he would not have done anything at all if he had not 
 been in a class that made him do it." (Laughter.) So, it 
 appears, what I do not owe to Professor Whitehorne I owe 
 to the class of '87 because of its unusual temper and quality ; 
 and I never disputed anything the dear old man said; if he 
 
 48 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 said it it must be so. And I wish tonight in speaking to the 
 Alpha Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa to lay a flower upon the 
 tomb of one whom I have never forgotten and whose memory 
 is as fresh to me today as it was the day when he said to our 
 class, "Get out of here, all of you. What do you know about 
 Greek?" And therefore what little I can contribute to this 
 occasion I wish to contribute by way of a tribute to the 
 memory of the one who, to my mind, was the best and the 
 truest instructor I ever had. (Applause.) 
 
 Dr. Duane: The next speaker that I am going to call 
 will give you an occasional poem. Perhaps you think that 
 by that I mean he makes a poem once every one hundred 
 years. If so you haven't caught the professional use of 
 words, and I must tell you that when you are dealing with 
 professors you have to be very careful in the use of words. 
 You know one professor — I won't say who it was — that 
 was caught once by his wife kissing the cook, when she 
 exclaimed in her indignation, "Professor, I am surprised," 
 said with some irritation, "Maria, I wish you would 
 ever learn the use of terms. I am surprised; you are aston- 
 ished." The occasional poem, I must tell you, is one that 
 is produced on occasions, and the occasions may recur, for 
 all we know, every minute ; at least we hope they may recur 
 very often with the gentleman whom I now present. Pro- 
 fessor John F. Genung of Amherst College, loyal son of 
 Union, scholar and poet. (Applause). 
 
 Professor Genung: Dr. Alexander** reminiscences yes- 
 terday of a similar celebration at Harvard University on 
 the one hundredth anniversary of their Alpha renewed in me 
 the pessimism that I felt on being asked to write some 
 verses for this occasion when he mentioned poets whose 
 names have become national, who have been identified with 
 Phi Beta Kappa — such men as Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 Charles Godfrey Leland, and he might have gone on to men- 
 tion Henry W. Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson and 
 James Russell Lowell among other names that have become 
 in some way identified with Phi Beta Kappa. And then to 
 be called on, one who has never professed to be a poet and 
 who has never written poems to amount to anything, as I 
 say renewed in me that sense of pessimism. 
 
 A Muse That Would Not Be Amusing. 
 
 I 
 
 When Brother Bennett laid his bland behest 
 On me, that I a stunt in verse should try, 
 
 I prayed my Muse, — the custom in such quest ; 
 
 She merely frowned and sulked, and said "Oh<?>n" 
 
 II 
 
 But something must be done, and she must aid, 
 And if she was perverse, how should I treat her? 
 I mauled and thumped, stern usage I essayed, 
 In the mistaken thought that I must ftijra. 
 
 ni 
 
 All to no purpose; so I pondered lone 
 
 How I by silly flatteries could entrap her; 
 
 I wheedled her as goddess to a throne, 
 
 I meant to crown her, — I could only udnTra. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Alas! my foolscap proved a handicap. 
 
 So sad the task to give poetic feet ease ; 
 To put in rhyme, believe me, is no snap, 
 
 V 
 
 Perhaps my choice was wrong ; I had called Thalia, 
 And to her sportive mood my suit was treason. 
 
 <^iKoGocpia bids for something higher; 
 If not to rhyme, she may respond to reason. 
 
 45 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 VI 
 
 Melpomene's the girl, she takes the trick, 
 For she has sway o'er rhyme and reason too; 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, she's tragic, for she'll stick 
 At naught that human wit can dare and do. 
 
 VII 
 
 So I transferred my plea to her, and found 
 
 At once, with wonder, that my theme ran clear; 
 
 Her sinewy song has a familiar sound, — 
 Alpha has sung it for a hundred year. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Think of the throng to whom through all that time 
 
 Philosophy has been the guide of life — 
 That goodly company who in prose or rhyme 
 
 Have sought life's highest values far from strife. 
 
 IX 
 
 If Alpha could extend her alphabet 
 
 World-wide, world-deep, to Omega, how soon 
 
 These crazy wars would cease ! — But no, for yet 
 The dawning light must broaden into noon, 
 
 X 
 
 When in full blaze the sun of Truth shall shine. 
 And Freedom's music peal o'er land and main, 
 
 When every sister of the tuneful Nine 
 
 Shall win her realm, and noblest suffrage gain. 
 
 XI 
 
 Our century is closing on a dawn 
 
 Whereon thick clouds have gathered ; our fair world 
 Of earth and sea and air with death is strawn. 
 
 And through the gloom fierce bolts of hate are hurled. 
 
 46 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 XII 
 
 But a new century opens. Stately forms 
 
 Of God's great purposes glimpse in the strife, 
 And Peace, the fairer for the weathered storms, 
 Shall bring to birth a larger, richer life. 
 
 XIII 
 
 Life longs for light, for cloudless truth and love ; 
 
 Forethought she craves for whatsoe'er betide. 
 She seeks the Wisdom that is from above ; — 
 
 Nor vain her quest, if she will trust her Guide, 
 
 XIV 
 
 Our Guide, whose hoary years declare her leal, 
 Wliile she in labyrinths of mind has wrought. 
 
 Leading from shadowy fancies to the real, 
 
 From idle glamours to the wealths of thought. 
 
 (Applause.) 
 
 Dr. Duane : I am now going to call upon a doctor. Now, 
 there are doctors and doctors. There is the doctor of medi- 
 cine whose mistakes the earth is said to cover. Then there is 
 the doctor of philosophy. His characteristics were well 
 described by one of the guild who said once that after getting 
 his degree, which he thought was a very fine one, he went 
 to Chicago and, while studying there, happened to occupy a 
 house that had been occupied by an M. D. One night at 
 midnight he was awakened by a clatter at the door and 
 sounds from below, like this: "I want to get in." "What do 
 you want to get in for?" "I want to see the doctor." "Oh, go 
 on ; he isn't the kind of doctor that would do anybody any 
 good." Now the doctor I am going to call upon is cer- 
 tainly not one whose mistakes the earth covers. And surely 
 I will not say of him that he is of the kind that will not do 
 anybody any good. He is one who to Phi Beta Kappa has 
 
 4T 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 rendered a faithful, laborious and valuable service. I call on 
 Doctor Oscar M. Voorhees, the secretary of the United 
 Chapters. 
 
 Dr. Voohees: Mr. Toastmaster and fellow members of 
 the Phi Beta Kappa: 
 
 I am glad indeed to have a part in this centennial celebra- 
 tion, of which, I am sure, v/c Dhall all Irave a very pleasant 
 recollection. I am here as the representative of the central 
 office who has a work to d(. of which most of you know little, 
 and about which you are not especially anxious to hear, and 
 yet concorning which every member of Phi Beta Kappa 
 should know something. 
 
 The United Chapters as an organization dates back to 
 1883, and the methods of the organization were then de- 
 termined by the necessities of the case. At that time the 
 most pressing problem was the matter of expansion. The 
 question had become acute because the Union Chapter de- 
 layed action on an application in behalf of Cornell. The 
 Harvard Chapter was then appealed to, and was of a mind 
 to take favorable action, but doubted its own authority, as 
 this was deemed to rest in the Alpha of New York. The 
 larger question of the relation of the chapters was dis- 
 cussed, and the necessity of some form of union became ap- 
 parent. The outcome was a fraternity convention in con- 
 nection with the centennial of the Harvard Chapter, held 
 August 1st, 1881, and in the end the organization of the 
 United Chapters in 1883. 
 
 The constitution devolved large responsibility upon the 
 secretary of the general organization. In his office all the 
 records are kept. Correspondence with applicants is in his 
 hands, and he must arrange for the meeting of the Senate 
 and Council. During the fifteen years that I have served in 
 this capacity thirty-nine chapters have come into being, and 
 the secretary has arranged for the organization of them 
 
 48 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 all. All new members are registered in his office ; there the 
 Phi Beta Kappa Key is edited, and efforts for the co- 
 ordination of chapter activities have their inception. The 
 work is constantly growing, and must continue to grow. 
 
 Methods were much simpler one hundred years ago when 
 the fifth branch of the society was organized at Union. 
 Some conditions peculiar to the time are worthy of mention. 
 Dr. Duane has told you of the Revolutionary conditions under 
 which Phi Beta Kappa came into being. The spirit of patri- 
 otism in the air had its influence upon the students at William 
 and Mary and led them to think of what they might do for 
 their country. So it was during the war of 1812 that the 
 first steps were taken looking to the organization of this 
 chapter. It was in 1813 that thirteen Union students made 
 application for the charter which was later granted. In 
 taking this step they sought the consent of Doctor Eliphalet 
 Nott, the president, and in the records of the Yale Chapter 
 you will find a copy of their letter with Doctor Nott's en- 
 dorsement and attestation of the high character of the young 
 men who then, in the midst of war, with patriotic as well as 
 scholastic intent, sought a charter of Phi Beta Kappa for 
 Union College. 
 
 Dartmouth and Plarvard quite promptly voted in favor of 
 granting the application. Yale took a little longer, more 
 than three years in fact, and when she did pass favorably 
 upon it, the young men who had signed the application had 
 been graduated and consequently were not in a position to 
 receive it. So the Yale Chapter looked around and found 
 three Phi Beta Kappa men of years and experience to whom 
 the charter was entrusted. Their leader was James Kent, 
 Yale, 1794, Chancellor of the State of New York, who became 
 even more distinguished in later years than he was then.* He 
 and two others, one a clergyman in Albany, and the other a 
 
 ♦See Phi Beta Kappa Key, Vol. 1, No. 3. 
 
 49 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 professor in Union College, received the charter and organized 
 the chapter, and the first thing they did was to elect President 
 Nott and several other distinguished men as foundation 
 members ; and the first thing that the foundation members 
 did after being initiated was to elect President Nott the first 
 president of the chapter. 
 
 Thus the destinies of the Alpha of New York were, at the 
 beginning, placed in the hands, not of undergraduates, but 
 of distinguished administrators who had attained wisdom by 
 experience, and who had a broader vision, perhaps, than 
 some others of what Phi Beta Kappa might become. I believe 
 that this placing of the destinies of the Alpha of New York 
 in the hands of these men of years and experience had a 
 large influence on the development of Phi Beta Kappa. As 
 Doctor Aleander so happily stated yesterday it lifted Phi 
 Beta Kappa out of the provincialism of New England and 
 gave it a national character. Then followed the election of 
 nearly one hundred honorary members, some of whom were 
 mentioned by Professor Bennett yesterday, men in the active 
 walks of life in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas and 
 Georgia, as well as distinguished men of New York. By 
 this means Phi Beta Kappa membership became more widely 
 disseminated, the society more generally known, and a broad 
 foundation was laid for the future in which we share today. 
 It is especially fitting that this contribution of the Union 
 Chapter to Phi Beta Kappa's development should be re- 
 called on this occasion. 
 
 There is another fact of importance to which reference has 
 not hitherto been made. This chapter exerted quite a de- 
 cided influence in the organization of the United Chapters, 
 and it exerted that influence largely through John A. De 
 Remer. There are those who will recall him. I first met him 
 at the council of 1901, over which he presided. I recall his 
 courtliness, his grace, his dignity. These qualities were es- 
 
 50 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 pecially appropriate, for the council met in the Court of Ap- 
 peals room in Saratoga Springs. The intercourse I had with 
 him afterward, when he was preident and I was secretary, 
 confirmed those early impressions. Mr. De Remer was chosen 
 to attend the Harvard Centennial in 1881 and the subse- 
 quent meetings that resulted in the organization of the 
 United Chapters. He was present at them all, I think ; was 
 chosen a senator at the organiaztion of the United Chapters ; 
 was elected vice-president; and then served as president un- 
 til his death. This influence of Mr. De Remer, as represen- 
 tative of the Alpha of New York, is especially worthy of 
 mention at this time; and his influence on the development 
 of the United Chapters should not be forgotten by this 
 chapter. 
 
 Phi Beta Kappa occupies a very remarkable position in 
 the educational world today. There is no other organization 
 that approaches it. Its reputation is largely due to the high 
 character and the distinguished activities of the men and 
 women who have had the privilege of wearing the golden key. 
 The reputation of its members, following scholarly attain- 
 ments while in college, has given Phi Beta Kappa its present 
 unique position; and that reputation will not decline, I am 
 sure, so long as high ideals of service are kept before its 
 growing membership. In every walk of life where worthy 
 service is being rendered we find our Phi Beta Kappa mem- 
 bers in earnest leadership. At times we may agree with them ; 
 at other times we may not. There may be differences of re- 
 ligious views or philosophical conceptions, as represented 
 here this evening, but these do not interfere when service is 
 the touchstone. A deeper interest and wider fraternity helps 
 correlate the varied efforts of Phi Beta Kappa men and 
 women. 
 
 We all recall how a few years ago three valiant soldiers, all 
 members of Phi Beta Kappa, were in the Federal arena, each 
 
 51 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 one trying to make the country believe that his method of 
 bringing the millennum ought to be accepted. Our distin- 
 guished and weighty brother, who has just spoken, was one of 
 the three. He represented Yale. Theodore Roosevelt from 
 Harvard was the second, and the third, Woodrow Wilson, 
 that scholarly man from Princeton, who received his Phi 
 Beta key at Wesleyan, won out in that triangular contest. 
 Those of us who knew the situation did not worry much re- 
 specting the outcome for we knew that whatever the result a 
 Phi Beta Kappa man would occupy the presidential chair. A 
 similar situation presented itself last fall, and we knew that 
 Mr. Hughes, if he won, would carry his Phi Beta Kappa key 
 with him into the White House as he carried it all through the 
 contest. So it was with the vice-presidential candidates ; both 
 the Republican and Democratic candidates were members of 
 Phi Beta Kappa. 
 
 I could mention many distinguished names on our roll, but 
 that is not necessary. I will say only this in addition, that 
 Union has furnished two Phi Beta Kappa presidents, and in 
 this respect rivals Harvard. Harvard furnished John 
 Quincy Adams and Theodore Roosevelt. Union furnished 
 Martin Van Buren and Chester A. Arthur. I am of 
 the opinion that most Union men have forgotten that 
 Martin Van Buren was ever elected to membership in 
 this chapter, but this is a fact; and hence you have the 
 honor of having furnished two presidents of the United 
 States. How many more you will furnish in the years to 
 come who can say? (Applause.) 
 
 There is one important fact that I should like to mention, 
 and that is that our first Phi Beta Kappa president was 
 really the author of the Monroe Doctrine, for you all know 
 that John Quincy Adams had much to do with that important 
 document. Our present Phi Beta Kappa president has pro- 
 posed a Monroe Doctrine for the world, and it may not be 
 
 52 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 beyond the lifetime of some of us when this great idea, that 
 has been incorporated in recent state papers, shall become a 
 a basal principle in the diplomacy of the world. At any 
 rate, whatever the outcome may be, we know that the hands 
 that have penned some of these great documents are of men 
 ^\ho have been proud to call themselves members of our 
 fraternity. 
 
 This occasion will long be remembered. One hundred 
 years is a long period, and yet in world history it is a com- 
 paratively brief time. For an organization of this sort it 
 is an important period. Very few chapters, only three in fact, 
 have had the privilege of celebrating such an event. All who 
 are here will be very glad, I am sure, to possess a report of 
 these proceedings. I trust you will be equally interested to 
 know what is going on in the Phi Beta Kappa world. 
 
 I have here a copy of the book entitled Representative 
 Phi Beta Kappa Orations which was edited by Professor 
 Clark S. Northup of Cornell, one of our Phi Beta Kappa 
 senators. In it have been gathered together twenty-six rep- 
 resentative orations, beginning in the early days and coming 
 down to the present time. The last one was by Professor 
 Paul Shorey, delivered in 1910, and the one just preceding 
 was by Woodrow Wilson, delivered a year earlier when he 
 was Governor of New Jersey. It would be easy to assemble 
 material for half a dozen similar volumes of Phi Beta 
 Kappa orations, and I am sure, that when the next volume 
 is published you will want to see included the forceful and 
 appropriate oration that was delivered yesterday by Doctor 
 Alexander. (Applause.) 
 
 There is one further line of development in which I trust 
 you will all be interested. We are hoping one of these days 
 to have suitable Phi Beta Kappa headquarters. During the 
 fifteen years that I have served the fraternity as general 
 secretary the headquarters of the United Chapters have 
 
 53 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 been in my study, furnished gratutiously by the congrega- 
 tions that I have served. This you will recognize as en- 
 tirely anomalous. Phi Beta Kappa has been at no charge 
 for light or heat or for other overhead expenses until recent- 
 ly. It has received these things gratutiously. For an organiza- 
 tion of over thirty-two thousand members this seems not 
 entirely appropriate. Not that I or my congregations have 
 thought of asking anything in the way of rental. The serv- 
 ice has been granted cheerfully. The conditions have re- 
 mained thus because the matter has never been brought with 
 sufficient force to the attention of the fraternity. I have 
 spoken of it in my reports to the last few councils, and as 
 a result a member living in New York has made an offer of 
 $25,000 toward a headquarters endowment fund of $100,000, 
 provided the balance, $75,000, be raised during the current 
 year. The income of the fund is to be used to maintain 
 suitable headquarters in the City of New York. I trust 
 that enough Union men will be interested to help the fund 
 along, and that you will do your share to help provide a 
 place where the work of the central office may be done more 
 efficiently, and where members who visit the city may come 
 to examine the treasures that will be displayed there. If 
 we could assemble the portraits of the distinguished mem- 
 bers, men and women, the members of the Senate, those 
 who have delivered orations, and others who have attained 
 prominence, we should have a worthy collection indeed. If 
 we could get together copies of all books published by our 
 Phi Beta Kappa members we should indeed have a remarkable 
 library. When we have room to display other treasures 
 and memorabilia, which we know to be available, we shall 
 have an exhibit of far-reaching interest. Why should not 
 this be done? It must be done. 
 
 I believe that the time has come to make a beginning, and 
 I hope that, when I shall have finished my work at the 
 end of this triennium, I shall be privileged to pass it over 
 
 54i 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 to a successor better able to carry it on than I have been, 
 and that he will have a suitable office in which to do his 
 work, so that Phi Beta Kappa will no longer be an almoner 
 of the bounty of some church or congregation but will be 
 properly housed and in a position to foster a worthy life 
 in all the chapters of our beloved fraternity. (Applause.) 
 
 Dr. Duane: Gentlemen, the last speaker I shall present 
 to you is one whom I know you will all be very glad to hear, 
 one whom I have reserved for the last because I thought 
 that we should have the best at the last. I call on one who 
 has presided for years over the destinies of the Phi Beta 
 Kappa, presided with dignity, efficiency, to the satisfaction 
 of all. Doctor Grosvenor, president of the United Chapters 
 of Phi Beta Kappa. (Applause.) 
 
 Dr. Grovesnor (in part) : Mr. President and fellow 
 members of the Phi Beta Kappa: 
 
 Permit me at the very beginning, because there are so 
 many things which I wish to speak upon and at the same 
 time I do not want to tax your patience too greatly, to 
 refer to my dear friend and associate and colleague, Doctor 
 Voorhees. No words of mine can pay the tribute that is 
 his due for his efficiency, his ability, his energy and his 
 devotion. No man in the history of Phi Beta Kappa has 
 rivaled the work which he has done for this organization. 
 It has been constant, unremitting; and he has given not only 
 of his time and of his labor and of his thought but he has 
 made his home, that pastor's study, the study of a busy 
 pastor in the Metropolitan district, the headquarters of this 
 fraternity. Men may come and men may go; presidents 
 are only inferior spokes in a revolving wheel; the necessity 
 of Phi Beta Kappa is that one should be at the real head 
 like my dear friend, Doctor Voorhees. 
 
 65 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 It is my distinguished honor on behalf of the eighty-eight 
 other chapters to bring to the Alpha of New York con- 
 gratulations on this great and memorable occasion. I never 
 feel so humble as when I rise on an occasion like this, repre- 
 senting the office that I hold, because the president speaks 
 from his official position with the significance, with the com- 
 prehensiveness, that cannot attach to any other officer, and 
 I know that from the gates of California to the coast of 
 Maine, way down to the Gulf of Mexico and up to the shores 
 of the neighboring Dominion of Canada the congratulations 
 are hearty and sincere, and in those congratulations we take 
 delight and pride. 
 
 ************ 
 
 And now for reminiscences. I graduated long, long ago 
 from Amherst College, and in the Amherst College of my 
 day there was a romantic interest attaching to the very 
 name of Union which we felt for hardly any other institution 
 in the country. I do not know why it is that Union held 
 that place which it occupied as a dispensary of blessings 
 over the land in the foundation of fraternities, inasmuch 
 as so many of them were first born here, and as the dis- 
 pensary of chapters of Phi Beta Kappa ; I do not know what 
 there is in your circumstances, in your environment, what 
 there is in the spirit of this institution; but Union has had 
 a larger influence than any other college in the country in 
 disseminating Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Beta Kappa prin- 
 ciples and then in stimulating those fraternal bonds which 
 were so strong in the fraternities and in these later days 
 are so strong in the sororities ; and I come here wearing for 
 the first time in the presence of a Phi Beta Kappa gather- 
 ing my Psi Upsilon badge. In Amherst we sang that song 
 "A solid rock on which to build" ; and again we sang a song 
 "From distant Union's classic hills." There was, as I say, 
 in the name of Union College something that stimulated 
 and that inspired. 
 
 56 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 And then there was the wonderful career of your il- 
 lustrious Doctor Nott, a man who was human above every- 
 thing else, and the humanities are the foundation and the 
 hope of Phi Beta Kappa. I wonder whether in the history 
 of this institution there has been any other college presi- 
 dent who has had such an opportunity and has used that op- 
 portunity so well. 
 
 With another Union president I had intellectual relations 
 which came very near defeating me at a prior period of my 
 life. There were ten or twelve candidates for appointment 
 to Robert College, Constantinople, I among them. The 
 argument was brought up at the meeting of the trustees of 
 that respected institution that no man from Amherst was 
 fit to be sent abroad because he was sure to be filled with 
 the Hickokian philosophy. Doctor Hickok, shortly after- 
 ward 3^our president, then a teacher in the philosophical de- 
 partment, a writer of many works, afterwards came to 
 Amherst. He ended his days there, I think, in the home 
 that afterwards was in the possession of my beloved and 
 reverend friend, Professor Genung, whose delightful and 
 stimulating poem to-night we have listened to with so much 
 pleasure. But one gentleman on this board of trustees said, 
 "I never knew of a college student who came out from his 
 alma mater filled with philosophy that did not get entirely 
 over it in the space of six months, and Mr. Grovesnor, I 
 imagine, will prove no exception to that." At any rate, 
 despite this one association with Union that might have 
 worked to my detriment, nevertheless I was appointed. 
 
 The pleasure which I have had to-day I can hardly ex- 
 press. I want to thank you, sir (Dr. Duane), for your 
 delicate and constant courtly kindness and attention to me 
 during the time that I have been here. The pleasure that 
 I have had in grasping hands and then in wandering 
 through these almost unrivaled scenes ! One scene at least 
 is without a peer in my experience, and that is the Jackson 
 
 67 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 Garden, as you call it; but the garden that stands up 
 in my memory and will stand up forever is the loveliest spot 
 I ever saw upon this earth, over which I have traveled widely, 
 in the combination of nature with the touch of art and of 
 sympathy, wherein every hand that was put upon a plant 
 or flower seems to have been a hand of love. I cannot con- 
 ceive under the face of God's heaven anything more exquisite 
 than that indescribable, ahnost inconceivable, except as you 
 breathe this air and luxuriate in it, I cannot conceive of any- 
 thing more exquisite, more celestial than that wonderful 
 spot. 
 
 Phi Beta Kappa was born in a storm. It was born in 
 the time of great war. * * * * Doctor Voorhees has referred 
 here to the first effort that was made to establish a chapter at 
 Union, again under that stimulus; and after all, despite 
 its horrors, there is nothing that so stimulates, so exalts 
 the mind and so appeals to the spirit of imagination in 
 youth as does contest, and the greater the contest the 
 greater the longing of the young men, like that youthful 
 Roman, Horatius Codes, to throw themselves into the abyss 
 and to save their city and save their land and to save their 
 honor. We are at a time like that to-day. * * * * And there 
 has been no deterioration. Let us not dream of the golden 
 days when we have the golden present. Let us not think of the 
 scenes into which young men flung themselves in the devo- 
 tion of Nathan Hale as something that is extinct. As young 
 men flock to the feast, so young men, and above all college 
 young men fling themselves at the call of their country. 
 The last college fraternity gathering that I attended was 
 last Tuesday evening at our chapter house of the Psi 
 Upsilon fraternity in Amherst. Seventeen were present. 
 Twenty-seven had already gone and five were to leave with 
 the Amherst unit on the following Saturday. Here at 
 Union I went into the chapter house of my fraternity with 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 the reverence of a pilgrim. It is in the same place where a 
 few struck out the spark from which our chapter has been 
 inflamed, our chapters of my fraternity have been inflamed, 
 and they took me into the dining room; twenty-four seats 
 at one long table, one at the end shorter; and they said, 
 "They have all gone from that table. There are none sitting 
 there where the ten were." They pointed to the other table 
 and they said, "They have all gone but the seven of us that 
 remain here." And so they have gone out, and, thank God, 
 that is the story this whole country over. There is no 
 monopoly by the Alpha of New York. There is no monopoly 
 by Phi Beta Kappa. There is no monopoly even by the 
 colleges and universities of the country of young men and 
 young devotion and other sacrifice. 
 
 We are in the midst of this war. We shrank from it. 
 We endured wrong and outrage and insult and we still hoped 
 and waited. Our long-suffering president was derided 
 through the length and breadth of the Republic for 
 poltroonery, and the vast majority of the American people 
 stood with him. Nothing, nothing, nothing but the utmost 
 shame and dishonor should plunge us over the precipice 
 into the hell of war. And at last, at last we plunged in. I 
 went out to Illinois, to Indiana and visited several colleges 
 in the West during the months of February and January 
 of this year, and I hardly found a single person who did not 
 feel that peace with dishonor was preferable to war in 
 behalf of that which we call honor. But when at last in 
 ringing language that will echo as long as time endures the 
 President of the United States came forward on April 2nd, 
 then the whole nation stood with him, and there has been no 
 spectacle in American history of such unanimity as that 
 which exists to-day. I said something about politics to 
 President Richmond to-night. "Oh," he said, "I can't think 
 of politics now; there is only Americanism." Perish the 
 Democratic Party, perish the Republican Party, the Social- 
 
 59 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 ist Party, any party! They have all perished and there 
 stands out the majesty of a united people. We are simply 
 Americans, Americans all. (Applause.) In that strong 
 demonstration which was made by your alumni this morning 
 those flags had the significance which they have not had 
 since 1898, and even in 1898 we were engaged in a struggle 
 that was relatively bagatelle. 
 
 In all human history there never has been an hour like 
 the present hour, even as there never has been such marshall- 
 ing of forces on one side or the other. On one side a 
 practically united world, a world responsive to the leadership 
 of the President of the United States and of the people of 
 whom he is the chosen representative. From farthest China 
 to southern South America, up to the Arctic circle, every- 
 where, except in that stretch of land from the Baltic and 
 the North Sea, several hundred miles long, diagonally across 
 Europe, bringing in the effete Austrian Empire, the satellite 
 Bulgarian, only waiting to decide as to which would pay the 
 bigger price and would offer the larger opportunity, and 
 then through the unspeakable Ottoman Empire, across the 
 Bosporus and the Marmora, through the devastated 
 ridges of Asia Minor, through Turkestan and Armenia, 
 down through Mesopotamia between the Tigris and the 
 Euphrates, all dominated by imperialism and by the Prus- 
 sian — not the German, although the Germans are in- 
 oculated with the virus — dominated by the Prussian autoc- 
 racy and militarism. There alone is the black spot on the 
 world's surface. In the forces that believe in that sublime 
 sentence uttered by a great Virginian, and carved in some- 
 thing more lasting than marble, "Governments derive their 
 just powers from the consent of the governed," and re- 
 peated again by another great American in messages sent, 
 the last of them all to Russia, we have the sum of the prin- 
 ciple for which one side fights. 
 
 60 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 So there is not only a United States but there is a united 
 world. The Ambassador of Argentine told me at a gathering 
 of Phi Beta Kappa not long ago that, when the President 
 called together the representatives of the ABC republics, 
 for the first time South America began to believe that the 
 great republic of the north was sincerely her friend, and 
 the troops of Mexico flocked to the border to enter the 
 American Army. They all did. We came into the struggle 
 not for humanity originally, not to down those things that 
 we detest abroad, but first of all to maintain our own 
 dignity and our own honor; and then the individual 
 withers and the world is more and more, and the 
 advantage of the United States and the interest of the 
 United States and the mere honor of the United States 
 shrivels, and the great world stands up, and in the provi- 
 dence of God the United States of America is the cham- 
 pion that comes when France is bleeding to her death, 
 when Great Britain is almost on her knees, when the great 
 giant of the East, released from his prison, is staggering 
 and doubtful in the light that beats upon him. * * * * 
 
 We fought once believing that we would not submit to 
 an authority from abroad, and when we flung out that 
 flag, as you flung out that flag to-day so splendidly as 
 it unfolded in the air that seemed to welcome it, we did 
 it simply for ourselves. We had no thought of the rest of 
 the world. Governments derive their just powers from the 
 consent of the governed meant simply that thirteen in- 
 significant clusters of colonists along the Atlantic would 
 be governed by themselves. * * * * And then through the 
 years we have gone on developing until we stand out with 
 fabulous opportunities and with fabulous power, and the 
 horizon is widened and widened and the world grown bigger 
 and bigger, and in God's great time we are the champions 
 of mankind. The first battle was fought last Tuesday. 
 Stupendous victory ! Nothing in human vision had ever 
 
 61 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 beheld such a scene, when at over fifty thousand different 
 places, with small disorder, with never a riot except from 
 escaped convicts from a prison, almost ten million men, the 
 flower, the pride of manhood, between the ages of twenty- 
 one and thirty-one, inscribed their names. Protests came 
 from, I regret to say — I regret to use such a term as 
 college — protests came from the college, the Anti-im- 
 perialistic League and from some members of the United 
 Workers of the World and from the International Workers 
 of the World, for whom I can have some compassion, I 
 can have some sympathy; but I cannot express adequately 
 my detestation and abhorrence of the teachings which 
 young men and young women had received in colleges and 
 universities that prompted them in their youth, their 
 callow inexperience, to accept office in an organization so 
 destitute of anything like an appreciation of and of loyalty 
 to our democratic systems of administration and of gov- 
 ernment. Nevertheless the ten million mardiing along 
 to the designated places as a matter of fact, without any 
 ceremony, simply as a matter of course — and that was the 
 attitude, as a matter of course — and putting their names 
 down knowing that they were to go forth when the Presi- 
 dent called and sacrifice their lives in the trenches or on 
 the sea or in the air was a scene too sublime for any ex- 
 pression in words. 
 
 And now comes the second battle, the first echo. It echoed 
 to the throne of the Kaiser in vibrations of the air. There 
 was the manifestation of what America meant. America, 
 this mighty, this gigantic, conglomeration of all natural re- 
 sources, of all the capability of human intellect and train- 
 ing, in all the majesty of youth, was slow to get into action, 
 and yet was resistless when once in motion. And now comes 
 this second battle; and that is the battle of the Liberty 
 Loan. Do you think that Herr Zimmerman and his 
 Excellency, the German Chancellor, and his Majesty, the 
 
 62 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 German Emperor, are not watching whether spontaneously 
 the Americans will spring forward from their thousands of 
 millions of accumulated capital and constantly increasing 
 earnings to make up that loan? Will it be said on June 15th 
 that the American people have responded, that in the 
 various outer sections of the country they have been true 
 to the unexampled record of our metropolitan city in sub- 
 scribing one thousand million dollars, not thrown away 
 but invested, because they know that there is no other 
 credit that is so strong as the credit of the national gov- 
 ernment? Do you think, when that is flashed abroad, it 
 will not be like the sting of another defeat? 
 
 There are two things that give the German Emperor 
 confidence, confidence that is mistaken, confidence never- 
 theless by which we can believe he is striving to buoy up his 
 sinking spirits and his sinking hopes and from which he 
 would derive means for beguiling still longer that noble 
 German people who to-day are enemies but who, we hope, 
 in time will be our friends, and those two factors are the 
 United States of America and Russia. For the first I have 
 no word to say. We have our own judgment and we know 
 that America has not failed in a crisis; so she will not in 
 a greater crisis. We know that she has pledged the 
 utmost resources of the Republic to carrying to a successful 
 issue this conflict. Do we not know that America in the 
 hour of trial will be true? What is the use for us to linger 
 upon that? * * * * 
 
 And then comes the council chamber of the nations 
 wherein we sit not as mere spectators, not as mere mem- 
 bers invited by courtesy to express our opinions. * * * * And 
 then the fruition, politically a new heaven and a new earth, 
 the triumph of principles. * * * * And then, when the time 
 comes that the sub-nation, the small as well as the great, is to 
 have justice done, and each nation is to be ruled by those 
 whom it prefers, perhaps not ruled so well as some foreign na- 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 tion would rule it, but following the principle of Lincoln, be- 
 lieving as Lincoln did that no one can be wise enough to rule 
 another against his will and, to carry it on, that no one nation 
 is wise enough, just enough, to rule another nation against 
 its will; believing that, then there stands forth a new map 
 under this new heaven and on this new earth. There stands 
 the justice, the justice for Ireland as well as for Poland, the 
 justice for Finland, for Bohemia, for these various lands 
 that have strangely been able to keep the principle of na- 
 tionality alive, that have kept that Promethean fire that 
 would not die, that would not become cold ashes but was 
 always burning, burning, burning. 
 
 In that great day we shall be able to look back and see 
 that the Phi Beta Kappa men have had their distinguished 
 ))art. What is the fundamental principle of our fraternity.? 
 It is service. What was it that these young men at Williams- 
 burg wrote into their constitution? Wliat are those three 
 stars to which we point upon our key? Friendship, moral- 
 ity, culture, language, literature, whatever you please. 
 And, just as through time the Phi Beta Kappa men hav? 
 been the foremost in throwing themselves wherever they 
 were most needed, so the Phi Beta Kappa men to-day, what- 
 ever their age, whatever their opportunity, are doing their 
 part. 
 
 I take now the statistics; at Amherst as my own college. 
 What do I find? That the proportion of the Phi Beta 
 Kappa men who rushed in 1861 to save the Union was 
 something like two to one as compared with those gentlemen 
 who were not members of the Phi Beta Kappa. And of 
 those who wore the general's stars and the insignia of office 
 when the war was done I think from Amherst everyone of 
 our few generals and all of our many colonels except two were 
 Phi Beta Kappa men. * * * * All through the East you will 
 find stones, circular stones, flat stones; and on these stones 
 will be names, Nelos, Nicodemus, and so on ; simply a name ; 
 
 64 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 a dead stone and a dead name. What do you know about 
 these people? Nothing. Just a name. They did something. 
 We don't know what. The name was inscribed there. In 
 Phi Beta Kappa thirty-two thousand men and women arc 
 not simply a collection of such stones as that. Phi Beta 
 Kappa is vital ; it is effective ; and in it are concentrated all 
 those spirits that combine to redeem the world. (Applause.) 
 
 Dr. Duane : So long as Phi Beta Kappa holds to the prin- 
 ciples that Doctor Grosvenor has so eloquently enunciated, 
 so long will Phi Beta Kappa endure. That it will hold to 
 them, who can doubt? And when our next centennial comes, 
 we shall not be there; but others will be there to celebrate 
 in the spirit in which we are celebrating here to-night. 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, I declare the ceremonies finished. 
 
 ■m^m 
 
 65 
 
PHI BETA KAPPA 
 
 SONG TO OLD UNION 
 Air : Sparkling and Bright 
 
 Let the Grecian dream of his sacred stream 
 
 And sing of the brave adorning 
 That Phoebus weaves from his laurel leaves 
 
 At the golden gates of morning; 
 But the brook that bounds through Union's grounds 
 
 Gleams bright as the Delphic water 
 And a prise as fair as a God may wear 
 
 Is a dip from our Alma Mater. 
 
 Chorus: Then here's to thee, the brave and free. 
 Old Union smiling o'er us; 
 And for many a day as thy walls grow grey 
 May they ring with thy children's chorus. 
 
 Could our praises throng on the waves of song. 
 
 Like an Orient fleet gem-bringing, 
 We would bear to thee the Argosy 
 
 And crown thee with pearls of singing. 
 But thy smile beams down beneath a crown 
 
 Whose glory asks no other; 
 We gather it not from the green sea-grot — 
 
 'Tis the love we bear our mother! 
 
 Let the joy that falls from thy dear old walls 
 
 Unchanged brave Time's on-darting 
 And our only tear fall once a year 
 
 On hands that clasp ere parting. 
 And when other throngs shall sing thy songs 
 
 And their spell once more hath bound us, 
 Our faded hours shall revive their flowers 
 
 And the past shall live around us. 
 
 FiTz Hugh Ludlow, '56. 
 
 66 
 
CENTENARY OF ALPHA OF N. Y. 
 
 REUNION ODE 
 
 Air: America 
 
 Brothers! We're here once more — 
 Not as in days of yore, 
 
 When life was young. 
 And 'mid that morning light, 
 Hope, as an angel bright. 
 Before our raptured sight 
 
 Her visions hung. 
 
 Home of our early thought! 
 Where, hand in hand, we sought 
 
 Knowledge and truth. 
 Receive us back again. 
 Coming, as care-worn men, 
 As you received us then 
 
 In early youth. 
 
 Some are not with us here — 
 Their mem'ry claims a tear — 
 
 The hallowed dead! 
 To brighter worlds now flown. 
 Their work of life well done. 
 For noble thoughts were sown 
 
 Ere they had fled. 
 
 Here let us pledge our truth, 
 As erst in early youth. 
 
 Faithful to be! 
 The honored name we bear. 
 The holy trusts we share. 
 Claim that we do and dare 
 
 All manfully. 
 
 A higher life to live, 
 More precious gifts to give; 
 
 This is our part: 
 That when our work is done, 
 And we the prize have won. 
 We, like the setting sun. 
 
 May hence depart. 
 
 » 
 
 5*0 say we all of us, 
 So say we all of us. 
 
 So say we all; 
 So say we all of us. 
 So say we all of us, 
 So say we all of us, 
 
 So say we all. 
 
 Henry Phiup Tappan, '25 
 
 67 
 
TERRACE SONG 
 Air : A Little More Cider 
 
 Ye Union boys, whose pipes are lit, 
 
 Come forth in merry throng; 
 Upon the terrace let us sit, 
 
 And cheer our hearts with song ; 
 Old Prcx may have his easy-chair — 
 
 The Czar may have his throne — 
 Their cushions can get worse for zvear, 
 
 But not our seat of stone. 
 
 This grand old seat of stone. 
 This jolly seat of stone. 
 Then here's to thee, right merrily, 
 Thou grand old seat of stone. 
 
 'Twas here the old Alumni sat 
 
 On balmy nights of yore; 
 And many voices joined in chat, 
 
 Whose music rings no more; 
 From many a lip the spirals curled. 
 
 But, when they rolled away, 
 The smoker went into the world. 
 
 And come no more for aye. 
 
 But thou, old seat of stone, 
 
 Thou jolly seat of stone. 
 
 The changing year still finds thee here, 
 
 Thou grand old seat of stone. 
 
 And when we all shall have our "Dips," 
 
 In shining sheets of tin. 
 Let no one, with irreverent lips. 
 
 Against thee dare to sin; 
 A cobbler's bench — a congress seat — 
 
 May rest our trotters yet. 
 But thou, old Terrace, can't be beat 
 
 By any we shall get. 
 
 Thou gay old seat of stone, 
 
 Thou dear old seat of stone, 
 
 May smoke and song float o'er thee long, 
 
 Thou grand old seat of stone! 
 
 When Captain Jack, has seen his plants 
 
 In bloom a few times more. 
 Some boys, who sport our altered pants. 
 
 Will knock at Union's door', 
 And when the Tutes have let them in, 
 
 Old Terrace, thou shall see 
 Them sitting where their dads have been. 
 
 And singing over thee; . 
 
 For thou, old seat of stone, 
 Thou dear old seat of stone — 
 To- thee shall be our legacy 
 Thou grand old seat of stone. 
 
 FiTz Hugh Ludlow, '56. 
 
^imin^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA UBRARY