RATIVE EXERCISES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 OF THE PRESIDENCY OF 
 
 JAMES K. PATTERSON 
 
 STATE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY 
 FRIDAY, JUNl 1, lt09.
 
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 (Eulane ?Hnibersfitp, ^eto (l^rleanji
 
 
 ^ Addresses delivered at exercises in commemora- 
 
 ,^ tion of the forty years' service of President James 
 
 ^' Kennedy Patterson, as President of the State 
 
 il. University of Kentucky, held on the University 
 
 campus, on June 1st, 1909, from 4 p. m. to 7 p m. 
 
 o'clock. 
 
 ^ Judge James H. Mulligan presided at the exer- 
 
 cises. 
 
 Eev. David W. Moffatt, D. D., pastor Emeritus 
 First Presbyterian Church, of Fort Wayne, Ind.,. 
 o opened the exercises by prayer. 
 
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 451843
 
 J^rngram 
 
 Judge James H. Mulligan, Presiding. 
 University Glee Club. 
 
 SPEAKERS 
 Governor Augustus E. Willson, Frankfort, Ky. 
 
 Judge Henry S. Barker, 
 
 Of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, 
 
 Louisville, Ky. 
 
 Hon. Cassius M. Clay, 
 
 Of the Board of Trustees, 
 
 Paris, Ky. 
 
 Rev. David Wm. Moffatt, D. D., 
 
 Pastor Emeritus First Presbyterian Church, 
 
 Fort Wayne, Ind. 
 
 Hon. Jerry Sullivan, 
 
 Member of Board of Regents of Eastern Ky. Normal 
 School, Richmond, Ky. 
 
 Rev. Charles Lee Reynolds, D. D., 
 
 Pastor Second Presbyterian Cliurch, 
 
 Lexington, Ky. 
 
 Rev. Joshua B. Garrett, 
 
 Professor of Greek, Hanover College, 
 
 Hanover, Ind. 
 
 Dean William T. Capers, 
 
 Christ Church Cathedral, 
 
 Lexington, Ky. 
 
 Dr. Arthur Yeager, 
 
 President of Georgetown College, 
 
 Georgetown, Ky.
 
 Professor Henry H. Cherry, 
 
 President of the Western Ky. Normal School, 
 
 Bowling Green, Ky. 
 
 Rev. Richard Henry Crossfield, D., D., 
 
 President of Transylvania University, 
 
 Lexington, Ky. 
 
 Rev. Isa.\c J. Spencer, D. D., 
 
 Pastor of Central Cliristian Church, 
 
 Lexington, Ky. 
 
 Dr. F. W. Hinett, 
 
 President of Central University, 
 
 Danville, Ky. 
 
 Rev. Edwin Muli.er, D. D., 
 
 Pastor First Presbyterian Church, 
 
 Lexington, Ky. 
 
 Professor John T. Faig, 
 
 University of Cincinnati, 
 
 Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 Virgil Y. Moorf., University Student. 
 
 Alpha Hubkard, University Student. 
 
 Professor James G. White, 
 
 State University, 
 
 Lexington, Ky. 
 
 RESPONSE 
 President James Kennedy Patterson. 
 
 Professor William B. Smith, Ph. D., 
 Of Tulane University, 
 
 New Orleans, La.
 
 Contents! 
 
 Address of Judge Mulligan 9 
 
 Address of Governor Willson 14 
 
 Address of Judge Barker 17 
 
 Address of Hon. C. M. Clay 23 
 
 Address of Rev. D. W. Moffatt 37 
 
 Address of Hon. Jerry Sullivan 32 
 
 Address of Rev. C. L. Reynolds 35 
 
 Address of Rev. J. B. Garrett 38 
 
 Address of Dean W. T. Capers 41 
 
 Address of Dr. Arthur Yager 43 
 
 Address of Prof. H. H. Cherry 46 
 
 Address of Prof. J. T. Faig 53 
 
 Address of Dr. Hinett 57 
 
 Address of Rev. Edwin Muller 60 
 
 Address of Rev. I. J. Spencer 63 
 
 Remarks of Mr. V. P. Moore 67 
 
 Address of Mr. Alpha Hubbard 70 
 
 Remarks of Prof. Jas. G. White 73 
 
 President Patterson's Reply 76 
 
 An Appreciation — W. B. Smith, LL. D 83
 
 labtirefis; of STutige UJuHigau in 0ptn\nQ 
 
 Our Honored Guest, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 
 
 3N the course of a life time which is beginning 
 to touch where the shadows fall, I have 
 by chance unworthily been the recipient at 
 times of honors far beyond my merit; but I wish 
 to say as briefly as possible that never in my 
 career have I been so keenly and sensibly touched 
 as has been done in giving me the honor of pre- 
 siding on this momentous occasion. 
 
 Forty years is a long span in one's affairs. Forty 
 years of continuous endeavor, of ceaseless labor 
 and travail, forty years crowned at every step by 
 the triumph of great things accomplished, is some- 
 thing very unusual. 
 
 At the outset I might say that when I secured 
 by close competition the honor of presiding over 
 this meeting it was with the distinct understanding 
 that I should make no speech. Therefore, in view 
 of the shortness of the time, while you will be 
 beautifully and eloquently entertained — touchingly 
 entertained, if you fail to hear what you consider 
 a really great oration, lay it to the door of those 
 who so restricted me on this occasion. 
 
 This is a unique occasion, such an one, I dare say, 
 as none present ever attended before — celebrating 
 forty years of continuous service in a great and a 
 noble work. Forty years marked at every step by 
 
 9
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 willing sacrifice, marvelous ability, and what is 
 greater, forty years almost without friction, or 
 without friction worthy of mention, and crowned 
 at last by the great success which rests on the head 
 of the guest of to-day. (Applause.) 
 
 Surely a man must not only be a great man, 
 but he must be better than that — he must have 
 been a good man who could so follow the even 
 tenor of his way, continually rising higher and 
 higher with every step — and yet think of it! this 
 man came from Indiana. He must be a very good 
 man. He is unquestionably that, and it needs no 
 words of mine to say that he is a very great man, to 
 have accomplished that which President Patterson 
 has accomplished. President Patterson did not of 
 himself alone build the State University, but I 
 speak the simple truth when I say that had it not 
 been for President Patterson there would have been 
 no State University. President Patterson is as much 
 the maker of this college as is Mr. Carnegie of any 
 of the great institutions which he ever endowed. 
 During the forty years that he has been the in- 
 cumbent of this office, I have watched its growth. 
 I well remember when Governor Blackburn laid 
 the corner-stone, and when two years later 
 the brilliant Watterson made the dedicatory ad- 
 dress, and so I have seen it under his fostering 
 care, under the influence of his great common 
 sense and his powerful intellect grow up to what 
 it is now, and yet he is but looking forward to 
 what it will be in the years to come. (Applause.) 
 If there was ever a man who erected a noble 
 monument by his life's work which entitles him 
 to a lasting place in the hearts of his fellows^ 
 10
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 surely it is the loyal man who has accomplished 
 this great work. Great for you; great for the 
 generation to come, and great for your children 
 after you. 
 
 For twenty-five long years of that forty he and 
 I have been the closest neighbors. We have lived 
 all through that span of life nearer to each other 
 than either was to any other person. 
 
 Here comes not only good men, but great men ; 
 here come men from Indiana, his boyhood friends, 
 after the span of a life time — coming here to 
 clasp his hand and to congratulate and to 
 take part in honoring him here to-day. Surely a 
 man must be a good man who can have his boy- 
 hood friends to come such a distance at such a 
 time to do honor to his theme. 
 
 There was once a Kentuckian traveling in Indi- 
 ana, and he fell into conversation with a gentleman 
 who seemed to be in very sad health, and the Ken- 
 tuckian let it be known, as Kentuckians are prone 
 to do, that he was from Kentucky, and after a time 
 he turned to his chance acquaintance and re- 
 marked: "I suppose of course that you're an 
 Indianian ?" "No" said the man, "I, too, am a 
 Kentuckian, but then I have been sick for a long 
 time." And so the tried friends of his youth, 
 like him grown in strength and character and 
 reputation — in everything showing ability, show- 
 ing virtues, and showing all those marked quali- 
 ties that make men conspicuous and great, they 
 come from their distant homes to take their places 
 by his side to give contradiction to those who say 
 the friendships of our youth are but fleeting; and 
 so we have with us to-day the friends of the morn- 
 
 11
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 ing of his life; and what stronger proof could 
 be asked that he is a genuinely good man, as well 
 as a very great one when these hale, learned and 
 distinguished men — though Indianians they be — 
 gather around him to join those prominent in the 
 life of our own immediate community and its citi- 
 zenship to do honor to the guest of this occasion. 
 Surely it is well worth a life-time of labor and sac- 
 rifice to receive such an honor and distinction as 
 this. (Applause.) 
 
 (At this point the Glee Club of the College 
 rendered a selection.) 
 
 By reference to the programme it will be seen 
 that it is extremely lengthy; there are twenty-two 
 addresses to be made. Having myself taken up a 
 good proportion of the time, I regard it as only 
 modest that I should say to those who are to ad- 
 dress you, that when there is so much they 
 know how to say so well, that we will take the 
 will for the deed ; we ask the gentlemen to remem- 
 ber that we know how beautifully and how well 
 they all speak — and so a little of it for this occa- 
 sion will suffice. This is said with a sense of jus- 
 tice that all may to our advantage be heard — 
 because this great audience is anxious to hear every 
 gentleman whose name appears on the programme, 
 and hence I venture to ask that you favor us with 
 your shortest address. My remarks are directed 
 mainly towards the first speaker — Governor Will- 
 son — because he is apt to be — well, just a little 
 long, sometimes. As we are unprovided with 
 lighting facilities and cots, we greatly desire to 
 conclude during the lingering day-light, and so I 
 again renew the request. 
 
 12
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 The distinguished gentleman I have the honor 
 first to present to you, needs no introduction — he 
 is the first officer of the Commonwealth, and surely 
 it is a proud day when the young man who came 
 in the unaided days of his youth from our sister 
 state of Indiana, and whose growth was by little 
 and little through such arduous toil and endeavor, 
 now comes at last in his mature manhood and 
 fullness of reputation, to receive this ovation, 
 as a fitting acknowledgment of his worth, that 
 the best and greatest in position in the State 
 gather to do him honor; the honored of the 
 land are glad to honor him. I have the pleas- 
 ure to present to you His Excellency, Augustus E. 
 Willson, Governor of Kentucky. 
 
 13
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 ^htixta^ of #ot)ern0r ?B2ltU0on 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, and our Honored Guest — 
 
 /9fr^ HAT would you do about it, if you were 
 £1 in my place? Judge Mulligan an- 
 
 ^^^ nounced that he had accepted this nomi- 
 nation as Chairman of this meeting with the un- 
 derstanding that he would leave all the speaking 
 to somebody else. Well, of course, people make 
 promises of that kind to get office. (Laughter.) 
 
 He has put more ginger and more fun and 
 more eloquence and more picturesqueness into 
 his talk than all the rest of us can do in the after- 
 noon, and so I am not going to try. When the 
 boys were singing that humming song I thought 
 of what Mulligan said, that I must not speak 
 more than two minutes. 
 
 Now there was a little thing came to my mind ; 
 it is curious how a real flashy, brilliant orator 
 sometimes puts his foot in it. There was just a 
 little jealousy in Mulligan's talk about Indiana. 
 The Governor of Kentucky was a resident of the 
 State of Indiana from 1857 to 1878, but I never 
 let it out before. It was a mean, unneighborly 
 thing for Mulligan to say he was not going to 
 .?peak, and then talk for a half hour and shut the 
 re>^t of us out. 
 
 My neighbors and friends, it is an honor to 
 anybody to have an opportunity to pay this neigh- 
 borly tribute and this human tribute of respect 
 to a man whose noble life has been given to use- 
 
 14
 
 Pres. J as. K. Patterson. 
 
 fulness and to good works. I feel very deeply 
 what Judge Mulligan said about the character of 
 a man wlio to a ripe old age holds the friends of 
 hi? boyhood, as this our friend has held his friends 
 here. They honor us by showing their love to 
 him by their presence here. 1 do not know in the 
 history of the Commonwealth, and certainly I 
 do not remember in my reading of the history of 
 men, a single case that I could think of now as 
 more striking in its record of a long tremendously 
 hard-working life of usefulness than the life of 
 our friend. I do not wish what I say to take on 
 an3'thing of the tone of a good-bye or a funeral. 
 He is cheerful ; he is bright ; he is earnest ; his 
 eyes shine as clearly as they ever did; and if you 
 think he has lost the facility for saying in a real 
 strong way, with a strong clear head, you have 
 not talked with him lately. I believe, to put it 
 stronger, I am dead sure, that his determination 
 was never so stout. It may be improper to use 
 the word "stout" with reference to his determi- 
 nation, but I do not know of any other word that 
 will fit it so well. I say, he never was more 
 earnest; he never was more useful; he never was 
 more greatly beloved and admired and highly 
 regarded in every way than he is today; and in 
 the full strength of wisdo7n, great-hearted kind- 
 ness, tremendous industry, his canny Scotch com- 
 mon sense, and American common sense, he iff 
 at his greatest today. But it is not what we say 
 today ; of course, I cannot say it ; but it is what is 
 shown here, what each one feels today. I am only 
 a short acquaintance of President Patterson's. 
 Many of you are his old acquaintances; many of 
 
 IS
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 you his students; but there is not a soul here 
 today who does not have this feeling about this 
 man that he is worthy of the love of his fellows; 
 that he is worthy the distinction of having a 
 great multitude of honest, thoughtful, earnest, 
 sensible people feel in their very heart the way 
 you feel, and I feel, and everybody knows, of the 
 usefulness of President Patterson, and you cannot 
 ?ay anything that adds to that; you cannot think 
 of anything that adds to it. 
 
 The greatest question in all life is, what shall 
 be thought of us hereafter; what is the record 
 where the accounts are finally kept? But the 
 next thing dearest to the human heart is, what 
 do the people who know us think about us? Do 
 they think this man is earnest, honest, wise, faith- 
 ful ; his word ringing true every day ? They will 
 forget his little combativeness ; they will look upon 
 it as an evidence of strength and not weakness; 
 sometimes hard-headedness ; but they won't forget 
 his constant, sincere, honest effort. They like you 
 and like you in every way. We are your friends ; 
 we honor the memory of your past work, and we 
 honor you still while you are with us. 
 
 16
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 3futise Parkers! ^dbrrsia 
 
 ^£ COULD well have wished that both the 
 ^1 duty and the responsibility of speaking for 
 ^^ the Trustees on this occasion had been com- 
 mitted to abler hands than mine. But while not 
 feeling at liberty to decline the compliment which 
 the imposed duty brings, I find myself embar- 
 rassed at the very threshold by my personal rela- 
 tions to the distinguished subject of the honors 
 we wish to bestow. My affection for President 
 Patterson has been of such long standing and of 
 so sincere a character that any eulogy I may be- 
 stow upon him will almost assume the complexion 
 of a compliment to myself. 
 
 I met the President for the first time when I 
 matriculated as a student in the A. & M. College 
 in 1870. From that time to this we have been 
 friends. In looking back over this long period 
 and fully realizing all that I owe to him, it is a 
 great honor to me that during all this time I 
 have had the right to call him friend. In 1870, 
 the A. & M. College occupied and owned that 
 magnificent estate known as Ashland and Wood- 
 land, on the opposite side of the city. The great 
 Civil War had been closed but a few years, and 
 the South was still prostrate from its ravages. In 
 the general wreck of the great struggle there had 
 gone down all, or nearly all, of her educational 
 institutions. The result was that many of her 
 young men had come up to the College, allured by 
 
 17
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 the hope of being able to labor during a part of 
 each day at such remuneration as would enable 
 them to maintain themselves at school during the 
 remainder. There was a very large part of the 
 student body composed of these young men from 
 the South. They hailed from the Carolinas to 
 Texas ; they were as fine and manly a set of young 
 men as one could wish to meet. I mention this 
 fact as introductory to a statement I wish to make 
 concerning the relations between the students and 
 the President. In all the time I was at the A. & 
 M. College I never heard a student speak disre- 
 spectfully of the President; they all loved and 
 admired him; and as I now remember the situa- 
 tion, I do not believe they would have submitted 
 to anything which savored of disrespect to him 
 whom they loved so well and in whom they had 
 such implicit confidence. The boys I knew here 
 from '70 to '73 are now, if living, long past the 
 heyday of life. They are scattered to the four 
 winds of heaven. Occasionally it is my good for- 
 tune to meet one of them, and always the first 
 inquiry is for news of the President. 
 
 During the period I was here, the A. & M. 
 College, although a State institution, was a part 
 of Kentucky University, which was then, as now 
 (though its name has been changed), under the 
 auspices of the Christian Church. Shortly after 
 I left school, under the influence of a disagree- 
 ment between the University and the State, the 
 union was dissolved and the State College was 
 established as an independent institution, and 
 was located upon its present site. The legislature 
 of Kentucky granted the College a small and very 
 
 18
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 inadequate annual tax for its support. This was 
 the occasion for the jealous animosity of every 
 sectarian school in the State, and soon the young 
 institution found itself an educational Ishmaolite 
 against which the hand of every sectarian was 
 raised in hate. It seemed to a mere spectator that 
 the feeble hantling thus cast upon the rock of 
 adversity must surely perish; and perish it would 
 hut for the loyal courage of one man — its Presi- 
 dent. In the courts, in the halls of the General 
 Assembly, in the columns of the press, and on the 
 hustings, he met and vanquished all opposition. 
 He literally lifted up the moribund institution 
 which seemed about to expire from the anaemia 
 of starvation, and, holding it close to his own 
 great, loyal heart, warmed it back into vitality 
 and life. When I look upon these heautiful 
 grounds, nearly every tree of whose lawns he 
 planted with his own hands; when I behold these 
 buildings, every brick of which was cemented by 
 his anxiety of heart, it seems to me as if the now 
 splendid institution should, in its gratitude, find 
 a voice, and in the language of the great Scotch 
 bard, say of its benefactor: 
 
 "The bridegroom may forget the bride 
 
 Was made his wedded wife yestreen; 
 The Monarch may forget the crown 
 
 That on his head an hour has been ; 
 The mother may forget the child 
 
 That smiles sae sweetly on her knee; 
 But I'll remember thee, Glencairn, 
 
 And a' that thou hast done for me!" 
 
 In the first law suit, instituted more than 
 thirty years ago, for the purpose of obtaining a 
 
 19
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 judgment declaring the tax for the benefit of the 
 A. & M. College unconstitutional, I, then an un- 
 fledged law3^er, had the honor, without fee or re- 
 ward, to in part represent the interests of the 
 school. The fight then begun lasted in the courts, 
 in the General Assembly, in the Constitutional 
 Convention, until within twelve months last past, 
 it has been finally settled by the Judgment of the 
 court of last resort in the State that the Legisla- 
 ture has the right to make any appropriation to 
 the College it deems proper for its maintenance. 
 I shall always remember with pride that I, who 
 thus began my career as a lawyer trying to uphold 
 the right of the legislature to support the State 
 College, had the honor, as a Judge of the Court 
 of Appeals of Kentucky, to aid in establishing by 
 final adjudication the State's constitutional right 
 to maintain this great institution for the educa- 
 tion of its young men and women. It will always 
 be a gratification to me to recall that during all 
 of this "thirty years' war" between the forces of 
 learning on the one hand, and the forces of igno- 
 rance and its twin sister, prejudice against public 
 education, on the other, that I have faithfully 
 followed as an humble private in the footsteps of 
 the great captain, to whom we owe the final vic- 
 tory. For to him more than to any other man in 
 the State we are indebted for the final public 
 adoption of the statesman-like policy that the 
 government owes it as a duty to its youth that 
 they shall be educated, and for the legislative 
 recognition of the economic principle that every 
 dollar spent for education is more than equal in 
 value to ten dollars laid out for the suppression 
 
 20
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 of pauperism and crime. President Patterson has 
 all his life been an educator of youth; and in se- 
 lecting this vocation he chose wisely and well. It 
 seems to me that there can be no nobler secular 
 calling than that of teacher : all others make most 
 for the things of this world; but this makes for 
 eternity as well. The teacher, who takes a human 
 soul and inspires it with the divine thirst for 
 knowledge, puts in motion an instrumentality for 
 higher things whose usefulness will only have be- 
 gun when the fountains of the sun have been 
 quenched, and the stars have withered on the face 
 of the firmament. As compared with knowledge, 
 all other acquisitions seem base and sordid. The 
 man who acquires money enriches only himself, 
 and what he gets he deprives others from securing ; 
 the man who obtains office serves only his own 
 ambition, and disappoints others who desired the 
 same promotion ; but the man who acquires knowl- 
 edge takes nothing from his neighbor, but, on the 
 other hand, adds to the common fountain from 
 which all may draw who will. He enriches him- 
 self, indeed, but he enriches as well all who come 
 within the radius of his influence. Knowledge, 
 like mercy, "is twice blessed : it blesseth him that 
 gives and him that takes." 
 
 In conclusion, it gives us pleasure to honor the 
 President, who is just closing up a long and use- 
 ful professional life. He has been faithful to all 
 the obligations which come with the possession of 
 'splendid abilities. He has discharged to the full- 
 est measure the great trust involved in his life's 
 work. He has never faltered in or swerved from 
 the path of rectitude, or "paltered with us in a 
 
 21
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 double sense." Of him we may say, as Carlyle 
 said of Cromwell, *'He feared God, but he feared 
 no one else." His whole life is a guaranty that 
 his daily prayer has in spirit, at least, been that 
 of the mariner of old, who, about to launch his 
 frail bark upon the treacherous sea, cried out: 
 "Oh, Neptune ! I pray you to smile upon my voy- 
 age; but whether you blow me fair, or whether 
 you blow me foul, I will hold my rudder true." 
 
 22
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 ^tihvtfia of lion. C. ill. Clap 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen and our Guest — 
 
 ^£ WISH from the bottom of my heart that 
 jl Judge Mulligan could make my speech, and 
 ^^ that I did not have to make any. When I 
 accepted this invitation, the only reason why I did 
 so was because I felt so deeply interested in our 
 President, and was willing to add whatever I could 
 to this occasion in a few words. 
 
 I am an evolutionist and consequently I am 
 no hero-worshiper, but I cannot contemplate the 
 history of this institution for the last forty years, 
 its beginning in nothing, and its gradual expan- 
 sion to its present harmonious development, and 
 contemplate the obstacles that had to be over- 
 come, both internal and external, but what 1, an 
 evolutionist, must acknowledge that its destinies 
 have been directed and controlled by a master 
 mind. In the beginning, this college received 
 meagre endowment from the sale of public lands 
 under the Morrill Act. President Patterson ap- 
 preciated that unless State aid was given to higher 
 education, this college would never amount 
 to anything. At that period, you will recollect, 
 those of you who are old enough, that there was 
 no public sentiment to amount to anything in 
 favor of State aid to higher education. President 
 Patterson felt that the very existence of the Col- 
 lege depended upon the creation of a public sen- 
 timent in the State of Kentucky in favor of 
 
 23
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 hii^hei education, and he immediately addressed 
 himself with all of his great powers of mind and 
 energy to create and educate such a public senti- 
 ment. He did this by addressing the taxpayers 
 tlirough the State, agricultural bodies through 
 the press, and every session of the Legislature 
 foimd him a constant attendant, urging and im- 
 pressing upon the members of the Legislature the 
 •great necessity for their doing something for high- 
 er education in the State of Kentucky through en- 
 dowment and appropriations to the State College. 
 He was opposed in this by the jealousies of the 
 various denominational institutions of the State, 
 as Judge Barker has said, some taking much more 
 part than others; and then he was opposed by the 
 conservative inertia of the Legislature, naturally 
 economical, because composed always of a majority 
 of farmers, who were naturally indisposed to in- 
 crease taxation; and after a very strenuous fight 
 he passed his first bill — appropriating one-half of 
 one cent on every $100 of taxable property in this 
 State for the benefit of this institution. This bill 
 was followed by other appropriations, generally 
 for the purpose of building certain buildings upon 
 these grounds. In some cases not only had Presi- 
 dent Patterson to address himself to the Legisla- 
 ture on the question of public sentiment to get the 
 Legislature to act in favor of the legislation, but 
 he had to bring to bear upon the Governor every 
 possible reason pressing for the bill. And then I 
 have seen him have to fight for these bills both 
 on the ground of policy and on the constitution- 
 ality of the bills; and I myself have seen him 
 pitted against one of the very ablest lawyers this 
 
 24
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 State has ever produced, and the universal opinion 
 of the audience that heard that argument was 
 that the lawyer had not gotten the better of it. 
 So all along the line he has fought and educated 
 and developed such public sentiment as was nec- 
 essary for the maintenance of the institution, and 
 regulated the internal growth of the institu- 
 tion by his great sagacity, by his judgment, by 
 his wide and accurate scholarship, his knowledge 
 of the classics, philosophy and history, in such 
 a manner as to give it the high standing which 
 it has and deserves. 
 
 Some one has said that the history of the laws 
 of a country are a good summarized history of 
 the nation — of the country. In the same way some 
 one has said that even the dictionary of a country 
 was a good summarized history of the country. In 
 the same way, with emphasis, I may say that the 
 history of this college for the last forty years is a 
 good history in a brief summarized way of the 
 public life and services of President Patterson. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 I have been associated with him in the Board 
 of Trustees now for several years, and what I am 
 about to say I can speak from personal knowledge. 
 In all my little political life, which does not 
 amount to much, I have been thrown with great 
 and brilliant men. I was in the Legislature with 
 Preston, Williams, Blackburn and many others, 
 and I want to say that I have never been thrown 
 in association with a man that had better use of 
 pure, direct English than President Patterson. 
 He is always terse and direct in statement, but 
 
 25
 
 Fortieth Annxversary. 
 
 whenever it was necessary he could always draw 
 "upon the whole realm of human knowledge in apt 
 illustration. 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, I am no flatterer; I be- 
 lieve in stating what I honestly believe; I believe 
 that today — that this very day, considering both 
 manner and matter — President Patterson is the 
 best public speaker in Kentucky. 
 
 Now, in conclusion, I want to express the pro- 
 found hope and wish that many years of useful- 
 ness and happiness may be extended to you, and 
 that you may live to see this college — your child 
 and offspring — although it is great now, expanded 
 into ft much more vigorous manhood, giving, 
 through the support of Kentucky, still greater 
 usefulness and education to our people. (Ap- 
 plause.) 
 
 26
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 i^bbresftf of l^th, Babib Wm, MoUatt, 30.5®. 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen — 
 
 /9^f^ borrow an Hibernianism if I had been 
 §1 born in my native country I should have 
 ^■■^ been born in Indiana, but not being con- 
 sulted over matters in those days I was born in 
 New Jersey, and when I was less than a year old 
 was carried by my parents to Madison, Ind. My 
 earliest recollections are of my home on one of 
 those stately hills and beautiful hills, which look 
 down on the city, and ten miles of the Ohio River 
 and of the Kentucky and Indiana hills and valleys. 
 There I became well acquainted with and warmly 
 attached to a boy whom I called "Jimmie" and 
 who called me '"Davie," this latter fact testifying 
 that we were then not big boys. Afterwards to- 
 gether we used to go down that big hill every 
 morning to school in the city, and every evening 
 climb it again to sleep together not at the foot 
 but at the top. I was not able to recollect just 
 how many years ago that was, but I knew that 
 whenever I met my life-long friend. Dr. James 
 Kennedy Patterson, that he would remember, for 
 as "Jimmie" he had a memory for everything. 
 And last evening he gave me the exact dates. Still 
 later we met at Hanover College as fellow stu- 
 dents, not however as class-mates, because he was 
 in advance of me, and between the time I got 
 acquainted with him as "Jimmie," and the time he 
 became "Patterson" in the college, I was informed 
 
 27
 
 Fortieth Anni\'ersary. 
 
 that he had memorized the spelling, pronunciation 
 and definition of all the words in Webster's school 
 dictionary. He did not tell me that, and I can not 
 vouch for its truth, but I know that as "Jimmie" 
 he had the pluck and persistence and the memory 
 to do it; and besides I have always been reminded 
 of it by his diction, and by the facility and ac- 
 curacy with which he handles the English language 
 in everything that comes from his pen. 
 
 When I was invited to attend this celebration 
 I had no thought but to come if it were possible. 
 I immediately began to look up the way and never 
 before did I so thoroughly realize how wide the 
 Ohio Eiver is. On my desk were folders contain- 
 ing the time tables of all the principal railroad 
 systems north of the river, and several of them 
 had lines extending southward to the river; but 
 there they stopped. No one of them gave me any 
 information as to how to find any place south of 
 the river. They told me how to reach any place 
 north of it in the United States and Canada, but 
 not how to come here. Consulting with the Pas- 
 senger Agent of the Pennsylvania lines he after a 
 careful and patient investigation of the matter told 
 me how to come ; and here I am, as I suppose, the 
 first and solitary traveler by rail that ever traveled 
 from my home in Fort Wayne, Ind., to Lexington, 
 Ky. It seems as if there was more intercourse 
 between Kentucky and Indiana in the day of 
 General George Rogers Clark and of General 
 Anthony Wayne than there is now. I want you 
 students of this University, boys and girls when 
 you go out into life, to do what you can to in- 
 crease the trade and travel between these states — 
 28
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 increase the intercourse by marriage between the 
 north and the south side of the Oliio Eiver. From 
 my experience of life-long friendships with native 
 born Kentuckians, I believe it would do you good 
 and the Indianians good to get better acquainted — 
 and this notwithstanding the introductory remarks 
 of the chairman. 
 
 Living on different sides of that wide river, 
 I believe that President Patterson and I have not 
 met personally for about precisely the number of 
 years that he has been President of this Institu- 
 tion. Our days were not at our own command. 
 When I invited him to come on a visit he could 
 not come, and when he invited me I could not go. 
 But I have kept informed of his work. I know 
 something about the circumstances that have been 
 alluded to here this afternoon; I know something 
 about the hard-fought conflicts and the splendid 
 victories by which my old friend saved the State 
 College from wreck and ruin, and about the ca- 
 pacity and energy he has exhibited in building it 
 up to become the present great State University of 
 Kentucky. (Applause.) It is not easy in these 
 days, as I have found from some experience, to 
 obtain a man suitable to be the President of a 
 college or university. Men with the mantle of 
 Thomas Arnold of Rugby, or of Mark Hopkins of 
 Williams, upon their shoulders are not standing 
 around waiting for a job ; and it seems to me that 
 the varied accomplishments exhibited by President 
 Patterson in the past history of this Institution 
 could scarcely have been found combined in an- 
 other man if you had searched the world over for 
 him. The legal and judicial talent and learning 
 
 29
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 and the statesmanlike qualities exhibited in his 
 determination to have nothing but success were 
 brought out by difficulties which arose incidentally 
 while pursuing his chosen vocation of an educator. 
 For that is what he chose to be, an educator. Any- 
 body can hear recitations and mark the grades of 
 the students according to his own sweet will, but 
 educators are born not made. The forty years of 
 Dr. Patterson's honored and successful presidency 
 of this institution show that to begin with he had 
 the native gift, the bent, the mental furnishing 
 and the educational preparation necessary to make 
 a first-class president. And they show what is no 
 less important that he did not lie down on his 
 previous preparation, but that with an active mind 
 which continued to grow in strength and compre- 
 hension, he kept abreast of the progress which 
 during the last forty years has been made in the 
 ever-widening scope of knowledge in all the vari- 
 ous departments with which this institution has 
 had to do. To this may be attributed the fact 
 that his later addresses have shown undiminished 
 strength and vigor, and increasing fullness of 
 thought. Notwithstanding the many times he has 
 bent his bow it abides in strength and the last 
 time you heard it twang it twanged as clearly and 
 sharply and the arrow sped as swiftly and as 
 surely to the mark as at any time in the years 
 gone by. 
 
 My dear old friend, Jimmie — (Applause) — 
 it is with unmingled joy that I am privileged to 
 rejoice with you on this occasion, when from the 
 mount of triumph you can look back over the way 
 in which you have come. The work of an educator 
 30
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 like that of a minister is not so spectacular as 
 the work of some people, but it has its peculiar 
 satisfactions. It is deep and lasting. It is a force 
 which acting immediately upon those who have 
 come under your instruction and personal influ- 
 ence will through them go on multiplying itself in 
 hundreds and thousands who never saw you — in 
 this state, in other states and in other countries. 
 So your work remains and shall remain. That 
 river has separated us in body but not in affection ; 
 and while I am here to-day and remember about 
 the number of those who started in life with you 
 and me, it brings serious thoughts; and one of 
 my dearest thoughts of that eternal heavenly land 
 to which I trust you and I are traveling, is that 
 there we shall have the time and opportunity for 
 the personal fellowships which this busy world de- 
 nied us. I trust that when we meet together over 
 there, there will be no river between us, but that 
 the friendship which began "auld lang syne," on 
 the Madison hills, shall be renewed to continue 
 forever and ever. God bless you. (Applause). 
 
 31
 
 Fortieth Anniversary, 
 
 Honored Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 
 
 3T affords me great pleasure to be present 
 upon this occasion to add my testimonial to 
 the esteem and regard with which the hon- 
 ored President of this institution is held. Dr. 
 Patterson has done for the State of Kentucky, and 
 for the cause of education in general, a great work. 
 It is a work which will continue to grow and ex- 
 pand in the years that are to come. This insti- 
 tution today is his monument. It will ever he so 
 regarded. 
 
 On this beautiful June afternoon, however, I 
 do not believe that it would be inappropriate in 
 me, even upon this occasion, to call attention to 
 some facts which confront us as Kentuckians. 
 Being a native born Kentuckian, I am proud of 
 her history, and proud of her institutions, yet I 
 cannot understand why it is that, although in Vir- 
 ginia, under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson, 
 more than a century ago, they saw it was one of 
 the duties of the State to furnish higher education 
 for her people, that Kentucky neglected it so long. 
 
 By the last Federal census, notwithstanding 
 the great work that has been done by State Col- 
 lege, and by the educational institutions of Ken- 
 tucky, among all the states and territories of 
 the Union, in proportion to population, there are 
 fewer college educated young men and women and 
 fewer college graduates than in any other state. 
 32
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 It is also true that in this great and glorious State 
 of ours more than one-fifth of the white voters 
 of the native white population are unable to read; 
 it is also true that there are at least eight counties 
 in which the per cent of illiteracy of the native 
 white population is more than thirty per cent. 
 In at least three counties in this great State there 
 are thirty-five per cent of the native white voters 
 who can neither read nor write. In other words, 
 when the,-*e voters go to the ballot box to cast 
 their suffrage in regard to the great questions 
 which confront us as a State and as a Nation, in 
 some of the counties one-fifth, in some of the coun- 
 ties one-fourth, and in a few more than one-third, 
 must determine their suffrage by the emblems 
 upon the ballot. 
 
 Our educational system has been disjointed and 
 disconnected, and this great institution which Dr. 
 Patterson has brought into existence, as it were, 
 and due largely to his efforts, it is strange that 
 it has grown as it has with the material from which 
 it had to draw, because in Kentucky we have no 
 high schools whose graduates could enter this in- 
 stitution. 
 
 It is unnecessary upon this occasion to enquire 
 into the causes of this condition. We know that 
 these are facts ; and we know, too, as Kentuckians, 
 that we are courageous enough to realize it, and 
 that we have the power and the will to remedy 
 them. We believe that with this institution as the 
 crown jewel in the educational system of the State 
 of Kentucky, that we will have county high schools 
 in every county and in every neighborhood with 
 rural schools, under the influence of this great in- 
 
 33
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 stitution, and wise laws will become what they 
 should be; and the country boys and girls will be 
 prepared to go to the county high schools, and 
 these county high schools will send not only 
 one thousand, but will send three, four or five 
 thousand students to this institution to prepare 
 for the life that is before them as citizens of this 
 great Commonwealth. 
 
 I am glad to be here upon this occasion to add 
 my testimonial to this movement and to express my 
 personal regard and appreciation of the work 
 that Dr. Patterson has done. I do not believe it 
 is inappropriate that we as Keutuckians should 
 realize that we have educationally fallen short, and 
 also to realize that there is enough manhood and 
 womanhood in Kentucky to put her back where 
 she was, and where she should be, in the front 
 of the line. (Applause.) 
 
 34
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 labbrega of 3^t\}. Ctarleg In i^epnoUiif 
 
 Mr. Chairman: — 
 
 ^£ HAVE been, while sitting here, thinking of 
 ^l the fortieth anniversary of Dr. Samuel J. 
 ^^ Nichols as pastor of the Second Presbyte- 
 rian Church, of St. Louis, Mo. During the week 
 in which that anniversary was being celebrated, a 
 stranger happened to go by the church. He 
 was surprised to see the church illuminated dur- 
 ing the week, so he stepped in and asked the 
 reason for it. He said to the usher inside, 
 "Who is that speaking?" and the usher said, 
 "That is Dr. Nichols, the pastor of the church." 
 "Well," he said, "How long has he been speak- 
 ing," and the usher, having his mind on the cele- 
 bration and the anniversary, said, "Forty years." 
 "Well," he said, "1 am going to see him through 
 to the end." Now the point is, not that any man 
 is going to speak this afternoon for forty years, 
 but we hope we will all be allowed for a long time 
 after these forty years, to see President Patter- 
 son through to the end; and we are going to ask 
 him to allow us to have that privilege. 
 
 While other men have been speaking about 
 Indiana this afternoon, I have been thinking of 
 Scotland, and the debt that education and educa- 
 tional institutions owe to old Scotland. Only last 
 week, in the city of Washington, the capital of 
 our nation, a monument was unveiled to the mem- 
 ory of John Witherspoon, the first President of 
 
 35
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 Princeton University, who was a Scotsman; and 
 one of the successors of Dr. Witherspoon was 
 James McCosh, the great Scottish philosopher. 
 And m this State of Kentucky one of the great- 
 est professors of medicine, the man who performed 
 first the operation known as ovariotomy, was Dr. 
 McDowell, who was also a Scotsman. In fact, 
 if you were to take out of the history of education 
 the Scots who have done so mach for our insti- 
 tutions of learning, you have not much left. 
 
 A Scotchman and an Englishman were talking, 
 and the Englishman was naming the great men of 
 his country who had figured in the affairs of Eng- 
 land, and in its history, and whenever a name was 
 mentioned the Scotchman would say, "He was a 
 Scot." The Englishman, somewhat provoked, 
 said, "I believe you would claim even Shakes- 
 peare." "Well," he said, "his abilities would justi- 
 fy the inference." Now it is true that there may 
 be Scottish blood, as Dr. Moffat remarked to 
 you, in the great men of this country; and 
 it is especially true among our educators, there- 
 fore, this afternoon, as we honor this Scotchman 
 for the forty years he has been President of this 
 institution, we must give our expression of grati- 
 tude to old Scotland; and we are glad that Scot- 
 land has sent to us not only men who can accu- 
 mulate gold and build libraries for us, but also 
 teachers like President McCosh and Dr. Patterson. 
 Sometimes we think that these Scots come to this 
 country to make iron and steel for a living, but 
 they come also to put iron into our blood, and to 
 teach us how to be honest. They come to preach 
 and to teach and train the brains of American 
 
 36
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 youth. The old Scotch eagerness to be a scholar 
 of which Ian MacClaren, the great Scottish 
 writer, has written in the "Bonnie Brier Bush/' 
 has been stimulated in the hearts of Amer- 
 ican bo3'^s and girls by these professors from 
 the old country. Little Scotland, we thank thee 
 for thy great gifts; for these men that have been 
 sent to us from this land of learning; and I be- 
 lieve that Prof. White must have some Scottish 
 blood in him ; he must have had Scottish ancestors, 
 because I know his value to the State of Kentucky 
 in an educational way. (Applaud.) We have to 
 thank President Patterson this afternoon, not only 
 for himself, and that is our great debt of grati- 
 tude, but also for Prof. White and his forty years 
 of service with President Patterson as one of his 
 assistants; and if Prof. White did come from 
 Scotland, and I think he must have come from 
 that stock, we will have to thank Scotland for 
 him, too. 
 
 I am glad to be here to congratulate President 
 Patterson and the State of Kentucky. If you 
 only knew the odds against which he has had to 
 fight; if you knew the greatness of the work of 
 this State University compared with the little in- 
 come that the State of Kentucky gives to this 
 institution, your admiration would be increased an 
 himdred fold. I Ijelieve Kentucky some time will 
 awake, and then the name of James K. Patterson 
 will be greater than it is today. (Applause.) 
 
 Z7 
 
 451843
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 ^hhrtasi of 3aeti. Sft^situa P. 4^arrett 
 
 ilfr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 
 
 ^Sl/'S I understand it, I owe the privilege and 
 \faj the happiness of being here on this occa- 
 ^^ sion to the fact that I was associated with 
 your friend, President Patterson, for a number of 
 years in college. My first word is a word of con- 
 gratulation. More than three-quarters of a cen- 
 tury ago, in Scotland, there was born a lad, and 
 while he was yet very young his parents, by the 
 good providence of God, brought him to Indiana; 
 and there he remained for a while until he got 
 started in his education, and then they permitted 
 him to come to Kentucky. (Laughter.) I con- 
 gratulate Kentucky upon having with them for 
 these many years our dear friend and your friend, 
 Dr. Patterson, to guide some of these educational 
 affairs for your State, and to accomplish what he 
 has accomplished in his work here. I desire to 
 congratulate Dr. Patterson himself also on the 
 good providence of God which has led him along 
 in the path which he has followed so wonderfully 
 and so successfully, and which has preserved his 
 life and brought him to this point in his life's 
 work and to reap these honors so full, so excel- 
 lent, so closely upon his head. 
 
 I think I may say that the year that Dr. Pat- 
 terson graduated at Hanover College was the year 
 in which I became a professor in that institution. 
 I have been all my life long permitted to associ- 
 
 38
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 ate with young people, in the earlier part of pro- 
 fessional life with young men, later with young 
 men and women; and I have found that the one 
 thing which lies at the foundation of a successful 
 life is on the part of a young man or woman to 
 have a vision of something to accomplish in the 
 world — an ideal placed before them, A young 
 man may not or cannot go forward blindly, 
 thoughtlessly, simply absorbing what is before him 
 for a long time without losing a great deal of the 
 power which tomes from education. Now it 
 seems to me that I can recall from the days that 
 Dr. Patterson was in college the fact that the 
 students as well as the teachers recognized this 
 quality in his student life ; that he was not satisfied 
 merely with words, or with the acquisition of 
 knowledge, without an aim or end that he had 
 placed before the ideal, and with the desire to 
 reach in the best manner possible the ideal which 
 was before him. 
 
 I think of another thing which students in 
 college or in the course of their education desire, 
 and that is a fixed purpose in life. They may not 
 have before them a clear perception of what they 
 want to become — that is, whether they want to 
 become a lawyer, or physician, or a minister, or to 
 enter into the conflicts of political life, but they 
 must have a fixed purpose to accomplish something 
 useful and excellent in life if they are to meet the 
 end for which they are selected by the providence 
 of God, and permitted to engage in the work which 
 lies before them as students. We recognized all 
 through the long life of our President this fixed 
 purpose ; it became apparent among his fellow stu- 
 
 39
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 dents that his desire and design was in whatever 
 place God should put him, to accomplish well in 
 the best manner possible the work which was be- 
 fore him. 
 
 You have this afternoon had repeatedly brought 
 before you another element which enters into the 
 successful life of a young man in the prosojution 
 of his work, and that is the courage to meet diffi- 
 culties; courage to enter upon the work which is 
 before him ; courage to stand firm for that which 
 he considers right, and that which he feels must 
 be accomplished in the providence of God, and to 
 work faithfully and earnestly for that purpose. 
 You have had before you, now have before you, 
 that which lies at the foundation of all success in 
 this work of life, and that is the foundation of 
 real character founded and laid upon the sure 
 foundation of truth, of a belief in the truth, and 
 right and lovely, and that which is acceptable in 
 the sight of God, and for the good of men. 
 
 I congratulate you, therefore, that you have 
 had with you a man of this stamp for all these 
 years; and that in the providence of God we are 
 now permitted to meet today to do him honor. I 
 pray that the Lord will watch over him and pre- 
 serve his life, and make his latter days not only 
 as useful as his preceding days, but glorious in the 
 excellent work which still remains for him to do. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 40
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 3amarfes! of JBpan l^iUmm S. Caperi 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : — 
 
 ^£ ESTEEM my privilege great indeed to be 
 ^l counted as one, even of twenty speakers, 
 ^^ who is to voice the prevailing sentiment of 
 gratitude and love of a great Commonwealth 
 towards the man who has made, possibly, the 
 greatest single contribution for the success and 
 glory of his State in the development of her Uni- 
 versity. To President Patterson belongs the 
 award, not of perishable laurels, nor of gifts of 
 gold, but rather the imperishable love and grati- 
 tude of fathers and mothers and the very manhood 
 of our State for making it possible for them to 
 realize the great ideal of the power of education, 
 from base to capstone, within their own borders. 
 The University idea is a just measure of the large- 
 ness of our honored friend's mind and heart: in 
 this University we can see him stretching some- 
 what his length and breadth and depth and height ; 
 without fulsome praise, we can all exclaim, "See 
 there the man!" (pointing to the outspread 
 buildings of the University) . And yet, my friends, 
 no great man is adequately judged by his works 
 alone : the personality of a man is greater far than 
 he can put into concrete form. This truth finds 
 beautiful illustration in our great Patterson: the 
 sparkle of his mind and the warmth of his heart 
 are only known by those who have been privileged 
 to come into the inner life of his friendship. His 
 
 41
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 coiiras-e, his faith, his lo3'alt3', these have all gone 
 into the material structure of the University, but 
 they are best appreciated, as exhibited in per- 
 sonal relationship with him. The light of his 
 own soul is caught from his keen eye and the lov 
 of his heart is best interpreted by the grip of his 
 friendly hand and generous hospitality. 
 
 Mr. President : Allow me here, in this solemn 
 presence, to declare my unqualified affection and 
 esteem for you and my deep sense of privilege in 
 being here on this occasion. I shall always cherish 
 it as being one of my very highest honors and dis- 
 tinctions. I wish you "good luck in the name 
 of the Lord." (Applause.) 
 
 42
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 abbreas; of Br. ^rtfjur Imager 
 
 Mr. Chairman, President Patterson, Ladies and 
 Gentlemen : — 
 
 /^/"N introducing me as "Reverend" our chair- 
 ^l man has made a mistake. I am not more 
 ^^ reverend than Dr. Patterson himself, but 
 have been an educator for twentj^-five 3'ears, and 
 I have looked upon President Patterson from my 
 home in Greorgetown at close range, and mth 
 great interet^t. Therefore, as an educator I come 
 here this afternoon simply to pay my respects to 
 this veteran leader in the army of educators in 
 Kentuclcy. I have been thinking as I sat here in 
 the midst of these buildings, of the inscription 
 which we all know, or know of, placed over the 
 north door of St. Paul's cathedral in London to 
 commemorate the architect, Sir Christopher 
 Wren: Led or, si monumentum requiris cir- 
 cumspice. 
 
 I believe 1 have never known an occasion 
 where that familiar inscription could be more ap- 
 propriately quoted than here and now. When Dr. 
 Patterson came to this institution forty years ago, 
 it was an empty field, and now it is strewn thick 
 with splendid buildings. He came here when 
 there was no college, no institution, and now there 
 is a great State University with a numerous fac- 
 ulty, with a great income, and with a great crowd 
 of students; with a magnificent alumni, and a 
 great army of loyal friends. It seems to me that 
 
 43
 
 Fortieth Anniversary, 
 
 this is his monument, and that one looking upon 
 it and seeing it in these days should not give him- 
 self up entirely to lamenting the backwardness of 
 Kentucky in education. When we feel inclined to 
 disparage, and to criticise what has been done, 
 sometimes I feel that we are not likely to do jus- 
 tice to the leaders in educational work here who 
 have fought in the past. However bad it may be 
 for Kentucky now to be so low down on the list in 
 illiteracy, if it had not been for the work of Dr. 
 Patterson and other educators in Kentucky, it 
 would be worse still. He has wrought nobly and 
 well. He has done a great work, and as an ed- 
 ucator I come here to honor him, and to offer 
 him my tribute of praise. Many people seem to 
 think that President Patterson, to use a slang 
 phrase, has not been "on to his job." I sometimes 
 wonder, I have often wondered, that these men 
 who seem to know so well how to run colleges and 
 to do everything else, never seem somehow to 
 get themselves elected to these positions. This 
 has been one of the sociological puzzles to me, that 
 there is always on the outside of every enterprise 
 a lot of folks who are ready for indiscriminate 
 criticism. Now, gentlemen, I have been in the 
 work of education in Kentucky for twenty-five 
 or thirty years. President Patterson and I have 
 seen presidents come and presidents go. But it 
 is m}"^ belief that no man can sit upon the driver's 
 seat of a great university for forty years without 
 having the qualifications to make it go. (Ap- 
 plause.) There is no harder team to drive on 
 earth than a college faculty, and a great crowd of 
 college students. (Applause.) And if President 
 
 44
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson, 
 
 Patterson had not known how to hold the reins 
 he would have been kicked out of the box long 
 ago. I believe that he has had just those qualities 
 that the University of Kentucky needed during 
 these forty years; that Scotch canniness which he 
 has come by so honestly; that far-sightedness; 
 that courage and that aggressiveness. I know 
 some men who are looking for a situation with 
 large emphasis on the ''sit." President Patterson 
 does not belong to that type. I admire his resili- 
 ency, his undiscourageahility. I have seen him 
 sat upon, but he always rose right up again. A 
 friend of mine told me a story of a little boy who 
 was taken by his uncle to a shop to see one of 
 these stove-pipe hats that shut up like an accor- 
 dian. His uncle took him there and showed him 
 this toy as a curiosity. A few days later his uncle 
 came around to his home wearing a handsome silk 
 hat. The boy looked at it and examined it, and 
 directly he brought it to his uncle and said, "Un- 
 cle, this one don't shut up; I have sat on it three 
 times and it don't shut up." President Patter- 
 son reminds me of that hat. He don't shut up. 
 It is no easy task to found a university, and it is 
 still a greater task to preside over the destinies of 
 a great college like this forty years. I want to 
 give to President Patterson my sincere respect for 
 his great performance, and my hope that he will 
 live many years to show us young Kentuckians 
 how it ought to be done. (Applause.) 
 
 45
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 I^bbr^ssi ot J^rof. ^I^enrp ^, Cljerrj» 
 
 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 
 
 UR republic demands education and more 
 abundant education; ideas and more noble 
 ideas ; more government by the people and 
 leSvS government by the politician; more govern- 
 ment by the teacher and less government by the 
 policeman; more government by the school house 
 and less government by the military camp; more 
 government by the university and less government 
 bv brute force; more and better schools and fewer 
 jails, penitentiaries and asylums; more scholars 
 and fewer criminals; more freemen and fewer 
 slaves; more life, more life, and more life. (Ap- 
 plause.) ]S[ature abhors a government by brute 
 force. The best administered government is the 
 one that seeks to govern the masses by aiding the 
 individual in governing himself. The moral, in- 
 tellectual, spiritual and physical health of the two 
 and a half millions of people of Kentucky is re- 
 garded by the progressive citizen as the most vital 
 question now before the citizenship of our Com- 
 m.onwoalth. The harmonious and universal vital- 
 ization of human units will solve all questions. 
 (Applause.) It will take the power to enforce in- 
 dustrial tyranny from the heartless American To- 
 bacco Trust and cause the dreaded night rider to 
 vanish into the darkness from whence he came. 
 If there is a peril which threatens Kentucky or 
 any other State, it is the peril of superstition, in- 
 46
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 competency, penny ideas — the peril of ignorance. 
 (Applause.) Enskin said: "There is but one 
 cure for public distress, and that is public educa- 
 tion directed to make more men useful, thought- 
 ful, sympathetic and just." Conscience charged 
 with spiritual electricity is the ballast of a de- 
 mocracy. It is the mission of the public school, 
 high school, normal school, the university and all 
 other educational institutions to generate this 
 electricity. Lowell evidently considered the voice 
 of conscience a leading factor in the solution of 
 all problems. He said : "Our healing is not in 
 the storm nor in the whirlwind. It is not in mon- 
 archies nor aristocracies, but will be revealed by the 
 still small voice that speaks to the heart and con- 
 science prompting man to a wider and wiser hu- 
 manity." No wonder Mr. Everett wrote : "What ! 
 Feed a child's body and let his soul hunger; pam- 
 per his limbs and starve his faculties?" 
 
 "Wliat ! Plant the earth, cover a thousand hills 
 with your droves of cattle, pursue the fish to their 
 hiding-place in the sea, and spread out your 
 wheat fields across the plain, in order to supply 
 the wants of that body, which will soon be as poor 
 and senseless as the poorest clod, and let the pure, 
 spiritual essence within you, with all its glorious 
 capacities for improvement, languish and pine? 
 
 "What ! Build factories, turn in rivers upon 
 the waterwheels, unchain the imprisoned spirits 
 of steam, to weave a garment for the body, and 
 let the soul remain unadorned and naked?" 
 
 We believe with Mr. Everett that the training 
 of citizens for life is the greatest work delegated 
 to the hands of man. We may boast of our coun- 
 
 47
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 try and tell of its acres of land bursting with min- 
 eral wealth; its lakes and ocean coasts; its reve- 
 nues and rich treasures, its great cities and won- 
 derful public buildings and strong f ortificatiorLs ; 
 its railroads and commerce; its white warships and 
 itfl standing armies; but after all our government 
 is a spiritual life. It is what is in the minds of 
 00,000,000 of people. It is a thought. This 
 being true, I desire to say with emphasis that the 
 vision of Kentucky boys and girls is our greatest 
 asset. There is not a child in Lexington that is 
 not worth more than all of the gold and silver in 
 Kentucky. I speak not as a Pine Tree Tapper 
 from Florida or as a Cotton Picker from the Lone 
 Star State, or as a Hoosier from Indiana; but as 
 a loyal Corn Cracker, who was born and reared 
 in humble and obscure life among the sand hills 
 of Kentucky. I love eweiy inch of Kentucky soil 
 and Kentucky life. We all know that the Ken- 
 tucky people are a great people. Nature has been 
 esnecially kind to us. I do not want to be narrow, 
 but you will excuse me if I believe that if God has 
 a favorite creation, it is the Kentucky child. I 
 believe there are more great men and women to 
 the square inch in Kentucky childhood than can 
 be found among an equal number of children in 
 any other Commonwealth. 
 
 The name of Kentucky's illustrious sons are 
 written upon almost every page of history that has 
 been recorded since I>aniel Boone first found his 
 way into the Kentucky wilderness. Kentucky gave 
 to the country a Clay, whose logic and oratory in- 
 structed and charmed the world. It gave to the 
 country a Lincoln, whose power of mind and heart 
 
 48
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 solved the dangerous question of African slavery. 
 It produced a Foster, whose '-'Old Kentucky 
 Home" is being sung around the world. It num- 
 bers a Breckinridge, a Marshall, a Prentiss, a 
 Crittenden, a Hardin, and many more of the most 
 brilliant lights known in American history among 
 her sons. She has furnished Governors, Congress- 
 men, Judges and great men in all walks of life 
 to other States ; but where are our Clays, Lincolns, 
 Prentisses, and Marshalls today? Where are our 
 future Governorsj Supreme Courts and General 
 Assem^blies ? 
 
 Where are the men who will in future years 
 blaze the way to a higher civilization in all of the 
 divisions of human activities. I believe I can tell 
 where they are. They sleep in the bosom of Ken- 
 tucky's noble childhood. They will rise in their 
 glory and be the Greater Kentucky when the 
 schools of our Commonwealth ring the rising bell 
 in their souls. Childhood shows us the way to a 
 greater democratic Commonwealth. 
 
 Spirit is the endowment fund of a democracy. 
 The soul is the energy that is behind commerce 
 and every other great achievement that enlarges 
 and ennobles life. It is the dynamo that turns 
 the complex machinery of human action. It is the 
 great central powerhouse somewhere in the cen- 
 ter of the universe that turns the wheels of pro- 
 gresss. In fact, nothing has ever been accomplish- 
 ed by human hands in the outward world that 
 did not begin as a concept in the world of mind. 
 Wherever our eyes go they behold the product of 
 spirit. Tobacco barns were burned and John 
 Holloway was shot before the blaze was witnessed 
 
 49
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 by the physical eye and the report of the gun was 
 Iieard by the physical ear. Captain Rankin was 
 hanged before the rope was put around his neck. 
 That riot appeared upon the fields of the soul 
 before it appeared upon the streets of Springfield, 
 111. T am trying to say that the Commonwealth's 
 house will be in bad order until the soul's house 
 is put into good order by Christian education. 
 (Applause.) A great Commonwealth cannot be 
 bestowed; it must be achieved through the devel- 
 opment of the soul. 
 
 Tlie citizen of patriotic vision who plants a 
 great university and gives to Christian education 
 forty years of noble and efficient service is a no- 
 bleman — a hero in the time of peace, who plants 
 the American flag upon the heaven kissed hills of 
 liberty. More than forty years ago the honored 
 President of the State University heard democra- 
 cy's call for men, and almost single handed and 
 alone opened a relentless warfare on superstition, 
 incompetency and ignorance. He has given the 
 great Commonwealth of Kentucky a great life and 
 a noble service. He stands alone today in one of 
 the epochs of Kentucky's educational history. 
 No man in the State has done as much in aiding 
 the individual to prepare for a larger life in the 
 Commonwealth as President James K. Patterson, 
 whose forty years of active service we have met 
 to cele])rate. I greatly value this opportunit}^ to 
 express my deep and sympathetic interest in the 
 University, its officers and faculty, and my per- 
 sonal esteem and regard for the life and work of 
 it? honored President. The regents, faculty, stu- 
 dents and friends of the Western Kentucky State 
 Normal join me in these greetings. (Applause.) 
 50
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 ^librejia of Bitfjarb l^enrp Crogjsftelli 
 
 Mr. Ciiainnaii, Honored President, Ladies and 
 Gentlemen : — 
 
 /•■^HIS is, indeed, a most iitting time for con- 
 if\ gratulating President Patterson, the com- 
 ^^ pletion of the fortieth year of his Pres- 
 idency of the University of Kentucky. As I was 
 listening to the addresses a moment ago, this 
 thought came to my mind: The forty years of 
 President Patterson's incumhency represent tran- 
 .sition, a period connecting the old with the new. 
 When forty years ago President Patterson came 
 to this community to take charge of this institu- 
 tion, our educational interests in Kentucky were 
 far from what thev are today. At that time the 
 old regime obtained. The one trustee system was 
 in vogue in our public schools. This trustee was 
 governed very largely in the determination of the 
 teacher of the school of the district by the spirit 
 of nepotism. 
 
 There was, furthermore, at that time a great 
 gulf fixed between the insititutions of higher learn- 
 ing and the elementary and secondary schools. 
 It was thought that there was an irreconcilable 
 conflict between the college and the high school, 
 that if the high school and academy succeeded, 
 many students would be lost to the college and 
 the university. We have come to the time when 
 we know that there is no such conflict. Every 
 college of rank is now doing all that it can to 
 
 51
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 encourage the high school and to render it the 
 more effective in preparing students for institu- 
 tions of higher learning as well as for the duties 
 of life. No man has been more diligently engaged 
 in this laudable enterprise than President Pat- 
 terson. 
 
 All honor is due to the State University and 
 its President for the results achieved so far. 
 
 While it was pointed out recently that we had 
 in the State of Kentucky more than 1,200 log 
 school houses, that there were more than 2,300 
 school houses without proper seats for their stu- 
 dent^s, that of the 25,000 trustees in the State 
 5,000 could neither read nor write, and that 
 10,000 of these had no adequate conception of the 
 duties of their office, these conditions are rapidly 
 disappearing; and the colleges of the State have 
 made large contributions in this direction. 
 
 I am glad to have the honor. Sir, to bear to 
 you the congratulations of Transylvania Univer- 
 sity, its Board of Curators, its Executive Commit- 
 tee; and in the name of this institution, I desire 
 to wish you God speed, and that your days may be 
 lengthened for the accomplishment of still greater 
 things for our old Kentucky home. 
 
 52
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 
 ^flBM^HE work of eminent specialists in most pro- 
 £m\ fessions may be tersely described so that 
 ^^^^ the man in the street may understand 
 something, at least, of their ability and achieve- 
 ments. The fame of great physicians, of astute 
 lawyers, of eloquent and logical preachers, of cap- 
 tains of industry with genius for organization, 
 is of the sort that is easily understood. But these 
 men work with things. How shall we measure 
 the achievements of the teacher or college pro- 
 fessor, whose work consists in stimulating and 
 guiding the expanding minds of young men and 
 young women ? His influence is enormous, yet his 
 successes are confused by the very successes he 
 helps others to attain. The reward of the teacher 
 lies in the pleasure he finds in his work and in 
 some scant opportunity, mayhap, to extend, if only 
 slightly, the boundaries of the known body of 
 knowledge. 
 
 These remarks are pertinent to a discussion of 
 the qualifications for college presidents, since they 
 are nearly always chosen from the ranks of emi- 
 nent professors. 
 
 The college president is usually an eminent 
 specialist, and more. He must necessarily be a 
 man of broad culture; yet, to be successful, he 
 must possess many other qualities, some of them 
 almost antagonistic to the spirit of the class-room 
 
 53
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 and the laboratory. He must have a strong per- 
 sonality and a natural talent for leadership. He 
 must be an accurate judge of men, have a good 
 knowledge of human nature and a well-developed 
 sense of values. He must possess infinite tact 
 and infinite patience. And he must be able to dis- 
 cern the signs of the times, so that the institution 
 whose destiny he is helping to shape, may train 
 properly the young minds committed to its care, 
 so that they may fit properly into the general 
 scheme of things. 
 
 The University of to-day must be fifteen or 
 twenty years ahead of the times. 
 
 To the layman, the life of a college president 
 may seem to be cast in particularly pleasant 
 places. But there are few so strenuous. As the 
 responsible head, he must guide his board of trus- 
 tees, his faculty and the student body. Any one 
 of these is liable to be fractious and sometimes 
 all three. He sees a glorious field of labor and 
 finds the obstacles so numerous and vexing that 
 they will discourage any but the stoutest heart. 
 It must be a dim realization of their stupendous 
 tasks that prompts even the citizens of ungrate- 
 ful republics to honor those college presidents, 
 who, through long and oftentimes tempestuous 
 careers, behold some measure of success crowning 
 their efforts. 
 
 For twenty years I have been in close touch 
 with the State University — for twelve years as 
 student or instructor — and in that time its alumni 
 have increased many fold and its activities have 
 extended into many new fields, A number of new 
 departments or colleges have been organized, in- 
 
 54
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 eluding Mechanical, Electrical and Mining Engi- 
 neering, and Law, all of which have grown rapid- 
 ly, and the old established colleges have shared 
 in the progress. The standards of admission and 
 collegiate work have been raised until the State 
 University towers above all other institutions in 
 the Commonwealth in power and prestige. Its 
 growth has been steady and uniform — the laying 
 of a solid foundation. Its graduates are to be 
 found in the faculties of similar universities from 
 Cornell to Leland Stanford and from Michigan 
 and Wisconsin to Alabama. Its most notable prog- 
 ress has been made in the past three years. In a 
 decade the tide of public sentiment toward it has 
 changed from toleration to enthusiastic support in 
 the city, the county and the State. Our legisla- 
 tures have been niggardly in the granting of 
 appropriations for needed buildings and increas- 
 ing the annual revenue for scholastic services. 
 During the past few years some evidence has been 
 given that this condition of things is to change 
 and that Kentucky will not l)e put to shame, as 
 she now is, by every state touching lies border, in 
 the matter of support for higher education. The 
 rapid progress in primary and secondary educa- 
 tion in Kentucky promises well for the future 
 students of the University, and this is due, in 
 some measure, to the consistent raising of her 
 standards of admission and collegiate work. As 
 the representative of the Alumni Association of 
 the State University, I have the distinguished 
 honor of offering to President Patterson their con- 
 gratulations on the completion of forty years of 
 honoral)le service for Kentucky. Many students 
 
 55
 
 Fortieth Anniv'ersary. 
 
 have been sent from the old college to take active 
 part in the life of the State and there is no 
 question of the confidence they feel in his ability 
 and strength. They rejoice with him in the suc- 
 cess of their Alma Mater and honor him for his 
 share in her progress. President Patterson is 
 known throughout this State and others as an able 
 speaker and writer. Only those who have followed 
 the career of the State University know how hard 
 he has fought for it and how potent has been his 
 strong personality in securing its present measure 
 of efficiency and successs. 
 
 56
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 ^titivtsisi of Br. IB^inttt 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 
 
 3T is a great privilege to me to bring to you 
 the greeting of the trustees and faculty of 
 Central University; accept our most cordial 
 congratulations upon this day. Forty years of 
 service and study is a great achievement. As I 
 look over and think that it has been forty years it 
 takes me back to my early days. President Pat- 
 terson entered upon his work here as the Presi- 
 dent of this great institution before I wore knee 
 breeches. While to-day he has much to ponder in 
 his mind, I would that when the time comes to 
 us to look over forty years of work that we may 
 have such memories as come to him this day. 
 
 I have not long been in the State, but. one of 
 the first names that came to me as conspicuous in 
 the life of Kentucky was that of President James 
 K. Patterson, and all through the brief years that 
 I have been privileged to work in this Common- 
 wealth his name has stood high in my estimation. 
 I feel that it has been a great privilege to be a 
 co-laborer with him in this work of education in 
 this Commonwealth. 
 
 I have listened to-day with great interest, and 
 some of these remarks have caused me to see 
 ghosts ; I saw the ghost of sectarianism. I do not 
 like that word. We ought not to use it to-day. I 
 thank God that I live in Kentucky and am privi- 
 
 57
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 leged to work in this Commonwealth when that 
 word has been put aside. (Applause.) 
 
 I know that in the development of this institu- 
 tion President Patterson has only achieved a tithe 
 of that which has been in his mind and in his 
 heart. Much as he may rejoice over the University 
 as it stands here to-day, yet to him it is incom- 
 plete; he has projected himself into the future, 
 and I venture the statement that he sees in his 
 own mind at this time a vision of a university 
 that he shall not be privileged to see in reality, 
 but the vision is his ; that which shall come in the 
 days that are yet before us, that haa already been 
 realized in his thought and purpose. 
 
 I desire to say here now just this word of con- 
 clusion, that whatever has been in the past, that 
 whatever dissensions there may have been in the 
 educational life of this great Commonwealth, that 
 the time of dissension has passed away; that no 
 longer shall one institution array itself against an- 
 other, and no longer shall one element of the edu- 
 cational life of this State be alien to the other, but 
 we shall realize that the educational life and prog- 
 ress and prosperity of this great Commonwealth is 
 the common cause of all. So in the future in the 
 development of this University, I take great pride 
 in saying for myself and for the colleges, and 
 presidents of the other institutions of the State 
 that we are one in purpose; that this institu- 
 tion shall go forward in its life and future of a 
 great University representative of a great State 
 without a single jealousy; without the possibility 
 of contention, but one, with harmonious work on 
 the part of the men who are to make the Kentucky 
 
 58
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 of the future in the development of the educational 
 life of the State. (Applause.) 
 
 Mr. President, accept our congratulations, our 
 admiration, our love on this day that means so 
 much to you. (Applause.) 
 
 59
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 ^hhvtsisi of j^eb. €btDtn 0inVitv 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Mr. President, Ladies and Gentle- 
 men : — 
 
 ^£ am surprised in the description my friend 
 ^1 has given of the church of which I have the 
 ^^ honor to be the pastor, but he left out of it 
 the most distinguished member; it has the honor 
 of having among its membership our honored 
 President. 
 
 We read in the Old Book that is familiar to us 
 under the name of Ecclesiastes that once upon a 
 time there was a little city and in that city dwelt 
 but few men, and a great king came against that 
 city and laid siege to it and built mighty bulwarks 
 against it; and in that city there was a poor wise 
 man, and by his wisdom he delivered that city, but 
 alas no man remembered that same wise man. 
 When I was honored with an invitation to be pres- 
 ent on this happy occasion and to add my little 
 words to the words that would be spoken my mind 
 for some reason reverted to that old story, and I 
 could not help but draw a parallel somewhat like 
 this : Once upon a time there was not a little city, 
 but a little institution, so small and so weak and 
 so few in it, but in that little institution there was 
 a wise man — I know not how poor he was — but he 
 was a wise man, and when there came against that 
 institution great strong foes and laid siege to it and 
 built their mighty bulwarks against it, that institu- 
 tion was delivered by that same wise man, but I am 
 60
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Pattersom 
 
 thankful to say for the credit of all these whom I 
 see here before me to-day that they have not for- 
 gotten that same wise man. We remember him; 
 we remember the work that he did; we remember 
 the deliverance that he wrought; and we are con- 
 scious to some degree at least of the splendid work 
 that he has done, not only in delivering the institu- 
 tion from its foes and in bringing it k> this condi- 
 tion that we see to-day, for as far as the eye can 
 reach and whichever way we turn, we see the mag- 
 nificent results of that great, heroic, unconscious, 
 able service that he has rendered to this institu- 
 tion. I can not but think when I remember these 
 forty years — I can not but think of another great 
 leader and deliverer, who led the chosen people 
 from the bondage of Egypt through the weary 
 wilderness to the promised land. Oh, who can ever 
 measure the labor and the trials — yes, I might say 
 the agony of the conflict in the service that the 
 great leader rendered his people, to his God and 
 to the world ? And after that forty years of service 
 he brought them within view of the promised land, 
 where we stand to-day in regard to this great insti- 
 tution; not only in view of the promised land, but 
 one as he looks about him and sees the effects of 
 this service of leadership would be led to be- 
 lieve that we have already crossed the Jordan and 
 entered upon our inheritance. 
 
 Forty years — long years, and when those years 
 were ended Moses standing upon the border-land of 
 that glorious inheritance saw before him what that 
 people whom he had led were destined to inherit. 
 
 Mr. President, you have brought us to the 
 border-line; you have brought us to the banks of 
 
 61
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 this Jordan. You have been privileged to look 
 across the river and to see the glory of the inherit- 
 ance to which you lead us in your great work. But 
 sir, it is my prayer to-day for Kentucky, for us 
 all, and my wish in regard to you, sir, that our 
 Moses whose forty years have ended — that our 
 Moses may not die, but that he may be spared to 
 us for possibly forty years longer. (Applause.) 
 
 I trust, sir, that when you do lay down your 
 great work, that there will be another Joshua, capa- 
 ble of taking it up and carrying it on to comple- 
 tion; and God grant that that other Joshua may 
 have many more years to study and prepare him- 
 self to take up this work as it falls from the hands 
 of the Moses who laid it down, and lead the people 
 on to greater things. 
 
 May God bless you, and spare you, the Moses 
 whom we honor and revere and thank to-day. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 62
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 ^bbresia of 3l^eb. Maat 3. ^p^nrer 
 
 ^-^ORTY \ears is a long span when viewed 
 ^r from rhe beginning, but only a thread of 
 ^^^ space when crossed. We thought our fa- 
 thers were old at forty but in those childhood 
 years we looked upon the horizon as the border 
 of the world. Experience has taught us to revise 
 our judgment. 
 
 To have spent forty years in strenuous, re- 
 sponsible public service and to have filled them 
 with wisdom and honor were worthy the ambition 
 and perseverance even of our gifted and distin- 
 guished Scotchman, the esteemed President of the 
 Kentucky State University. 
 
 He planted himself like a tree by the water- 
 course, bringing forth fruit, and giving shelter 
 and shade, through four decades to multitudinous 
 students, seeing them grow into useful and patri- 
 otic citizenship, and, in the face of many discour- 
 agements, he making his own high ideals dominant 
 in the realm of education. His success commands 
 the gratitude, as it does the admiration, of all the 
 loyal and wide-awake men and women in the Com- 
 monwealth of Kentucky. 
 
 Forty years of honest toil, with tides of ad- 
 versity flowing in and tides of cheer flowing out — 
 destiny-freighted years — years on which students 
 built their eternities — surely they demand this 
 reverent pause and hearty greeting. 
 
 Like "wine and milk" for the soul, in the 
 golden chalice of education, has been your long 
 
 63
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 administration in tliis famous institution. So, 
 honored President, as a representative of that re- 
 ligion that carries the undying torch of truth and 
 civilization, I salute you, congratulate you and 
 wish for you continued strength and providential 
 guidance. 
 
 I love to think of life under the form of sym- 
 bols. Each year is a book; each day is a page; 
 every hour is a line and every waking moment a 
 chosen word. Before such a library of sacred vol- 
 umes we may stand with bowed heads and thank- 
 ful hearts, as Agasiz stood among his students on 
 the island of Penikese. What one has done, and 
 been, and aspired to become, is written in those 
 books to be opened in the great examination when 
 teachers and pupils, alike, shall be tested and 
 "pitched or passed." 
 
 I love to think of life, also, as a grand orches- 
 tra. Every year is an instrument discoursing 
 music. All the instruments mingle their melodies 
 into harmony, though sometimes in a minor strain, 
 with their creseendos and diminuendos, but reach- 
 ing at length a climax of rapturous sweetness and 
 triumphant joy. 
 
 The past calls us to remember. The future 
 meets us with its message and its smile and bids 
 us to labor in hope and in love. The past is a 
 sea; the future is a shore; the present is a grain 
 of sand washed by the wave and thrown back into 
 the broad bosom of the deep. Or, to use another 
 figure, the past is a sea; the future is the rising 
 tide ; and the present is the turn of the tide home- 
 ward. 
 
 Steele once wrote that "a healthy old fellow, 
 64
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 if not a fool, is the happiest man alive." In youth 
 the green leaves of the forest shut out the light; 
 but M^hen the leaves fall the stars appear. 
 
 Dr. Holland, in his essay on "How to Grow 
 Old," says the way to keep young is to love. Love 
 the young and keep in vital touch with them. Let 
 the shuttle of youth throw its golden threads of 
 sunshine into the dull, gray, warp of age. Love 
 your wife, if you have one — and if not, get one if 
 you can — love your fellows in their struggles and 
 their sins; and love God, your Guardian and 
 Friend. Love is the great elixer of life. The man 
 of vision and of love can never grow old in spirit 
 even as the man of faith can never die. 
 
 As the mountain among the hills ; as the ocean 
 among the seas; as the rose among the flowers; 
 as the oak among the trees and as the sun among 
 the stars, so is love among the rejuvenating virtues 
 and graces. 
 
 I sympathize with the sentiment of Oliver Wen- 
 dell Holmes, when, at the age of three-score and 
 ten, he went back to Harvard, his alma mater, and 
 thus spoke to men who half a century before had 
 been his classmates and his chums: 
 
 "Has there any old fellow got mixed with 'the 
 
 boys ?' 
 If there has, take him out without making a noise ; 
 Hang the catalogue's cheat and the almanac's spite. 
 Old time is a liar ; we're twenty to-night. 
 
 *^es, we're boys; always playing with tongue or 
 with pen. 
 
 65
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 And I sometimes have asked, shall we ever be men ? 
 Shall we always be laughing and happy and gay 
 Till the last dear companion drops, smiling away ? 
 
 "Then here's to our manhood, its gold and its gray, 
 The frosts of its winter, the dews of its May. 
 And, when we are done with our life-lasting toys, 
 Dear Father, take care of Thy children — 'The 
 Boys !' 
 
 66
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 l^marfeB, Vxv^il |9. iHoore, Seprtsipnting 
 tt)e ^tutient poDp 
 
 3 doubt not that many of you think me quite 
 presumptuous to dare appear on the same 
 platform with such notable speakers as have 
 addressed you this afternoon. And, indeed, I am 
 more than willing to admit that under ordinary 
 circumstances I would hardly place myself in a 
 position where the fullness of my inexperience 
 could be so readily apprehended by the unpleasant 
 but very human process of comparison. 
 
 I believe, however, on this occasion I have a 
 decided advantage over those who have preceded, 
 me, in at least one particular, one which I hope 
 will make up for my disadvantages in point of 
 ability. For the past four years I have enjoyed 
 the privilege of being under the care and guidance 
 of him to whom we join in paying tribute this 
 afternoon. You gentlemen have known him as a 
 man among men, a scholar among scholars, a 
 fighter among fighters. You have met him on the 
 battlefield of life, most of you as followers and 
 friends, some perhaps, at times, as foes. In either 
 case, you can testify to his broad learning, his 
 remarkable ability, his tireless energy and his 
 heroic courage. You have seen him, armor on, 
 sword drawn, the light of battle in his eye, ready 
 and anxious to wage unceasing war for his glorious 
 cause. 
 
 I, as one of the many for whom he has given 
 
 67
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 his life-work, have seen him when he had sheathed 
 his sword, put away his armor, and with that 
 serene peacefulness of the truly noble victor, sat 
 by his own fireside, surrounded by his boys and 
 girls, working for them, planning with them, en- 
 couraging them in his own inimitable way. No 
 sign of conflict there, no evidence that all we then 
 enjoyed was the result of his sacrifices, no refer- 
 ence to a life of never-ending endeavor for us ; and 
 yet, an atmosphere of quiet dignity and calm con- 
 tent, which we instinctively knew could come only 
 from a knowledge of obstacles, one by one, sur- 
 mounted, and Herculean tasks surely and safely 
 accomplished. 
 
 President Patterson has ever been the friend 
 and adviser of his students, guiding them in the 
 safest paths, assisting them along the most needed 
 lines, always ready to lend a helping hand to the 
 deserving, and striving from the beginning to 
 make his University, and I think I use the pro- 
 noun advisedly, a school where rich and poor 
 should meet on a common level. He knows no 
 such thing as partiality, and his favors, numerous 
 as they have been, are dispensed on the common 
 ground of merit. 
 
 A kind and generous protector, a helpful and 
 understanding teacher, and still a strict and thor- 
 ough disciplinarian — such has he been to us, and 
 as we leave him we carry with us the memory of 
 a man. Could we receive a richer endowment ? 
 
 To pay the debt of gratitude owed by Ken- 
 tucky's boys and girls for forty years of such mag- 
 nificent service is a task too great for mere words ; 
 and to give even an idea of our appreciation is 
 68
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 more than I would attempt. But, on behalf of 
 my eight hundred fellow students to whom he be- 
 queaths this rich heritage, on behalf of hundreds 
 who point to him as the author of their successes, 
 on behalf of every man or woman, boy or girl, who 
 has had the opportunity of knowing him as only 
 his students ever know him, let me pay my tribute 
 of admiration, affection and respect to the truest, 
 noblest and best friend education ever had in 
 Kentucky — President Patterson. 
 
 69
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 ^WKtsu of Alpi)a $ui)i)arti« mtmhev 
 of ti)e Qllasifii of 1910 
 
 
 
 NE and thirty years ago, the Agricultural 
 and Mechanical College, now the State 
 University of Kentucky, after an appren- 
 ticeship of thirteen years began to exist as a sepa- 
 rate institution. To the casual observer no event 
 could seem more insignificant. The recognized 
 colleges and some of the ablest teachers in the 
 Commonwealth scarcely deigned to notice it., but 
 the act that freed thousands of African slaves in 
 the State at the close of the War of the Eebellion 
 was in a sense a mere trivial affair when compai-ed 
 with the emancipation of this institution from the 
 mother University. 
 
 Then began a long and dark struggle for the 
 existence of the new college, but guided by the 
 hand of her young captain whose armour was 
 forged among the hills of his native Scotland, she 
 triumphed over all. Then those who had refused 
 to recognize her becoming afraid of her power 
 joined their forces for her destruction. Again the 
 battle ensued, and in the thickest of the fight her 
 foster father and knightly champion could hear 
 the faint cry of generations yet to be : "Watchman, 
 what of the night?" And from the depth of his 
 heart came the strong reply: "The morning 
 cometh," for as the lofty mountain peaks are first 
 to catch the beams of the rising sun, he was first 
 to predict the future greatness of the institution 
 70
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 that he had so successfully piloted. Not only has 
 he combatted and vanquished every assailant, but 
 through forty years of strenuous toil he has built 
 up a University which bids fair to surpass any 
 south of the Ohio. 
 
 It is seldom that in the annals of history can 
 be found a record parallel to his. What Ken- 
 tuckian has made a greater sacrifice for the cause 
 of education in his State than our noble Presi- 
 dent? Had he sought the field of politics, he 
 doubtless would have found a harvest ripe. Had 
 he entered into the business world, his success 
 would have been bounded only by human proba- 
 bilities. But he has been content to give his whole 
 life to the upbuilding of the State University of 
 Kentucky, which will remain a monument to his 
 memory as long as higher education shall be the 
 watchword of the people, or until the nation shall 
 cease to exist. 
 
 And now, President Patterson, as a representa- 
 tive from the student body of the State Uni- 
 versity of Kentucky I bring to you a message: 
 From the fathers and mothers from a thousand 
 happy homes, the education of whose sons and 
 daughters is entrusted to your care, from the 
 mountains, the Blue Grass, the Pennyrile and the 
 Purchase, from every county in the grand old 
 Commonwealth, from the future manhood and 
 womanhood of the State, her only hope, from the 
 members of that society which you have so liber- 
 ally endowed and which bears your revered name, 
 from those who have had the marked privilege of 
 being members of your own classes, from the 
 hearts of a loyal and loving student body I bring 
 
 71
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 you this greeting. It is the wish of each and all 
 that you continue in that office which you have so 
 ably filled for forty years, until He to whom we 
 must all give an account of our deeds done on 
 earth says: "Well done, thou good and faithful 
 servant : Thou hast been faithful over a few things, 
 I will make thee ruler over many things; enter 
 thou into the joy of thy Lord." 
 
 72
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 a^emarfefi of J^rof. fameji ^. WBWt 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 
 
 3F time permitted, I would be glad to tell you 
 of some of the struggles that this old gentle- 
 man, my personal friend, and I have to- 
 gether passed through during the long years of 
 our association. My first acquaintance with him 
 was when I entered Kentucky (now Transylvania) 
 University, forty-four years ago. Since that time 
 there has been scarcely a day, when we were both 
 in this city, that I have not seen more or less of 
 him. Perhaps no man knows better than I the 
 many perplexing questions he has met and the 
 obstacles he has overcome in his long, able, and 
 successful administration. Some of these have 
 been known to the public, but only his most 
 intimate associates have known of the many sleep- 
 less nights and days of anxiety which he has ex- 
 perienced. It is, however, growing late and I 
 must not detain you, but I will ask your attention 
 to the reading of two letters which have been re- 
 ceived in the course of the preparation for this 
 celebration. One of these is from President H. C. 
 White of the University of Georgia, and reads as 
 follows : 
 
 University of Georgia, Athens, Ga. 
 May 25, 1909. 
 Director M. A. Scovell, 
 
 Lexington, Ky. 
 My Dear Director Scovell : — 
 
 I have just returned home after an absence of ten 
 
 73
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 days — having attended the Lake Mohonk (N. Y.) Con- 
 ference on International Arbitration — and as my mail 
 was not forwarded I find your very kind favor on my 
 return. I very much regret the delay in acknowledg- 
 ment but have wired you at once. I am genuinely dis- 
 tressed that I may not accept your very kind and 
 flattering invitation. It would give me the utmost 
 pleasure to be permitted to say a few words on the 
 occasion of the completion of Doctor Patterson's forty- 
 year term of useful and distinguished service. It is a 
 noteworthy event in the history of American education. 
 I should require no long time in preparation of what 
 I would wish to say. Unfortunately I have accepted 
 an invitation to deliver the Commencement Address 
 at one of our Southern Colleges on June 1st, and there- 
 fore I cannot be with you that day in Lexington. I am 
 very, very sorry. Will you not do me the favor to 
 express for me my very great interest in the event, 
 my hearty appreciation of the valuable and historic 
 services of President Patterson, my best wishes for 
 his health, happiness and continuance in good works, 
 and my sincere wishes for the continued prosperity of 
 your great institution which has owed so much to 
 President Patterson's fostering care. With thanks to 
 your Board of Trustees and to you personally, I am. 
 Very faithfully yours, 
 
 H. C. White. 
 
 The other is a letter from a gentleman known 
 to many Lexington people, the Eev. Dr. Ethelbert 
 Dudley Warfield, who was born and reared in this 
 city and whose education, as you will find from 
 this letter, began under the instruction and guid- 
 ance of the learned scholar and able teacher in 
 whose honor we are met this afternoon. 
 
 Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania. 
 Easton, Pennsylvania. 
 My Dear Prof. White:— 
 
 I greatly regret my inability to be present and par- 
 74
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 ticipate in person in the recognition that is being 
 given to my beloved teacher, President Patterson. I 
 was a student in the State College from 1877 to 1879 
 and during that time I enjoyed the private tuition of 
 President Patterson in Latin and Greek. This brought 
 me into very intimate relations with him, and I can 
 never forget the delightful hours that I spent in his 
 study and under the pine trees near his house at the 
 Woodlands — the villa ad pinas — as I have been accus- 
 tomed to call it during the years that have flown. Not 
 only did President Patterson introduce me to the de- 
 lightful atmosphere of Classical scholarship, but he 
 awakened, especially in connection with Herodotus, a 
 deep interest in history that has been one of the great 
 inspirations of my life, which took me to Oxford to 
 study under Professor Stubbs, and brought me to a 
 professorship of history in due season. I also learned 
 from him to appreciate the quaint humor and strong 
 character of the Scotchman, an appreciation which was 
 deepened by contact with those other great Scotch 
 teachers who were in succession to be my preceptors, 
 President James McCosh of Princeton, and Benjamin 
 Jowett, the Master of Balliol, who was the Vice Chan- 
 cellor of Oxford when I went thither. I rejoice that 
 President Patterson has come to so ripe an age, to the 
 full measure of recognition of his service as an edu- 
 cator, and that he has seen the State College reach the 
 natural development into the State University. I trust 
 that he will find on this occasion the sincere regard of 
 his many colleagues and students a more acceptable 
 tribute than any praise that might be brought to crown 
 his long period of service. I rejoice that I am per- 
 mitted in this measure to contribute to the testimony 
 of the occasion. 
 
 Ethelbert D. Warfield, 
 Pres. and Prof, of History Lafayette College. 
 
 75
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 $rr£(aient Sattersion'fii 3$itplv 
 
 If I could persuade myself that I deserve half 
 of what has been said concerning me this after- 
 noon, I should have a much better opinion of 
 myself than ever heretofore. I thank you, gentle- 
 men and the institutions which same of you 
 represent, for the hearty and generous recogni- 
 tion which you have accorded to my ability, my 
 attainments and my work. The task of building 
 up an institution of learning is always an arduous 
 one. A college or university reverses the classical 
 axiom, "A poet is born, not made." A university 
 grows by development, by expansion, by accretion. 
 Its growth is that of an organism. It does not 
 come into existence a finished product. Those 
 institutions are the best which setting out from 
 small beginnings expand symmetrically. The old 
 universities of Europe and the best universities of 
 America have attained their present proportions 
 through this law of development. Bonn and Goet- 
 tingen in Germany, the Sorbonne in France, Sala- 
 manca and Valladolid in Spain, Magdalen and 
 Balliol and Christ Church in Oxford, King's and 
 Trinity in Cambridge, Glasgow and Edinburgh in 
 Scotland, Harvard and Yale in America, have 
 centuries behind them. They are hoary with age 
 and with honors. Their prestige and reputation 
 could not be exchanged for endowments. The 
 glory of their achievements are a halo forevermore. 
 
 The State University of Kentucky, to which 
 through me you have given your meed of generous 
 
 76
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 recognition, is the youngest of American universi- 
 ties, and is just beginning the career of usefulness 
 and honor which many of those on this platform 
 and in this audience will, I have no doubt, live to 
 see it attain. When listening to the eulogies on 
 my relation to the growth of the State University 
 of Kentucky, I could not help recalling the lines 
 of Wordsworth: 
 
 "Like winds that sweep the mountain summit, 
 Like waves that own no guiding hand. 
 How fast has brother followed brother 
 From sunlight to the sunless land." 
 
 Nearly all of those who opposed me thirty 
 years ago, when the State College, now the State 
 University, was passing through the crisis of its 
 fate, and nearly all of the few who stood by me 
 in the fierce struggle for existence which it en- 
 countered, have gone. So true it is that "the 
 places which know us now shall soon know us no 
 more." 
 
 The antagonisms and animosities engendered 
 by the contest of thirty years ago have been molli- 
 fied by time and are now practically extinguished. 
 An era of good feeling has begun and all the insti- 
 tutions represented here are co-operating loyally 
 for the advancement of the common cause in which 
 we are all interested. 
 
 Now that we have entered upon the University 
 stage in our educational progress, it behooves us to 
 adjust ourselves to altered conditions and to en- 
 deavor to realize for the Commonwealth the just 
 expectations which the general public will doubt- 
 less entertain. 
 
 17
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 The university of to-day, generally speaking, 
 retains and must retain for some time to come 
 under-graduate instruction in collegiate work in 
 connection witli advanced work in original investi- 
 gation and research, which is, as I take it, the 
 proper function of the university of to-day, and 
 much more of the university of the future. We 
 have already fallen into line with the work done 
 by the average State University in America, and 
 I am glad to say that in the Association of State 
 Universities, we are received as members of this 
 brotherhood of learning upon equal terms with 
 the rest. 
 
 What relation the university of the future must 
 sustain to denominational education no one can 
 foretell. If I may upon this occasion hazard a 
 forecast and a hope, it would be something like 
 the following: That the State University, amply 
 endowed by the Commonwealth, should provide 
 all that can be taught in secular education, in 
 language, in literature, in science and in art, em- 
 bracing the whole range of realized knowledge, 
 past and present; everything indeed that can be 
 taught within the ample scope and compass of the 
 provision thus made by the State for advanced 
 educational training; that the largest opportunity 
 should be afforded to the student to appropriate 
 and to assimilate what is already known and 
 to prosecute original research in any depart- 
 ment of scientific work, to which his inclination 
 leads him to devote his energies; that the State 
 should invite the existing denominational institu- 
 tions, whose endowments do not warrant their 
 undertaking anything beyond collegiate work, to 
 
 78
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 become affiliated institutions of the State Univer- 
 sity, admitting their alumni ad eundum to any of 
 the advanced courses of study and research for 
 which they are prepared; that the State should 
 still further invite each denomination within the 
 Commonwealth, whether Jew or Gentile, Catholic 
 or Protestant, to place its theological seminary 
 within the ample precincts of the University 
 grounds, and offer to their theological students the 
 benefit of free tuition in any branch of secular 
 learning with which they may desire to become 
 familiar; that these denominations endow their 
 respective seminaries as liberally as they may, pro- 
 viding for everything that can be taught bearing 
 directly or indirectly upon the widest theological 
 training ; that each control its endowment and its 
 faculty and its course of instruction, without inter- 
 ference from the State University ; that reciprocal 
 independence and co-ordination and good fellow- 
 ship should be maintained, each seeking to co- 
 operate with all the rest in the advancement and 
 development of a scholarship secular and theo- 
 logical commensurate with the necessities of the 
 age. This relationship, I apprehend, would Chris- 
 tianize secular education and liberalize theological 
 culture and training. 
 
 It is doubtless true that truth is one, but it is 
 likewise true that the individual manifestations of 
 truth are infinitely varied. Xo principle of science, 
 I hold, can be in opposition to the fundamental 
 principles upon which a rational system of the- 
 ology must be built. Science and religion cannot 
 be antagonistic, so long as each restricts itself 
 within its own proper sphere. The principles of 
 
 79
 
 FoKTiETH Anniversary. 
 
 science and the truths of religion interlace and are 
 interwoven one with the other and what God has 
 joined together man should not attempt to put 
 asunder. Each, however, must learn to know its 
 respective limitations. The limits of religious 
 thought, on the one hand, have their counterpart 
 in the limitations of secular knowledge upon the 
 other. I do not anticipate that the time will ever 
 come when the Decalogue or the Sermon on the 
 Mount must be revised and recast to meet the de- 
 mands of scientific truth. 
 
 I am not greatly disturbed by the disquieting 
 utterances of Ladd or Jordan, of Howison or 
 Jastrow or Munsterburg, with all their ability. I 
 do not apprehend a Eenaissance led by them in the 
 Twentieth Century. I do not anticipate any seri- 
 ous disturbance of the existing ethical and re- 
 ligious forces from any system of ethics having 
 as its basis gravitation and the correlation of the 
 physical forces. The telescope and the microscope 
 and the spectroscope, electrons, atoms and mole- 
 cules, stupendous facts in the physical universe, 
 will, when reverently interpreted, conserve and 
 strengthen, but will never provide either the ful- 
 crum or the lever for the overthrow of the ethics 
 or religion of the Old and New Testament. 
 
 The incandescent light may, with its brilliancy, 
 dazzle the inventor and his admirers, when they 
 stand within the circumference illuminated by its 
 glare. But it would be a grave mistake to suppose 
 that one such light or a hundred million such 
 lights can ever supersede the sun in the heavens. 
 The greatness and the littleness of man are to us 
 a perpetual wonder. "Oh, what a miracle to man 
 80
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 is man, a beam ethereal sullied and absorpt, 
 though sullied and dishonored, still divine." 
 
 Diderot and Helvetius, D'Alembert and Rous- 
 seau had their day and disturbed the souls of men. 
 as the vanguard of the new philosophies of our own 
 day are doing now, but their crusade against 
 Christianity has become a thing of the past, and 
 not one in a thousand now knows that they lived 
 and cast their pebble on the waters. 
 
 The time will never come when a morality 
 grounded upon the crass materialism of the gospel 
 of mammon will ever supersede the deliverance 
 made upon Mt. Sinai, or the still grander deliver- 
 ance of the Sermon on the Mount. In the ages 
 to come, whatever progress may be made, and we 
 are moving forward by strides mighty and rapid, 
 every year making the achievements already won 
 the basis for the attainment of still higher and 
 mightier conquests over nature, it will still be true 
 that in the beginning God created the heavens 
 and the earth; it will still be true that the chief 
 end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him 
 forever; it will still be true that life and immor- 
 tality have been brought to light through the 
 Gospel of the Son of God ; it will be true that 
 "Only that which made us meant us to be mightier 
 
 by and by, 
 Set the sphere of all the boundless heaven within 
 
 the human eye, 
 Sent the shadow of himself, the boundless, 
 
 through the human soul. 
 Boundless, inward, in the atom, boundless, out- 
 ward, in the whole." 
 
 Above all, whatever others may do, the State 
 
 81
 
 Fortieth Anniversary, 
 
 University of Kentucky must keep itself upon a 
 high moral plane, dominated not necessarily by a 
 dogmatic but by a religious sentiment, reflecting 
 the religious convictions of the people of our Com- 
 monwealth. Nothing must be taught from the ros- 
 trum or in the recitation room which, either in- 
 directly or by innuendo, should unsettle the faith 
 of any. Our Commonwealth is Christian, our 
 nation, the great American nation, is happily 
 Christian. It recognizes its obligations to the past, 
 that a free church in a free state are the inalienable 
 inheritance of the imperial stock to which they 
 belong, and that from the new religious enthusi- 
 asm and hope and aspirations, infused into man- 
 kind by the advent of the Savior, all that is worth 
 anything in modern civilization is derived. 
 
 "There is an old belief 
 
 That on some distant shore, 
 Beyond the sphere of grief. 
 
 Dear friends shall meet once more. 
 
 "Beyond the sphere of time 
 
 And sin and fate's control, 
 Serene in changeless prime 
 
 Of body and of soul. 
 
 "That creed I fain would keep. 
 
 That hope I'll not forego. 
 Eternal be my sleep. 
 
 Unless I waken so." 
 
 82
 
 Pres, Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 ADDENDUM 
 
 James Hennebp ^attergon 
 
 ^ater mnibneiUti* ftentutbienisist 
 
 AN APPRECIATION 
 By WILLIAM BENJAMIN SMITH LL, D.. 
 
 ^HEN" we lay open side by side the map 
 and the history of the earth, more 
 especially the biographical history, we 
 are struck by a remarkable unevenness in distri- 
 bution. Great as is the inequality of fertility, 
 ranging from tropical luxuriance to frozen wastes 
 and burning saharas, we find it fully matched in 
 the irregularity of the outcrop of distinguished 
 humanity. For untold ages the history enacted 
 over immense regions by innumerable throngs of 
 human beings has remained wholly unhistorical. 
 Like an endless crop of plants, even weeds, uncon- 
 scious of the seasons, the undistinguished genera^ 
 tions have sprung up perpetually from the earth 
 and just as perpetually have sunk back again to 
 undistinguished rest in their native sod. A tre- 
 mendous fact, before which the soul shrinks back 
 in terror. Is then all history so futile, as aimless 
 as the paleozoic ages, as monotonous and weary as 
 the ocean's barren fields of wandering foam? 
 
 It is a great relief to turn from these desert 
 tracts of time and space to certain favored re- 
 gions, to certain garden-spots where man has 
 sprouted up and grown aloft and widely, where 
 
 history has enacted itself on a sublime and sig- 
 
 83
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 nificant scale, where the drama of life has unrolled 
 itself in pomp and majesty, and where purpose 
 and aim appear upon the stage and point towards 
 eternal values. Such in ancient days were in 
 some measure the valley of the Nile and the Twin- 
 Kiver-Land of Mesopotamia and the rugged 
 mountain district of Canaan; later the serrated 
 shores and olive-clad hills of Hellas, the sunlit- 
 summits and shady vales of Italy, later still the 
 valleys of the Vo and the Arno, and all Northern 
 Europe. But even here in these regions so fer- 
 tile in greatness, the distinctions have been most 
 notable. Tf you stain the map of France or of 
 England or Germany, each region according to 
 it-s fecundity in illustrious men, the map will be 
 parti-colored in the extreme, showing side by side 
 the faintest and the deepest dyes. 
 
 A very conspicuous and industrious school of 
 thinkers would refer pretty nearly all of these 
 ditferences to the influence of the environment, 
 particularly the educational and social environ- 
 ment. Such are 1\I. Odin and his distinguished 
 disciple, Mr. I^ester Frank Ward, of Washington. 
 This is not the place to expose the fallacies that 
 infect their reasoning. Suffice it to affirm that 
 fallacies are fatally present therein, and that the 
 far more potent factor of Heredity refuses to be 
 overlooked. Of all the facts of life on this planet, 
 the fact of Inheritance, of the transmission of 
 qualities, physical and psychical, mental and 
 moral, from parent to child immediately or me- 
 diately, after intervals of generations, is by far 
 the most impressive and most important. The 
 84
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 recent formal recognition of Genetics (at the 
 Universit}^ of Cambridge) is a landmark in the 
 development of science. 
 
 The career and the personality that we have 
 before lis for consideration not only illustrate, but 
 very naturally provoke the foregoing reflections. 
 James Kennedy Patterson was the son of Andrew 
 Patterson and his wife, Janet Patterson (nee Ken- 
 nedy), of Dumbartonshire, Scotland. This name 
 is one to dwell on. Its classic form Caledonia, 
 in its pentasyllable fullness and resonance, seems 
 better to befit the largeness and eminence with 
 which this mountain region has bulked in history. 
 A country in the highest degree picturesque, 
 riotous in wild and ravishing beauty that passes 
 over at every turn into rugged majesty or stern, 
 daring, and terrible sublimity, where nature al- 
 ternately charms and stupefies, smiting with one 
 hand and caressing with the other, Scotland has 
 bred a people of the most marked variety, and has 
 contrilmted far beyond the measure of her num- 
 bers to the undying annals of our globe. The 
 features that distinguish the Scot are too well 
 known to call for minute statement. Above all 
 else he is an aecomplisher. Xature has indeed 
 forced him from the start into a severe and pro- 
 tracted struggle wherein only victory could secure 
 life. A stern and relentless selection has molded 
 the national character into features of strength, 
 courage, endurance, hardihood, patience, persist- 
 ence, and unweariable energy. Along with these 
 go the sturdy virtues of honesty, integrity, self- 
 sacrificing loyalty, and incorruptible faith. A 
 cliaracter pre-eminently to admire and pre-emi- 
 
 85
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 nently fitted to succeed. It is said in London that 
 if a Scot be admitted to any position, however 
 humble, in a business enterprise, he will surely 
 become the head of the firm. Here in the United 
 States it is a familiar fact that the Scotch and 
 the Scotch-Irish elements have distinguished them- 
 selves beyond all others, except possibly the Hugue- 
 notic, in the making of American history — here, 
 where such ample opportunity lias presented itself 
 for the display of executive, aggressive, and ad- 
 ministrative qualities. Of the men who find a 
 place in Who's Who in America, 126 (relatively a 
 very large number) were born in Scotland. But 
 we also speak of a severe, rigorous, and inexor- 
 able logic, and this power has characterized the 
 Caledonian since remote antiquity. Two of the 
 greatest, if not the two very greatest, logicians of 
 the middle ages were Johannes Scotus Erigena 
 and John Duns Scotus, the Doctor Subtilis. 
 Emerson, whose mind refused to move from pre- 
 miss to conclusion, but insisted on beholding all 
 truth as self-revealed in instantaneous vision, 
 Emerson speaks of the "insanity of dialectic" that 
 possesses the soul of Scotland. 
 
 But Caledonia is not only stern and wild. It 
 is also sprinkled all over, lowland and highland, 
 with si^ots of the tenderest beauty. So, too, the 
 Caledonian character is not merely sinewy and 
 strong, canny and subtle, tough and resistant and 
 all-subsiding ; on occasion it can show itself gentle 
 and sensitive, kind and affectionate, loving and 
 passionate, as well as devoted and true. Jeanie 
 Deans is no mere creature of the great Magician's 
 
 86
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 imagination, and even the light-hearted Burns, in 
 the agony of his soul, pours out his most plaintiff 
 wail to "Mary in Heaven." 
 
 I have dwelt at such length on the Scotti^^h 
 character, because in so doing I have really been 
 describing the subject of this sketch, who is a 
 Caledonian of the Caledonians. It is not often 
 indeed that we find an indivadual so thoroughly 
 typical. President Patterson is a Scot to the 
 marrow of his bones. Dumbarton, the county of 
 his parents, lies in a long crescent just northwest 
 of Glasgow, the city of his birth. It is a lovely and 
 romantic region, rich in antiquities, a land of 
 mountains, shooting up into peaks 3,000 feet 
 high; vocal with the commingled roar of a thou- 
 sand cotaracts, drenched with the vapors that rise 
 forever from the Atlantic and struggle over the 
 mountain tops, made almost an island by the river 
 lieven and the convergence northward of Lochs 
 Long and Lomond, the latter "the Queen of Scot- 
 tish lakes" — a wild and beauteous land which the 
 .sturdy and siterling qualities of the inhabiters have 
 developed into a region rich in herds and flocks, 
 smiling with liarvests, and resounding with the 
 hum of varied industry. 
 
 The lineage of James Kennedy Patterson is 
 a good illustration of the homely adage that blood 
 will tell, even as the invincible dominance in his- 
 tory of certain national or racial strains of blood 
 exemplifies tlie prepotence of Heredity over all 
 and every influence of environment. The name 
 of Patterson (or Paterson) bulks largely in the 
 chronicles of Britain. In the Dictionary of Na- 
 
 87
 
 i^'ORTIETH AnNTVERSARY. 
 
 tional Bio^aphy it is 17 times entered, filling 
 30 columns. In Who's Who it is also 17 times 
 repeated. The name of Kennedy ("the noble 
 family of Kennedy") is even more conspicuous. 
 Thirty tim« it appears in the Dictionary of Na- 
 tional Biography, filling fifty columns, and 22 
 times in Who's Who. All this stream of historic 
 blood seems to have poured out from the same 
 Scotch fountain, welling up in the glens near 
 Glasgow. Here was born the subject of this sketch 
 the 2fith of March, 1833. It was in the first 
 watch of the morning of the new modern day. The 
 sun was not yet risen, but the whole sky was blush- 
 ing with the splendid dawn. A new king and a 
 new )ninistry in 1830 — the tremendous struggle 
 for Keform, running through more than a year, 
 and ending with the final triumph of the People 
 over the Lords in the Eeform Act of 1832. Then 
 followed in swift succession the abolition of 
 sin very in the colonies (1833) and the poorlaw 
 of 1834. No wonder that the King took fright 
 and dismissed his ministry, calling on Sir Robert 
 Peel (conservative till 1816) to form another. 
 Meantime Science was putting on wings and In- 
 vention was harnessing all the powers of Nature 
 to the car of Progress. In 1830, the first pas- 
 senger train was dragged forward by a locomotive. 
 Already, in 1820, Ampere had founded electro- 
 dynamics in a series of researches, experimental 
 and theoretical, of surpassing brilliance. In 1831 
 Faraday had discovred the induction of electric 
 currents and opened the century of electricity in 
 wliich we still move. In 1835 and 1838 Morse 
 and Steinheil, building on earlier labors, had in-
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 vented the system of electric telegraphy, whose 
 wonders accumulate even unto this da)\ It is not 
 unjustly then that we declare this decade to he 
 the first in the great century of the Recent Age. 
 Tlie year 1832 also beheld the setting of the cen- 
 tral sun of German literature, Johann Wolfgang 
 von Gothe, as the year 1831 had already seen the 
 sudden eclipse of Hegel. In Britain, too, the 
 lights of the elder day were one by one extin- 
 guisht, Scott and Lamb in 1832, Coleridge in 
 1834, the Ettrick Shepherd in 1835, which called 
 forth from Wordsworth his exquisite and pathetic 
 poem on the Passing of the Elder Bards. In every 
 way then it was a world reborn that the babe was 
 ushered into that 26th of March, 1833, a world 
 that had turned its back upon the past and with 
 high-beating heart was starting upon paths hith- 
 erto untrod. The atmosphere was tense and sur- 
 charged with electricity. In such an atmosphere 
 were spent the first nine years of the child's life, 
 nor can we suppose his high-strung nature to have 
 been unthrilled by the great expectancy of the 
 era, in politics and science, by the quickening 
 breath of regeneration that was inspiring and en- 
 ergizing all classes of men, nor again to have been 
 unmoved by the power, the beauty, and the majesty 
 that dwelt in lake and in wood, in mountain and 
 in valley, in river and in glen of that land of 
 loveliness. However, the land of promise beck- 
 oned across the seas, and in 1842 the boy accom- 
 panied his parents to America, where, in 1843, 
 they found a home amid the forests of Indiana, 
 forty miles from ]\Iadison, where was the nearest 
 school. Here for six years he led a home life such 
 
 89
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 as the reader may perhaps imagine, if the swift 
 development of the West has not already thrust 
 such primitive conditions unimaginably far away. 
 Such a life would seem to involve a stagnation, 
 if not a paralysis, of the mental powers, the child 
 being cut off from nearly all intercourse with his 
 fellows and apparently left without any stimulus 
 to the higher life of the soul. So indeed it would 
 for the majority. They would make bitter 
 plaint of the environment as having repressed all 
 their nobler aspirations and fastened them in- 
 separably to the soil; and some poet would cele- 
 brate them as gems of purest ray serene but hid 
 in the depths of ocean, as radiant flowers but bom 
 to blush unseen — and some sociologist would echo 
 the poet and predict that with only the opportu- 
 nity of education and association with the cul- 
 tured, "genius" might be "generated" in every 
 hundredth man and talents brought forth as plen- 
 tiful as blackberries. It would indeed be over- 
 daring to affirm with Galton that genius is irre- 
 pressible; we may admit that circumstances may 
 sometimes and even often be fatally unfriendly. 
 Yet the conquering quality in real ability is one 
 of its most notable marks and showed itself clearly 
 in the case of young Patterson. Immersed in the 
 forest-depths he did not go untaught nor uned- 
 ucated. Well might he exclaim: 
 
 "I care not, Fortune, what thou may deny. 
 You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace." 
 
 It was by virtue of Nature's grace so freely be- 
 stowed on him, by virtue of the stalwart ancestral 
 blood that flowed in bin delicate veins, that he 
 
 90
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 learned, forty miles away from .sdiool, by the dim 
 candles and the tireside glow of his pioneer homo, 
 far more and far better things than are often 
 taught in the palatial temples of education that 
 adorn our jnodern cities. He had not indeed the 
 endles.'^ series of Eeaders, Arithmetics, and Geog- 
 raphies that now enrich the great publishing 
 houses of America : he was never pampered on 
 the thin spiritual gruei, the delicately flavored in- 
 tellectual pap, on which the favored children of 
 to-day are fed. He learned nothing about the 
 Child's History of Greece and I?ome and Modern 
 Kiirope; he made no Little Journeys and saw no 
 T'ittle Rivers and read no Jungle Books nor other 
 l)ooks for Little People; in fact, he remained ig- 
 norant of all recent devices to prolong the natural 
 period of mental babyhood. But he did grow 
 strong on the strong meat of the classic writers, 
 he was happy in the companionship of Scott and 
 Burns and other illustrious countrymen, he learned 
 to know the voices of Milton and Shakespeare and 
 the great choir of England, he drank from the 
 clear-flowing fountains of Hume and Macaulay, 
 of Robertson and of Gibbon. How well such old- 
 fashioned and obsolete training served its purpose 
 may be inferred from the fact that after only two 
 years' attendance at school in Madison, in 1849 
 and 1850. the boy of 17 was himself foimd fitted 
 tn assu)ne charge of a country school, which he 
 successfully conducted till the next year, when he 
 entered Hanover College. There he maintained 
 himself at the head of his class till his graduation 
 in 185G. at the age of 23, thus preparing for the 
 refutation of another favorite fallacy, that the 
 
 91
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 leaders in school are seldom or never heard of 
 afterwards. It is true that the dark side of in- 
 distinction does indeed swallow up large numbers 
 of first-honor men; but it is also true that it 
 swallows up countless throngs of all other classes. 
 The honor man's chance for distinction is not 
 indeed good; but it is far better than the chance 
 of any single one of his fellows. It is true that 
 most of the eminent successes in life are scored, 
 not by the honor men, but by others; but it is 
 also true that most of the grass is eaten, not by 
 the black sheep, but by the white, aud for similar 
 reasons. 
 
 The old college curriculum was srict, formal, 
 and straight-laced as a Puritan. It lacked the in- 
 finite elasticity and flexibility of the modern elec- 
 tive S3'^stem, with which indeed it compared much 
 as Calvinism with Universalism, But, as every- 
 thing has the defects of its qualities, so too it 
 has the qualities of its defects, and it is ques- 
 tionable whether the working of the old system, 
 as reckoned in men, the only final units of value, 
 was on the whole inferior to that of the new. This 
 latter yields us specialists actually, while the 
 former yielded them only potentially; but that 
 there is great gain in such early specialization is 
 not by any means sure. We have seen that young 
 Patterson readily overcame the handicap of cir- 
 cumstances, which at the most delayed his en- 
 trance into life by three years. When he did come 
 he came fit, not merely to do some one thing ex- 
 ceding well — like the mere fractions of humanity 
 that now swarm every June from the hives of 
 specialization, but to do many things well, and 
 92
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 that particular thing exceeding well to which na- 
 tive bent or the constraint of environment might 
 incline him. 
 
 Though not yet 24, he was chosen Principal of 
 G-eenville Presbyterial Academy, in Muhlenberg 
 County. Ky., at any time a recognition, not merely 
 of scholastic accomplishment, but also of adminis- 
 trative ability, and under the circumstances of the 
 c?.ee particularly noteworthy. The duties of this 
 position, often trying enough, he discharged effi- 
 ciently for three years, until elected Principal of 
 the Preparatory Department of StcAvart College, 
 since then devclopt into Southwestern University, 
 Clarksville, Tennessee, where he was speedily ad- 
 vanced to the chair of Latin and Greek. Here he 
 remained but two years, 1859-61, being then 
 called back to Kentucky to the position of Prin- 
 cipal of the Transylvania High School, at Lex- 
 ington. This post he lilled with energy and suc- 
 cess till. 1865, when he was called to the chair of 
 Ijatin and Civil History in the newly organized 
 Kentucky University. 
 
 The nine years that had passed since young 
 Patterson's graduation had been years strenuous 
 enough to suit the most fastidious; they had been 
 occupied with multitudinous cares of administra- 
 tion as well as of teaching. When you meet the 
 bright college graduate that for a decade has de- 
 voted himself to "school work,'-* to the incessant 
 routine of reports, recitations, and general man- 
 agement, it is almost certain that you will note 
 with pain a distinct declension from the ideals, 
 the aspirations, and even the knowledge of ten 
 years before. He knows certainly much more of 
 
 93
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 the world, but he knows and thinks less of the 
 spirit. He will confess that he is "rusty" in the 
 languages and mathematics and perhaps even in 
 the science?-, his vision of the great . presiding 
 geniuses of history has grown dim, and his glance 
 his been turned away. He excuses himself on the 
 ju.4 ground that his time is taken up with his 
 Board and his Teachers and his Committees. He 
 has become but a small wheel or rather an uncon- 
 scious cog in the huge and complicated machine 
 of education. No one need wonder when such a 
 fate overtakes a "Principal." But it did not over- 
 take young Patterson. His personality proved 
 strong and triumphant. In spite of the distrac- 
 tions and consuming cares of his responsible posi- 
 tions, he never lost touch with science and learn- 
 ing, with research and scholarship. He still 
 found time not merely for loving companionship 
 with the masters of literature, both ancient and 
 modern, but for minute and extended philological 
 studies not unworthy of a linguistic specialist. 
 So capacious was his intellect, so diversified his 
 interests, so enlightened and catliolic his sympa- 
 thies that it is not easy to say what was his favor- 
 ite, what would have been his specialty, had for- 
 tune commanded or permitted him to specialize. 
 To me, however, he seemed by nature rather a 
 comparative philologist than aught else. He had 
 acquired an easy familiarity with Hebrew, while 
 Principal of the Transylvania High School, and 
 he enjoys the distinction of being the first west 
 of the Alleghanies to attempt to become a San- 
 skrit scholar. No one that ever enjoyed the 
 blessing Of his instruction can forget the de- 
 
 94
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 light he appeared to find in Grimm's mys- 
 terious Procession of the Mutes, as awe-inspir- 
 ing as the Precession of the Equinoxes, nor 
 the keener than bloodhound scent with which 
 he would track down some vagrant word from 
 Kome to Athens and to India, from the braes of 
 Scotland or bogs of Ireland, through the fens and 
 forests of Germany and tlie frozen wastes of 
 "Russia, to its home on the central plateau of Asia. 
 Those were rare chases we made in those golden 
 days,instructive and enjoyable in the highest de- 
 gree, with the master-huntsman hounding and 
 cheering us on. A red fox chase sometimes, much 
 fun and little fur, but none the less profitable, 
 even when the trail proved false, for in earlier 
 days, as in later, the philologists knew some things 
 that were not cO. But the most bootless investi- 
 gation could not fail to be inspiring, and the spir- 
 itual gain was never wanting. Of all the facts of 
 human history the fact of Language is the most 
 towering and conspicuous. Its origin and growtli 
 are beyond compare wonderful and significant, the 
 laws of its structure and development are not less 
 profound and subtile than the laws of planetary 
 \vheelings and stellar evolution. The attitude of 
 awe and reverence l>efore the Word is a college 
 acquisition not to be lightly esteemed. The recog- 
 nition that a certain fleeting or instantaneous 
 posture of the vocal organs, the shape of a certain 
 momentary pulse of air, has descended unchanged 
 ■or changed in a prescribed and definite fashion 
 through thousands of years, that it marks one's 
 blood kinship with one's clan, from India to Cali- 
 fornia, is amazing and awesome; it sobers the 
 
 95
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 spirit and gives ballast to the soul. More partic- 
 ularly, the habit, of hunting up the affinities of 
 words is invaluable to the effective wielder of hu- 
 man speech. Especially is this true of the wielder 
 of English, in Avhich vocables tend to become pure 
 arbitrary symbols, as in Volapuk or the logistic 
 of Peano, whereas in German one still feels the 
 meaning of one's words. By the student trained 
 in Prof. Patterson's class-room the Word was not 
 merely perceived in itself and in its conventional 
 meaning, it was apperceived in its history and 
 kinship ; it was seen, not in its bare and bald sig- 
 nificance, but wearing a bright aureole of sugges- 
 tions and "full-charged with old-world wonders." 
 In the days of his Principalship Prof. Patter- 
 son had become a wide-ranging linguist, and the 
 Curators made no mistake in calling him to the 
 chair of Latin. It is only one feature of his oc- 
 cupancy that has thus far been noted. Another 
 was the stress that he laid upon Latin composition. 
 Such an advanced and difficult work as Crombie's 
 Gmynasium was carefully studied by his seniors, 
 who were also drilled in turning Hume and Ma- 
 eaulay into Latin. In reading Latin they found 
 one of his favorites in Lucretius, whom they read 
 partly in class, partly as a parallel, the stately 
 argumentation of the chief of Latin poets being 
 an especially delicate morsel to the logic-loving 
 Scotchman. 
 
 As the very able adjutancy of Prof. Milligan 
 relieved Prof. Patterson of the bulk of the Latin 
 teaching, he found time for interesting courses in 
 Metaphysics. It was in this department that he 
 perhaps im^pressed himself most deeply upon the 
 
 96
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 minds of some students. The subject is difficult 
 and repellent to the majority, but Prof. Patterson 
 never failed to maintain the interest of his classes. 
 As a genuine son of the heath, he was thoroughly 
 loyal to the great Sir William Hamilton, but he 
 never called for any narrow acquiescence in his 
 master's dogmatism. His own library was rich in 
 philosophic works, both of the Scotch school and 
 of others, which he delighted to incite his students 
 to consult and which he was generous in putting 
 at their service. In fact, it would seem that Prof. 
 Pattei-son was almost as useful to his students in 
 the direction of their reading as in his class-room 
 instruction. P'or his own reading had taken the 
 widest range, and he had a fine instinct for the 
 best in literature as well as in science and history. 
 Many were the books bought at his suggestion, 
 sometimes numbers of copies of the same work by 
 one ela.ss. The latest and most noteworthy pro- 
 ducts of the British press rarely escaped his atten- 
 tion—his judgment was sure and his taste dis- 
 criminating. It was the day of the new birth of 
 Zoology and Botany, or of their rebaptism under 
 the auguster name of Biology. In 1859 Charles 
 Robert Darwin had spoken his memorable oracle 
 on "The Origin of Species by Natural Selection," 
 and the whole air shook with its multiplied echoes 
 and re-echoes. Prof. Patterson had not been 
 swept of! his feet by the great wave of argument 
 and authority, but he was an eager student of the 
 subject and a diligent reader of Darwin and Spen- 
 cer, of Huxley and Tyndall, of Murphy and of 
 Mivart. Hardly less was he interested in the doc- 
 trine of the cell, as it grew up under the master- 
 
 97
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 hand of Virchow, and even in the abiogenetic the- 
 ories of Bastian. It was indeed a surprising sight 
 to see a Professor of Latin so deeply versed in the 
 sciences both of matter and of mind, so closely in 
 touch with the great scientific and philosophic 
 movements of the day, and so fully au courant 
 with the most recent developments in so many 
 fields of research and discussion so diverse and so 
 widely sundered. He himself found a lively pleas- 
 ure in placing the rich treasures of his varied 
 knowledge at the service of his pupils, to whom 
 his stimulation no less than his guidance was in- 
 valuable. 
 
 Even this was not all, however. Prof. Patter- 
 son was almost equally helpful in Civil History. 
 This, too, was a favorite study. He loved to dis- 
 course on the great national or racial movements, 
 the migrations of the peoples, the formation, dis- 
 solution, and regeneration of governments and em- 
 pires, just as his noble colleague, the leonine John 
 Henry Neville, loved to dwell on the supreme 
 tragical moments of history, its sublime dramatic 
 situations, its pivotal crises and catastrophic de- 
 nouments. Tn fact, these two potent teachers 
 98 
 
 *An amusing illustration of the native tendency of 
 President Patterson to throw his arms round the earth 
 is found in the following : A student, who has since 
 made a name for himself as a lawyer, for some reason 
 absented himself from an examination in history; after- 
 wards he sought and received special examination, at 
 which the first question, set in Civil History, read thus : 
 "Give a brief account of the events preceding, succeed- 
 ing and contemporaneous with the reign of Alfred the 
 ■Treat." Inasmuch as a liberal construction of this ques- 
 tion would extend its range over the whole of time and 
 space, it is not strange that the examinee was rather 
 appalled at the requisition. 
 
 98
 
 Pkes. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 were in tlieir methods, their ideals, their services, 
 their scholarship, and even in their natures remark- 
 ably complementary. If intensive was the dis- 
 tinctive epithet for the latter, extensive* was fully 
 as applicable to the former, though neither was 
 narrov- and neither superficial. In their long as- 
 sociation in collegiate work each seemed to round 
 out the other, and no student could be other than 
 fortunate who fell under heir concurrent influence, 
 even tho he never felt any other. 
 
 Such was Prof. Patterson, the teacher — a 
 broad-diffused glow of intelligence, linguistic, phil- 
 osophic, scientific and historical, clear, distinct, 
 colorless, bright, illuminative— not like his great 
 compeer, the fierce ardor of a seven-times heated 
 furnace. Over the wide seas of knowledge we glided 
 as in a pleasure-yacht, with sails obedient to the 
 urgence of every breeze, touching at every inviting 
 port and exploring at leisure every curious coast ; 
 whereas with the Greek professor we sped along 
 as on some swift-keeled Mauretania throbbing with 
 propulsive energy, furrowing a predestined path, 
 and aimed at an appointed haven. 
 
 The most solemn of all oatlis of the ancient 
 Pythagoreans was couched in these mysterious 
 words: "Yea, by him that vouchsafed our soul 
 Quaternion, a fountain having roots of everflowing 
 nature." 
 
 yat fia tov afurepa \l/v\a TrapaSovra TerpaKTvv, Trayav 
 acvaou <^vo'£(os pt^wfJiaT , l^ovcrav 
 
 The inspiration of Professor Patterson was 
 sp^-ead over nearly the whole circle of knowledg(?, 
 but his teaching proper reached only the four sub- 
 jects of Linguistics, Literature, Metaphysics, and 
 
 99
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 Civil History, a Pythagorean quaternion, and for 
 all that yielded to the spell of his instruction, a 
 fountain with roots of nature everlasting. 
 
 Bu it was not in teaching that Prof. Patter- 
 son was destined to celebrate his highest triumph 
 and attain his widest renown. The union in 1865 
 of Kentucky University with the State College 
 established in conformity with the Morrill Act of 
 1862, one of the farthest-sighted pieces of legis- 
 lation that have ever proceeded from Washington, 
 had formed at Lexington an educational institu- 
 tion of remarkable promise. The flood tide of 
 its instant prosperity was reached in 1870, and for 
 awliile it seemed as if Jjexington were destined to 
 bcome a great centre of education and learning, 
 rivaling in a measure the older, more favored and 
 famous foundations of the North and East. The 
 man who had brought about this union was John 
 B. Bowman, founder and for many years Regent 
 of Kentucky University, and particularly able as 
 an organizer and promoter. His plans for the 
 institution that had been his life-work were large 
 and generous, and they were expanded and lib- 
 eralized as it rose rapidly into national recognition 
 find importance. But the widening horizon of his 
 hopes soon passed beyond the denominational bor- 
 dprs of his earlier schemes, and he found that con- 
 tinued progress would call for the desectarianiza- 
 tion of the University. On the other hand, many 
 of the most zealous and influential elements that 
 formed the natural clientele of the University were 
 distinctly, conscientiously, and unalterably op- 
 posd to any such universalization. They held with 
 a certain historic justice that the seminary was 
 
 100
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 originally conceived and founded as a Propaganda, 
 with the express purpose of educating the youth of 
 their own church along the lines of their own 
 faith, that it was, in fact, intended to be a strictly 
 denominational college, that as such it had solic- 
 ited and accepted gifts, and that the secularization 
 in progress or contemplated involved a perversion 
 and a misappropriation. Here then was a contra- 
 diction such as emerges regularly, in the course of 
 development, between Progressives and Conserva- 
 tives, between those that go on and those that stay 
 rooted where ihey are. By far the most illustrious 
 example in American history, and one of the most 
 illustrious in the history of the world, was offered 
 in our late Civil War, which resulted from the an- 
 tagonism necessarily disclosed as the mind of the 
 North moved irresistibly away from the standpoint 
 of the Constitution and of 178S, while the mind 
 of the South abode steadfastly thereby. In the 
 case of Kentucky University, the struggle was long 
 and bitter, and a ]X)rtrayal of its features would 
 not be edifying. Let it suffice that victory re- 
 mained with the strict constructionists. The 
 broad-gauge plans of Mr. Bowman miscarried, and 
 he himself finally yielded up his position as Re- 
 gent. Therewith the future of the Kentucky Uni- 
 versity was determined. 
 
 Already in 18G9 Prof. Patterson had been 
 called to the office of President of the Agricultural 
 and Mechanical College, as a Department of Ken- 
 tucky University, an office which he administered 
 ably till the year 1878. Then it was that the irre- 
 pressible conflict already mentioned at last issued 
 in legislation severing all relations between the 
 
 101
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 College and the University. Hereby the former 
 was indeed freed from an entangling alliance that 
 for several years had given little to hope and much 
 to fear, but it was cast forth a homeless and al- 
 most a helpless waif. At once President Patter- 
 son set about to secure its retention in Lexington. 
 In all such cases it is necessary to offer "induce- 
 ments"; the fact that licxington was incompar- 
 ably the bcfet place for the College would of itself 
 count for little; the scale had to be weighted down 
 in its favor with more material considerations. 
 The City Council was persuaded to give the City 
 Park as a new site for the College, and President 
 Patterson secured from the City Council of Lex- 
 ington and the Fiscal Court of Fayette County 
 the additional gift of $54,000 for the erection of 
 buildings. In consideration of these favors the 
 College was allowed to stay in Lexington, but its 
 plight was really pitiable. By the Morrill Act of 
 1862 there had fallen to Kentucky as endowment 
 of the Agricultural and Mechanical College a 
 princely domain of 330,000 acres of public lands. 
 Properly located and judiciously managed, this 
 would have yielded a sura adequate, if not to the 
 development, at least to the support of its bene- 
 ficiary. However, it was sold at the rate of 50 
 cents per acre, for the sum of $165,000, which 
 gave a net return of $9,900 interest per annum ! 
 Now began the battle for life, destined to drag 
 its weary length through nearly a whole genera- 
 tion. It was in this long warfare that the varied 
 powers o f President Patterson were called into 
 fullest requisition,, that he won for himself the 
 highest distinction, and that he rendered to the 
 
 102
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 State of Kentucky, to the cause of education, and 
 to the interests of civilization the most enduring 
 and the most conspicuous service. Of course it 
 was kno\^Ti of aii men that the income of $9,900 
 was a mere mockery, and President I'atterson 
 addressed himself to the arduous task of securing 
 a legislative appropriation; arduous, because there 
 was no lively sentiment in favor of higher educa- 
 tion by the State, but much earnest and active 
 sentiment against it, as the sequel distinctly re- 
 vealed. At the next session of the General As- 
 sembly, in 1880, he secured an appropriation by 
 tax of one half-cent on every one hundred dollars 
 of taxable valuation; in other words, a one-twen- 
 tieth of a mill tax — very inconsiderable as we now 
 reckon such taxes. Hereby the income of the 
 State College (as it wa^ henceforth called) Wiis 
 increased by $17,500 (the assessed valuation being 
 about three hundred and fifty millions), and 
 reached the munificent total of $27,400. Herewith 
 the College entered upon its stormy career, having 
 a faculty of only six, with 86 per cent of it^ few 
 matriculates unable to do any college work and 
 enrolled in the sub-freshman class. Surely such 
 a beginning seemed in no way alarming, in mod- 
 esty it was a perfect model. But it involved the 
 most dangerous and deadly precedent of state aid 
 to higher education, and there was no telling what 
 terrible consequences such a precedent might pro- 
 voke or protect. The one-twentieth might grow 
 to one-tenth, one-eighth, or one-seventh, or even 
 more, with nobody nigh to hinder. As the College 
 sprinkled its Alumni thicker and thicker over the 
 State, some would get into the Legislature, into 
 
 103
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 the public offices, on the bench — the youthful in- 
 truder would gradually grow irresistibly strong, 
 it would shoot up higher and higher, it would 
 overtower and overshadow all the denominational 
 schools in the State, and ultimately dwarf them 
 into insignificance. All these sequels were clearly 
 foreseen by the keen-eyed leaders of the denomi- 
 nations, who determined that the young Hercules 
 should be strangled in his cradle. Obsta prin- 
 cipiis! was their motto. Accordingly six colleges 
 joined forces in a holy league, and in 1883, at the 
 next session of the General Assembly, they made 
 a concerted attack upon the State College by call- 
 inp- for the repeal of the tax and the confinement 
 of the operations of the College within the limits 
 of its original income of $9,900 — a course which 
 would have been equivalent to the dissolution of the 
 College itself. This attack was directed against the 
 public policy of state aid to higher education. It 
 was contended that such aid is unwise, that such 
 higher instiniction should be left to the church and 
 to private beneficence, that the many should not 
 be taxed to educate the few ! As if the activities 
 of the few, the learned, the men of science, were 
 for themselves alone and not in far larger meas- 
 ure for their fellows. As if surgical and medical 
 science benefited only surgeons and physicians ! 
 Are ship-builders and bridge-builders the only 
 ones to profit by fast ships and good bridges ? Does 
 the light illuminate only the hand that bears it? 
 Such a fallacy seems too patent for exposure, yet 
 it is very tough and hard to kill. Only a few years 
 ago a very able and distinguisht educator argued 
 strenuously in favor of a certain benefaction's tak- 
 ing the form of lower rather than higher education, 
 104
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Pattersom 
 
 on the grouutl that it should benefit the people at 
 large ! Such pleadings were powerfully presented 
 before the Legislature in 1882, and for three 
 months th fate of the College wavered in the bal- 
 ance. Better counsels prevailed, however, and in 
 the end the bill repealing the tax was rejected. 
 "Hereby it seemed that the future of the College 
 VMS in some measure a-s^sured. The victory was 
 a most significant one, since defeat meant anni- 
 hilation, and was won against such odds as made 
 the friends of the College well-nigh despair. 
 There is no surer measure of hope than financial 
 credit. "Private credit is wealth; public honor is 
 security," wrote Junius. The fluctuations of the 
 Bourse tell w^ith unerring precision how confidence 
 in the Kepublic or the Empire is rising or falling 
 in the minds of the best-informed. Judged in this 
 way, the public confidence in the future of the 
 State College seems at this time to have reached an 
 absolute zero. For, as already noted, the City of 
 T>exington had given the site for the College, and 
 along with Fayette County had added $54,000 for 
 the erection of buildings, which were already aris- 
 ing when the legislative battle began. Through 
 some error in the estimate of the architect, the 
 College building and a dormiory had been started 
 on a plan to which the funds in sight were entirely 
 inadequate, so that it became necessary either to 
 abandon the construction or to borrow the money 
 requisite for the completion. The attempt was 
 made to effect a loan, but this was found to be 
 imnossible. One bank after another declined to 
 furnish the funds, for the very excellent reason 
 that the College could offer no security. It was 
 generallv believed that the state tax would be re- 
 
 105
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 scinded. that the College would then be suspended, 
 that the grounds given by the city would thereupon 
 revert to the city, that repayment of any money 
 advanced would be out of the question. Such 
 credit as the College had enjoyed for two years 
 had now vanished completely. At this crisis in the 
 aflfairs of the institution committed to his trust, 
 President Paterson came forward like a veritable 
 Deus ex machina. The lad brought up amid the 
 oaks and walnuts of Indiana, who taught a coun- 
 try school at seventeen, had not inherited a for- 
 tune; nor does the path of even the Principal, 
 much less the Professor, often lead along the banks 
 of the Pactolus. Nevertheless, the Scotch thrift 
 that has always been no mean factor in national 
 prosperity and national greatness, had not been 
 wanting in this typical Scot. Heroically over- 
 mastering adverse conditions, he had wrested a 
 competency from grudging fortune, and now there 
 fell to him such an opportunity for grand action 
 as might gladden the heart of a knight. He 
 offered his whole estate as security for the College. 
 This security was accepted by the Northern Bank, 
 the money was advanced for the completion of the 
 buildings, which went on uninterrupted in their 
 construction. Here was an act of faith and of 
 m8,gnanimity that deserves to take rank in very 
 high and select company. When we reflect that 
 President Patterson was risking his all for a for- 
 lorn hope, and that the confidently expected ad- 
 verse vote in the General Assembly would have 
 left him penniless and unemployed at the age of 
 49 years, it seems hard to overrate the moral cour- 
 age and nobility of his deed and hard to find for 
 
 106
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 it any parallel in the history of education in 
 America. 
 
 The relief from this financial embarrassment 
 and the failure of the attempt to repeal the one- 
 tA^'entieth-mill tax might justly revive the droop- 
 ing spirits of the State College authorities, but a 
 severer and even more desperate battle was yet 
 to be fought. While the legislative struggle was 
 in progress, the enemies of the College made the 
 startling discovery that the tax was unconstitu- 
 tional ! The provision of the Constitution seemed 
 to them most express and admira:ble; for it de- 
 clares, in section one of article eleven, that "The 
 capital of the fund, called and known as the 
 'Common School Fund,' consisting of $1,235,- 
 768.42, for which bonds have been executed by 
 the State to the Board of Education and $73,500 
 of stock in the Bank of Kentucky; also the sum 
 of $51,223.29, balance of inerest on the school 
 fund of the year 1848, unexpended, together with 
 any sum which may be hereafter raised in the 
 State, by taxation or otherwise, for purposes of 
 education, shall be held inviolate for the purpose 
 of sustaining a system of common schools. The 
 interest and dividends of said funds, together with 
 any sum which may be produced for that purpose, 
 by taxation or otherwise, may be appropriated in 
 aid of common schools, but for no other purpose." 
 Such was the formidable constitutional rock that 
 lay directly in the course of the luckless College, 
 on which it seemed doomed to suffer utter and 
 hopeless shipwreck. The hostile Colleges em- 
 ployed one of the ablest constitutional lawyers. 
 Judge William Lindsay, ex-Chief Justice of the 
 Commonwealth, who made an elaborate argu- 
 
 107
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 ment on the subject before a joint committee 
 of the Senate and House of Kepresentatives of 
 the General Assembly of Kentucky. The conten- 
 tion of the great jurist was that in accordance with 
 the plain provision of the Constitution of 1850, 
 "No money could be raised by taxation or other- 
 wise for purposes of education other than in the 
 common schools." This was preciisely what public 
 policy also demanded, according to the denomina- 
 tionalists ! No more effective device could have 
 been imagined for relegating the Commonwealth 
 of Kentucky, not only to the reannost position in 
 the procession of Eepublics, but to a station be- 
 hind every even half-progressive community on 
 the face of the globe. In their mistaken zeal, the 
 sectarian colleges demanded control, not only of 
 all higher, but of all secondary instruction as well. 
 Over the whole State of Kentucky they would 
 draw the curtain of the Dark Ages. It was a tre- 
 mendous moment big with fate, not only of the 
 College, but also of the whole Commonwealth. 
 The authorities of the unhappy institution had 
 applied for legal help to the best lawyers in the 
 State, especially to the distinguished John G. Car- 
 li?le, afterwards so conspicuous in the Cabinet of 
 Mr. Cleveland. But he, with others, declined to 
 undertake a case that he regarded as foregone in 
 its conclusion ; it seemed to him that the provision 
 of the Constitution was unequivocal, and that 
 neither a lower nor a higher court would uphold 
 the constitutionality of the tax in question. The 
 case appeared altogether desperate, not even worth 
 defending. The College was in the plight of Israel 
 as dscribed by the Psalmist: "They looked upon 
 me, they shaked their heads." 
 108
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 Under these dishearteniug conditions, when 
 all seemed lost and impossible of recovery, there 
 was one who had no thought of surrender, and 
 who, calm and serene as Addison's Angel, could 
 ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm. 
 President Patterson was no lawyer, he had never 
 studied law. But he was a master of logic, an ac- 
 complished linguist, skilled in the arts of inter- 
 pretation, a subtle critic, a plausible leader, and a 
 persuasive rhetorician. Above all he possessed a 
 highly disciplined intelligence and a piercing in- 
 sight that detected at once the vulnerable point 
 in his opponent's armor. He asked and received 
 permission to answer Judge Lindsay's argument 
 in the hall of the House of Representatives, Mon- 
 day evening, 30th of January, 1882. Seldom has 
 there been a more extraordinary encounter, of an 
 exnert Jurist and a college professor, in the 
 former's own field, and seldom has the result been 
 more unexpected and decisive. When Judge Lind- 
 say closed his argument the Wednesday before 
 (35th of January), the universal opinion was that 
 the six colleges had triumphed finally ; when Presi- 
 dent Patterson finished his rejoinder, the Judgment 
 was reversed, it was felt that the Judge had failed, 
 that the constitutionality of the tax had been suc- 
 cessfully vindicated. 
 
 Their unforeseen and surprising discomfiture 
 before the General Assembly by no means dis- 
 mayed the League of Six, who now determined 
 to bring the case into court for final arbitrament. 
 A certain Mrs. W. W. Hill, of Louisville, refused 
 to pay the tax, doubtless merely with intent to 
 test its constitutionality, and the case was brought 
 up in the Chancellor's Court, whence of course it 
 
 109
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 passed to the Court of Appeals. The opposing 
 colleges were represented by a bright array of 
 legal talent. Judge Lindsay, Alexander P. Hum- 
 phrey, Bennett H. Young, and James Trabue. 
 Where so much was at stake they would not fail 
 to support their plea with all the best professional 
 ability at their command. Against so much learn- 
 ing and acumen allied for the destruction of the 
 State College, there appeared once more its 
 doughty defender. President Patterson, whom 
 both courts allowed to file, as a brief for the Col- 
 lege, the argument already used so effectively be- 
 fore the legislative Joint committee. A long si- 
 lence under arms then followed. The law's delays 
 seldom advance, they too often hinder or even 
 hopelessly thwart the progress of Justice. In this 
 case, however, the delay was extremely fortunate 
 for more than one reason. The State College was 
 growing daily in favor, in importance, and in 
 general recognition. The absurdity of the conten- 
 tion put forward by the protestant colleges was 
 gradually becoming clear to the public conscious- 
 ness, and the enormity of the injury that would 
 be inflicted on the people's interests by striking 
 down the State's one seminary of higher learning 
 grew daily more evident. Public sentiment, at first 
 and for years so thoroughly in sympathy with the 
 six colleges, was veering steadily towards the State 
 College, and victory was already in the air when 
 in 1890 Judge Holt handed down his decision, the 
 end of controversy. Of course, it upheld the con- 
 stitutionality of the tax, and was written ad- 
 mittedly and even avowedly along the lines laid 
 down in the convincing argument of President 
 Patterson. Herewith closed, as it should close, 
 110
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 one of the most remarkable, important, and in- 
 teresting piece* of litigation in the history of ed- 
 uc'ition. It was not so protracted nor so varied 
 in its phases, nor so full of legal dexterities, nor 
 so rich in devices of ingenuit)^ as the famous 
 process at law in which Richard Bentley, prince 
 of English philologists, maintained himself for 
 a whole generation and to the end of his life, at 
 the head of Trinity College, Cambridge, in defi- 
 ance of all decrees of court and of all the machinery 
 of justice that could be brought to bear upon him 
 by the whole church and Judiciary of England. 
 But while we cannot withhold tlie meed of admi- 
 ration from the great scholar for his unwearying 
 persiistence, his dogged determination, and his in- 
 exhaustible resourcefulness, yet we can have little 
 sympathy with his cause, nor can we feel very 
 lively interest in the issues involved. On the other 
 hand, the cause championed by Patterson was a 
 most righteous one, the interests at stake were 
 the very highest, being nothing less than the cul- 
 tural rank, the educational position, and the in- 
 tellectual dignity of a mighty Commonwealth, and 
 the methods employed were the most upright and 
 honorable. The great argument that s'aved the 
 State College was indeed a model of fairness and 
 straight-forwardness. Everything in fact hinged 
 on the proper interpretation of the phrase "pur- 
 poses of education." By a number of independent 
 lines of reasoning, all converging upon one and 
 the same conclusion, the President proved beyond 
 any successful contradiction that by the term "ed- 
 ucation" was meant common-school education, and 
 this alone was in the minds of the framers of the 
 Constitution at that time (December, 1849), and 
 
 111
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 that any other interpretation led at once to ridic- 
 ulous consequences. Whence it followed that col- 
 legiate education as given by the State College 
 and as contemplated and fostered by the tax-law 
 in question fell within neither the purview nor 
 the prohibition of the Constitution. The whole 
 argument was in fact a just application of the 
 sound principle laid down by Grotius in comment 
 on I Cor. 13:7: Solent voces universales re- 
 stringi ex materia suhjacente — general terms are 
 to he restricted (in application) to the subject' 
 matter under discussion. Judge Lindsay and the 
 colleges held that the general term "education" 
 was to be taken in its widest sense, as including all 
 grades of discipline; President Patterson showed 
 that only common school education was at the 
 time in question under discussion or consideration. 
 When one reads the argument now, it seems so 
 obvious and unquestionable that one wonders how 
 there could ever have been any doubt at all, which 
 however merely attests the perfection and lumi- 
 nosity of the President's demonstration. It is 
 th paradox of excellent artistry that it should 
 seem easy and obvious; the perfect adjustment 
 produces a certain effect of simplicity, natural- 
 ness, inevitability. We lay down the skillfully 
 wrought story with the feeling that it could not 
 have turned out otherwise; the student closes up 
 such a work as the Anabasis with the remark that 
 anybody could write like that. But the fact is that 
 only the very few have been able to do it, and the 
 interpretation that the President made so plain 
 as to appear self-evident actually escaped the ob- 
 servation of some of the keenest legal minds in 
 the country. Such a capital brief would have 
 112
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 made a great reputation for any one engaged in 
 active practice at the bar. Along with a number 
 of addresses delivered by President Patterson, it 
 should be published in a handsome volume. As 
 a spcimen, not of rhetoric, but of logic, and be- 
 cause of the extreme importance of the matter 
 involved, it deserves a high and permanent place 
 in the literature of Kentucky. 
 
 This redemption and salvation of the State 
 College of Kentucky, this successful defense of 
 the principlt, of public support of the higher edu- 
 cation, was the paramount single service rendered 
 by President Patterson to the Commonwealth 
 whose servant he was. It is rare that any man 
 has the offer of even a momentary chance to be 
 thus grandly useful to a whole people. It is the 
 mark of a great man to rise at once to the bidding 
 of emergency. "For a brief span," says Pindar, 
 'Tiath opportunity for man, but of him it is surely 
 known when it comcth and he waiteth thereon, a 
 servant but no slave." It was the good fortune of 
 President Patterson that a signal occasion should 
 present itself before him ; that he mastered it per- 
 fectly was his own signal merit. When we call 
 the roll of the leading colleges and universities 
 of the land and read the list of their presidents 
 and the record of their achievements, we shall in- 
 deed find it a bright scroll of honor, a chronicle 
 of worthy deeds bearing witness to eminent abil- 
 ities; but v^^here shall we find any single act of 
 prowess to match this rescue of the State College 
 of Kentucky from financial ruin and from legis- 
 lative and judicial overthrow and extinction? 
 
 Meanwhile the exertions of the enemy to se- 
 cure a repeal of the tax-act were continued with 
 
 113
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 unabated zeal and energy. At every session of the 
 Legislature the attempt was renewed, but uniform- 
 ly without success. Not even the final decision of 
 the Appellate Court in 1800 could put a quietus 
 on this periodic recrudescence of animosity. How- 
 ever, the plea of unconstitutionality being forever 
 annulled, the plea of public policy became daily 
 more ludicrous. If State aid to higher education 
 was a calamity in disguise, it could not be denied 
 that the disguise was perfect. At length, in 1891, 
 Article 184 of the new Constitution recognized and 
 affirmed the validity of the half cent tax levied in 
 1880 and organized public opposition died what 
 might be called a natural death, and the State Col- 
 lege has had since then no open foes. Perhaps no 
 other educational institution in the United States 
 has ever encountered such implacable hostility or 
 has ever sustained such a prolonged and at times 
 apparently hopeless struggle against such superior 
 odds. While the College has never been without 
 able, faithful, and devoted friends, who have ren- 
 dered it timely and efficient aid, yet there is no 
 question anywhere but that its champion in this 
 unique battle was its President, James Kennedy 
 Patterson. 
 
 Such service as we have been considering could 
 of course not be duplicated, but there were many 
 other good offices that he discharged, only less con- 
 spicuous. Before tbe final triumph in the Appel- 
 late Court, he had zealously urged the establish- 
 ment of an Agricultural Experiment Station in 
 connection with the College, and had thrown his 
 influence in favor of the Hatch Act of 1887, by 
 which such stations were endowed with a yearly 
 
 114
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 income of $15,000, to which by the Adams Act 
 was added a further sum of $15,000 per annum. 
 The year 1890 was rendered still more notable iu 
 the history of the State College by the Morrill 
 Act, to the passage of which through Congress 
 President Patterson lent poM-^erful and effective 
 aid, which appropriated $25,000 per annum to 
 each of the Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges 
 established on the basis of the land grant of 
 1862. Hereby the veteran statesman, Justin 
 S. Morrill, placed a fitting capstone to the 
 stately edifice erected by his wisdom nearly 
 a generation before. The conditions of the Act 
 called for the admission of colored students on 
 terms of equality with the white, or else for the 
 division of the appropriation in the ratio of the 
 population. In Kentucky there could be no hesi- 
 tancy before such an alternative : the State College 
 received 85% per cent of the $35,000, the remain- 
 ing 1414 per cent ($3,625) being applied to the 
 support of the Colored School at Frankfort. By 
 the Act of 1907 the appropriation of 1890 was 
 doubled, upon precisely similar conditions, so that 
 the total income of the College as derived from the 
 United States was raised to $53.650 — equivalent 
 to an endowment of over $1,000,000. 
 
 The extreme individualist might contend that 
 such assistance from the far-off general govern- 
 ment would tend to paralyze State action, by 
 teaching to rely upon the invisibl e powers at 
 Washington. However the facts in the case do 
 not confirm such a forecast. A tonic may be a 
 constructive and also an appetizer. In this in- 
 stance the help extended seems to have acted as 
 
 115
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 a stimulus. For in 1893 President Patterson se- 
 cured from the Legislature an enactment whereby 
 not only were tuition fees remitted to certain ap- 
 pointees from the counties to the College, but also 
 their traveling expenses for a single trip from 
 home to the College and back home again were 
 provided them. To some minds such a piece of 
 legislation may sound queer and dangerously 
 paternal ; but the conditions in distant parts of the 
 State seemed to Justify and even demand it, while 
 its great influence in ingratiating the College with 
 crtain classes of the people cannot be questioned. 
 In 1900 the General Assembly was persuaded to 
 appropriate $30,000 for a gymnasium and $30,000 
 for a home for young women, and in 1902 it added 
 $30,000 for the latter. In recognition of the 
 President's offices in all these matters, the last 
 mentioned building has been appropriately named 
 Patterson Hall (for young women), the efficient 
 administration of which and of the gymnasium 
 constitutes now one of the notable and admirable 
 features of this hopeful and growing institution. 
 
 Public support of higher education, like so 
 many other public activities, is largely a matter 
 of habit. To form such a habit may be difficult 
 at first, tho it can hardly ever be painful; once 
 formed, however, it is soon felt to be a natural 
 function and is exercised with satisfaction. It is 
 not strange then that President Patterson should 
 secure in 1904 an additional yearly appropriation 
 of $15,000, and in 1908 a further increase of 
 $20,000 per annum, besides $200,000 for build- 
 ings, so that the total annual income from all 
 sources reached the sum of $125,000. Herewith 
 
 116
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 there had come such a widening of the activity of 
 the College that it was felt that the name College 
 was no longer appropriate. The State College had 
 in fact developed insensibly into a State Univer- 
 sity. Accordingly, President Patterson threw him- 
 self into the movement to bring about this change 
 of name, which change was consummated by the 
 Act of the Legislature of 1908, whereby was bom 
 into the world the youngest of the Universities, 
 the State University of Kentucky. Since this 
 designation came into conflict with that of the 
 Kentucky University aforementioned, the name of 
 this latter was changed back to Transylvania Uni- 
 versity, an ancient and honorable and euphonious 
 appellation. 
 
 This inauguration of the State University of 
 Kentucky, which set seal to the forty years of 
 President Patterson's labor in behalf of the parent 
 institution and marked the beginning of the reali- 
 zation of his lofty ideals and wide-grasping con- 
 ceptions, was also the signal for the renewal of 
 the attacks for ten years intermitted. It was held 
 by the Attorney General that the change of name 
 from "College" to "University" seriously aifected 
 and perhaps destroyed the validity of appropria- 
 tions made to the University; that the College as 
 a corporation expired the moment its name was 
 changed, and that appropriations made for the 
 University might not be sheltered by the sanc- 
 tions that guarded those made to the Agricultural 
 and Mechanical College. Here indeed were raised 
 scruples dark and nice ! To resolve them Pres- 
 ident Patterson appeared, 25th of December, 190S, 
 before Circuit Judge Stout, holding court in 
 
 117
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 Frankfort, and in a masterly argument demon- 
 strated that the idea of a University already lay 
 involved in the original provision of the constitu- 
 tive Act of 18G2; that the Agricultural and Me- 
 chanical College, so far from being dead, was very 
 much alive, in uncommonly good health and the 
 best of spirits; that the discontinuity in the life 
 of the seminary was purely imaginary. He furth- 
 ermore proved that the still more delicate doubt, 
 whether the last appropriation to the University 
 was not inhibited by Articles 49 and 50 of the 
 Constitution, was void of all substance. Though 
 the University was perhaps at no time in serious 
 danger from these later technicalities and dubie- 
 ties, vet it was a great relief to have them stilled 
 by he craft of such a magician. 
 
 Such is the outward and visible record of Pres- 
 ident Patterson's achievements in the administra- 
 tion of the trust he has held since 1869. It is 
 the belief of the present writer that no record of 
 the same class is more admirable or bears more 
 unequivocal witness to unwavering fidelity and 
 signal ability. In comparison with Harvard and 
 Yale, and Columbia, and Cornell, and Michigan, 
 and Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and California, 
 and a score of others, the State University of 
 Kentucky may seem insignificant in attendance 
 and income, as well as in the variety and exten- 
 sity of its educational and investigative energies. 
 But if we consider the extremely unfavorable con- 
 ditions of its genesis, and the unexampled oppo- 
 sition that continually thro eighteen years threat- 
 ened its very existence, we must regard its survi- 
 
 118
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 val as marvelous and its development as wonder- 
 ful 
 
 But this record, however bright, by no means 
 tells the full tale of Professor Patterson's activi- 
 ties. He has represented his people and his State 
 on several occasions of international importance, 
 and always worthily. Thus, in 1875, he was 
 the Delegate of Kentucky to the International 
 Congress of Geographical Science, and in the 
 same year to the British Association for the 
 Advancement of Science, and was Delegate to 
 the same As*sociation in 1890. He was elected 
 member of the Eoyal Historical Society of 
 Great Britain in 1870, and of the Society of 
 Antiquaries of Scotland in 1880. He attended the 
 International Congress of Geographical Sciences 
 in Paris, in 1875, and his report of the meeting 
 was so highly valued that the Legislature ordered 
 10,000 copies printed for distribution. 
 
 President Patterson has always maintained a 
 lively interest in European movements, both social 
 and political. His wide, varied, and accurate his- 
 torical studies had enlightened his understanding 
 of such movements and weighted his judgments 
 with the value of a professional publicist's. This 
 fact was recognized in discerning circles and se- 
 cured him the highly agreeable task of writing 
 the editorials on foreign politics for the Courier- 
 Journal from 1871 to 1875. Among these was one 
 of very exceptional interest, inspired by the death 
 of Napoleon III. His style of writing resembled 
 very much his style of speech, being clear, crisp, 
 precise, and strongly suggestive of reserved en- 
 ergy. To the writer of these words there was 
 
 119
 
 Fortieth Annitersary. 
 
 always something PJuropean, something that 
 seemed to have come across the seas, in the ac- 
 cent, the intonation, the structure of sentence, 
 and the structure of thought that characterized 
 President Patterson, i hough only recently has it 
 come to my knowledge that he was actually born 
 in Scotland. Many who have read that long series 
 of editorials must have felt vaguely that they were 
 in the presence of something not wholly American, 
 a spirit not alien nor unkind, but yet not quite 
 native to the skies that bend over America. 
 
 It was not strange then that President Patter- 
 son always remained in close touch with the great 
 personalities and history-makers of Britain. He 
 corresponded regularly with the Professor of 
 Modern History at Oxford, the illustrious histo- 
 rian of the Norman Conquest, Dr. Edward Au- 
 gustus Freeman, and this frequent and elaborate 
 correspondence, which entered into minute and 
 thorough-going discussion of European politics 
 and policies, was rich in pleasure and profit to 
 both the participants. Another of his correspond- 
 ents, and one whom he specially valued and ad- 
 mired, was Professor John Tyndall, a name fa- 
 miliar enough to many readers now, but which in 
 those elder days fairly filled the sounding trump 
 of fame. President Patterson ranked Professor 
 Tyndall especially high, not merely as a savant 
 and lecturer and experimenter, but also as stylist 
 and converser. 1 remember to have heard him 
 say that Tyndall's English was the raciest he had 
 ever heard spoken. This valued and valuable 
 acquaintance with the brilliant materialist was 
 formed at High Elms, Kent, the country seat of 
 
 120
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 Sir John Lubbock, now Lord Avebury, the dis- 
 tinguisht naturalist, archaeologist, and historian 
 of Primitive Civilization, who was entertaining 
 President Patterson and who introduced him also 
 to Dr. Spottiswoode, the celebrated mathematician, 
 and to James Eichard Green, too early reft from 
 his illuminating historical studies. Among his 
 other English friends or acquaintances was the 
 Junior Lord of the Treasury in Mr. Disraeli's 
 ]\1inistry (1875), Sir James Horn Dalrymple El- 
 phinstone, from whom he received most agreeable 
 attentions in London, and in Paris M. Ferdinand 
 Maury, Member of the Institute of France and 
 librarian of the Imperial Library under the Sec- 
 ond Empire, who also showed him distinguished 
 courtesies. It was through such friendships and 
 relations as these that President Patterson main- 
 tained communion with the general mind to an 
 extent and degree of intimacy rarely met with even 
 among high-placed men of culture and travel. 
 In conversation with him one could not fail to 
 perceive and to feel that he spoke not the lan- 
 guage of Kentucky, nor of America, hut as it 
 were of the whole Anglo-Saxon race, that he held 
 the affairs of the United States and of Europe in 
 juk>ter perspective than did almost any of his 
 compeers. To this result his foreign birth and 
 lineage did undoubtedly in some measure con- 
 tribute. It is to his honor that he never forgot 
 his native land, that while he served so faithfully, 
 courageously, and unweariedly hio adopted coun- 
 try', the land of broad fertile fields and waving 
 woodlawns and majestic forests and sunlit surges 
 of blue grass, his heart was never weaned away 
 
 121
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 from the stern mother that bore him and nur- 
 tured him at her shaggy breast, the land of brown 
 heath and soaring mountain-peak, of mist and 
 fog and transient sunbeam, of brakes and braes 
 and foaming cataracts, of long-armed friths and 
 blue-eyed lochs and dells where the thistle blooms. 
 
 This Caledonianism of President Patterson 
 brought with it in some measure its own Nemesis. 
 There may have been some who admired the 
 scholar, the teacher, the administrator, the logi- 
 cian, the writer, but who felt unable to get very 
 near the man, who thought him cold, calculating, 
 unsympathetic, and too wholly rational and pas- 
 sionless. Such a judgment neglects what we might 
 call the national equation; it fails to remember 
 that President Patterson was a representative 
 Scotchman in the finest fibres of his being, that 
 his involuntary fidelity to his ancestry made it 
 irapos«ible for him to be aught but a foreign com- 
 mander, serving with unshakable devotion in the 
 anmy of a native prince. Always he walked about 
 soiitary among the native forces, among them, but 
 not of them. Yet to the few who really came to 
 know his Caledonian heart, he showed that the 
 fires burned beneath the snows, that in his bosom's 
 core he was kind, tender, generous, compassionate, 
 and full of affection. 
 
 Like many prominent men of far less ability, 
 President Patterson was called on to make many 
 addresses. These were always well thought out 
 and excellently worded, abundant in all sorts of 
 exact knowledge, and particularly notable for ele- 
 vation and range of view. Perhaps the most re- 
 markable was the one entitled "Education and 
 
 122
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 Empire," which was delivered in Washington City 
 before the American Association of Agriculture 
 and Mechanical Colleges, in the year of his pres- 
 idency of that body, 11)03. This address was by 
 unanimous consent a production of surpassing 
 merit. Recently I chanced to have a conversation 
 with an able and eminent official of the U. 8. 
 Government, in which the general attitude of 
 President Patterson came up for consideration. 
 1 found him utterly unsympathetic and in fact 
 sharply opposed to the President's policy, which 
 seemed to him altogether too ambitious for an 
 Agi'icultural and Mechanical College, laying alto- 
 gether too much stress on general science and the 
 humanities, and not nearly enough on agriculture 
 proper. "Why," he said, "in his great presidential 
 address in 1903, which every one admits was the 
 ablest ever delivered before the Association, he 
 did not give even one paragraph to the one main 
 object of the foundation of such colleges." 1 
 have quoted this judgment from a most unfriend- 
 ly critic, as having much more significance than 
 if it proceeded from a sympathetic source. It is 
 a question of point of view. One may conceive 
 narrowly or broadly, humbly or grandly. Pres- 
 ident Patterson chose the second alternative. Had 
 there been already another State University in 
 Kentucky, the stricture just quoted might have 
 ben justified. In that case there might have been 
 no good reason for duplicating the agencies of 
 instruction, and the whole development of the 
 Agricultural and Mechanical College might have 
 been with propriety directed along the narrow lines 
 of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts. But such 
 
 123
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 was not the case. There was no semblance of a 
 State Universit}^ in Kentucky, save in the State 
 College, and it wa^ the part of the highest wisdom 
 to expand and develop the State College sym- 
 metrically in all directions until the citizenship 
 should behold before them a university, strong, 
 young, vigorous, triumphant over all its foes, both 
 without and within, the pride, the boast, and the 
 hope of the Commonwealth. In the noble address 
 of 1903 President Patterson has set forth his 
 great ideal with persuasive eloquence. It is a 
 splendid plea for mind and the culture of mind 
 as the indispensable agents in the organization and 
 evolution of civilization particularly in its gov- 
 ernmental and social aspects. It shows the largest 
 comprehension of the problems that confront 
 humanity in the twentieth century and high ap- 
 preciation of the role which the Anglo-Saxon race 
 is called on to play in the solution of those prob- 
 lems. Certainly no other people have addressed 
 themselvas with so much earnestness or with so 
 much success to the great task of reconciling lib- 
 erty with order, of substituting evolution for 
 revolution, of exemplifying the conception of the 
 social, civic, and political system a3 a tree rooted 
 unshakably in the rich loam of bygone days, yet 
 putting forth new nurture continually on the top- 
 most boughs. Both this address and the still more 
 learned address to the Law Classes on the History 
 of Language show the strivings of a well-grounded 
 racial and national pride and a keen sense of the 
 superiority of Anglo-Saxon character and achieve- 
 ments. The spectacle of British Empire is cer- 
 tainly inspiring as perhaps naught else political 
 
 124
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 or civil on the face of the earth. The Druid's 
 prophecy to Boadicea : 
 
 "Regions Caesar never knew, 
 Thy posterity shall sway," 
 
 has been fulfilled tenfold. When we add the 
 Colossus of the North, the United States, it is seen 
 that the Anglo-Saxon race easily dwarfs all others 
 boith in performance and in promise, and it be- 
 comes natural to think of it (with Rudyard Kip- 
 ling) as the modern Israel, as the chosen people 
 of the God of Civilization, and of all others as 
 mere "Gentiles,'* "or lesser breeds without the 
 Law." The German-Englishman, Houston Stew- 
 art Chamberlain, would display a little more gen- 
 erosity by including the English under the general 
 designation of Germans ! The enthusiasm and 
 intense racial consciousness of the Briton may well 
 be pardoned. The respect and even awe with 
 which the name Englishman is mentioned on the 
 continent of Europe is no undeserved tribute to 
 the national character and accomplishments, and 
 when any subtle dangers threaten to assail that 
 character, it is well that science should arouse her- 
 self to meet and repel them. It is not then in 
 correction, but rather in supplementation of the 
 estimates of such glorifiers of the Anglo-Saxon 
 that one might observe that civilization is a highly 
 complex product, and there seem to be certain very 
 important elements that find their finest expres- 
 sion nowhere in Anglo-Saxondom, but rather an 
 the continent of Europe. The reader will at once 
 think of art in its many forms, as sculpture and 
 architecture and painting and music, to all of 
 
 125
 
 Fortieth Anniversarv. 
 
 which the contributions even of the South Euro- 
 pean, with his "ephemeral ideals" (to quote from 
 Education and Empire) have been of supreme and 
 matchless importance. But not to dwell on the 
 obvious, it may be further affirmed that Science, 
 Learning, and Philosophy have been conceived on 
 the continent in a way sufficiently different from 
 the Anglo-Saxon to justify its concurrent exist- 
 ence. There is, in fact, heard distinctly on the 
 continent a certain upper harmonic, a certain 
 overtone that is not often recognized so clearly on 
 the Islands. A few illustrations will make this 
 plain. Newton and Leibnitz invented the In- 
 finitesimal Calculus independently. With the 
 former it wa.^ and remained till the last a mere 
 instrument for the solution of mechanical prob- 
 lems; as a self-contained mathematical doctrine 
 it never came to birth in his thoughts, he divulged 
 it only to a few intimate friends, in his great work 
 Principia Philosopliiae NaturaUs he studiously 
 suppressed all allusion to his use of it, and not 
 for many years did he discover his invention to 
 the world. But Leibnitz from the first was con- 
 cerned with the method as a method, as a doctrine 
 of pure mathematics and full of philosophic im- 
 port ; he gave his thoughts freely to the world and 
 set up a mathematical movement that speedily 
 reached the most brilliant and extensive results. 
 The point is that Newton's interest lay wholly in 
 the applications, while Leibnitz was primarily inter- 
 ested in the method itself. On the other hand, the 
 Leibnitzian school far outstripped the Newtonian 
 in the applications as well as in the theory of the 
 Calculus. Consider also the case of David Hume. 
 
 126
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 a metaphysician unsurpassed in subtlety and pro- 
 fundity. At twenty-eight he produced his Treatise 
 of Human Nature, an exhaustless well of the deep- 
 est thought, from which the generations follow- 
 ing have not yet ceased to drink. The work was 
 unsuccessful, ''it fell dead horn from the press." 
 What did Hume do? He practically abandoned 
 philosophy ! He wrote his far inferior "Philo- 
 sophical Essays" (afterwards entitled An Inquiry 
 Concerning the Human Understanding) an attempt 
 to popularize the Treatise, and in the "Advertise- 
 ment" thereto he even disclaimed his own great 
 Treastise, desiring that the Essays "may alone be 
 regarded as containing my sentiments and prin- 
 ciples." He then turned his attention to History. 
 Compare this want of high seriousness and of devo- 
 tion to philosophy as philosophy with the life-long 
 ardor and singleness of purpose of Descartes, Kant, 
 Spinoza, and the other illustrious Continentals. 
 Or set Bacon by the side of Galilei or Giordano 
 Bruno, or Locke alongside of Leibnitz, and observe 
 the proportions. Once more, the illustrious Scotch 
 mathematician, Peter Guthrie Tait, says of his 
 equally illustrious compatriot Maquorne Eankine, 
 that he wasted some of his earlier years on the 
 Theory of Numbers. But Gauss called the same 
 theory the Queen of Mathematics and Mathematics 
 the Queen of the Sciences, and the highest analytic 
 powers of France and particularly of Germany 
 have been devoted to its fruitful development. 
 Such instances might be multiplied indefinitely, 
 but enough. There is on the continent a certain 
 idealism in culture that is not found elsewhere in 
 equal degree. When Fourier reporting to the 
 
 127
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 Academy regretted that Jaeobi had devoted his 
 great powers to the Theory of Elliptic Functions 
 rather than to the Theory of Heat, the latter re- 
 plied in a letter to Legendre that a philosopher 
 like Mr. F, "should have known that the sole end 
 of Science is the honor of the human spirit, and 
 that under this aspect a question of number counts 
 for as much as a question of the system of the 
 world." Such has been the distinctive attitude of 
 the continental thinker, which it would be very 
 disastrous for all men to assume, but might also 
 prove unfortunate for all men to abandon Let 
 then the Anglo-Saxon continue to play his leading 
 part in the drama of Civilization, but let him not 
 forget that other more airy roles are essential to 
 the representation. 
 
 The personal characteristics of President Patter- 
 son are already well-known to many readers of this 
 Appreciation. Throughout his long life he seems 
 to have been remarkably at one with himself, un- 
 shaken by such tempests as sometimes cleave our 
 hearts asunder and enkindle war in our members. 
 Smoothly, roundly, symmetrically his nature has 
 gone on growing steadily. His virtues are mainly 
 those that belong to the dominant class; the more 
 preeminent lean decidedly toward the civic rather 
 than the personal type, and in this as in every- 
 thing else he is true to his race, to his stock, to 
 his fatherland. 
 
 When Antonius Pius, that prince among Em- 
 perors, unsurpassed in mingled majesty and beauty 
 of character, among the sons of men, lay at the 
 half-opened doorway of another world, with all the 
 tciTors of the tremendous transit gathered about 
 128
 
 Pres. Jas. K. Patterson. 
 
 him, the captain of the guard came to ask for the 
 day's watchword. AEquanimitas, replied the 
 dying Emperor and turned his eyes away towards 
 the slowly unfolding portals. If asked to name the 
 central stem, the trunk-virtue in the character of 
 President Patterson, one could hardly do better 
 than to repeat the imperial watchword, equanimity. 
 Like the great Governor General of India whose 
 more excellent qualities he measurably reproduced 
 he has never been disturbed in this noble even- 
 mindedness by any extreme or caprice of fortune. 
 Had anything been able to ruffle this majestic 
 calm, it would have been the untimely separation 
 (in 1895) from his son, Wm. Andrew Patterson, 
 a youth of extraordinary promise. The devotion of 
 President Patterson to his brilliant boy went far 
 beyond the wide limits within which even a 
 father's affection is wont to move and was a lovely 
 and beautiful thing to behold. Since that so pre- 
 mature bereavement President Patterson has 
 walked as beholding the invisible. But though a 
 heavy and unlifting shadow has fallen on their 
 path, yet neither he nor his most fit and admirable 
 helpmeet has thereby been saddened into gloom 
 or moroseness. The ancestral religion not less 
 than so many ancestral qualities of body and of 
 mind, of intellect and of temperament, has de- 
 scended upon President Patterson with the con- 
 straining insistence of inheritance. Not all his 
 wide wanderings in the realm of science both 
 physical and metaphysical, both geological and 
 biological, not all his rich gleanings in the fields 
 of philology both ancient and modern, not all his 
 deep researches in transmigration of peoples and 
 
 129
 
 Fortieth Anniversary. 
 
 the transformations of myths, rituals, and customs, 
 though they have refined his tenets, broadened his 
 sympathies, and enlightened his judgments, have 
 ever availed to becloud the eye of his hereditary 
 faith or to shake his loyality to the principles and 
 practice of the historic Church of Scotland. — A 
 clear-eyed, broad-browed, calm-visaged, keen- 
 thoughted, large-minded, single-souled man; fer- 
 tile in expedients, master of every situation, firm 
 in resolution, tenacious of purpose, patient, un- 
 wearied, always pressing onward; a spirit from 
 afar, too deeply saturated with the hues of its own 
 home to take on the colors of its new environment ; 
 kind-hearted, benevolent, beneficent, and capable 
 of intense affection, yet too thoroughly devoted to 
 great public interests to give more than occasional 
 attention to merely personal relations and con- 
 cerns — an evergreen pine born in Ben Nevis' top. 
 rooted in the rocks, braving the tempest and the 
 torrent and the thunderbolt, always the same 
 whether sheltering the birds of spring or whisper- 
 ing with the winds of summer or upbearing the 
 snows of winter, immovable, immutable, alone — 
 such seems the Father of the University of Ken- 
 tuclc}^ 
 
 well for him whose will is strong ! 
 He suffers, but he will not suffer long; 
 He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong : 
 For him nor moves the loud world's random mock, 
 Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound. 
 Who seems a promontory of rock, 
 That, compass'd round with turbulent sound. 
 In middle ocean meets the surging shock. 
 Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crowned. 
 130 :
 
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