ii; 1 . : H:J HENRY DICKINSON SMITH A BIOGRAPHY AND MEMO* ;!".. HENRY D. PORTE: :- University of California Berkeley HENRY DICKINSON SMITH HENRY DICKINSON SMITH Henry Dickinson Smith A BIOGRAPHY AND MEMORIAL BY Henry D. Porter NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH Copyright, 1908, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburg: 100 Princes Street This volume is dedicated to the class of 1909, Beloit College, which will hold in lasting memory, the ardor in high service, the inspiring and eager example, of him Whom it commemorates FOREWORD Why callest Thou the stainless knight, With sword scarce proved against the foe, Why leavest us, with many a fight, Wearied and scarred, and fain to go? Yet this we dimly understand, That Life Eternal is our own, And that the unseen Other Land Is ours, and not this Land alone. Once Thou didst lose Thy Son awhile, On a strange errand, full of pain, Yet with a Father's welcoming smile Didst proudly take Him home again. So now we say; If life be one And Thou of Life the Ruler be, Dear God, Who gavest us Thy Son, Behold we give our sons to Thee. From " The Parting Guest/' ROSSITER W. RAYMOND. " And Jesus looking on him, loved him." R. V. The nobility of youthful ardor rightly directed arouses deep emotions of love and expectation. Often the signal souls are those whose career is shortened. They still point us to expanding powers in realms beyond our vision, but not beyond our hope. The preparation of this memorial, committed to me by Henry's parents, has been one of increasing interest. The attractive series of letters, so personal and self-revealing, were collated by his mother. Other sources have been freely drawn from, especially the Beloit College Round Table and the Codex of the classes 1907 and 1909- The verses Foreword and Postscript are here pre- sented through the kind permission of their authors. To each of the many hundred who have expressed their sym- pathy through beautifully worded and comforting letters and their high estimates of Henry's inspiring, though brief influence, an additional word of thanks is given. " The sympathies of sorrow are timeless and spaceless." HENRY D. PORTER. HENRY DICKINSON SMITH BORN JANUARY 22, 1881, AT TIENTSIN, CHINA DIED AUGUST 8, 1906, AT GENEVA LAKE, WIS. HENRY DICKINSON SMITH A KNIGHTLY soul! A knightly son! In - ** such felicitous phrases President Eaton summed up for us the brief but distinguished career of Henry Dickinson Smith. It is not necessary to look backward to King Arthur's time to see the true knight in his panoply. Nor need we turn to the days of historic chivalry to be reminded of noble youth in quest of high service. It is not the champing steed in his array, nor the steel-clad rider with visor down and lance at guard, that makes the loyal knight. Then, as now, it was the true and faithful spirit, the pure and consecrated life, that made one worthy to receive the touch of a king granting nobility and knighthood. Now, as then, youth is made beautiful through the soul within. Strength and beauty are the forces of manliness, equipped through service and discipline to the right estimate of duty. Whoever finds through work and service the joy of effort, has a claim to honor, and is fitly called a knightly soul. 14 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH Hazards are for him but the opportunity for ser- vice. Death in victory may be the reward. The sad event which brought a sudden privi- lege and a speedy end to this knightly student makes it fitting that a more extended record should be preserved of his young and ardent manhood. For it was in the moment of eager self-forgetfulness, as ever impulsive in effort, that this strong and true life was laid down. New impulse has been given in recent years to the study of life* adding interest to the quondam introspective study of man. With great minuteness and patience of detail the deli- cate and intricate interrelations of human attrib- utes have been watched and the studies tabulated. The way was at once opened for a clearer study of the child life. The marvelous years of in- fancy, so swift in development, so far-reaching in result, have become a real source of valuable study. The child has been found to be the father of the man. Personality and individual- ity find in that child life their unique origins. What is the gift through heredity, what the increment of growth through environment, find here large solution. We trace in the physi- cal form and feature of the child the long-ob- served aspects and attitudes of the parents. We HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 15 follow in like manner the mental unfolding, or the moral discipline, of parent or of earlier an- cestor. Of heredity, the scientific thinking is led to affirm, " Heredity is the sum of environment." But such heredity waits to find new and other environment to mold in its measure the new and idiosyncratic life. It is not without full signifi- cance that our Christian thought is glad to say: " Each life is a plan of God." No childish or youthful life can pass close scrutiny without the growth of assurance that resident, yet obscure, forces have full share in the building of character. Because of this, the modern parent learns to prize at high value the privilege and responsibil- ity of guiding without undue pressure the un- folding life. The children of foreign missionaries have an environment of their own, in a certain measure isolated, and valuable as a study on that account. The childish and youthful life of such an one, if this study may be permitted to linger a little, will find its own interest. A MISSIONARY BOYHOOD Henry Dickinson Smith, the only son of Rev. Arthur Henderson Smith and Mrs. Emma Dick- inson Smith, was born in Tientsin, China, Jan- uary 22, 1881. Two sisters had preceded Henry. 16 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH One sweet babe was laid away in the quiet church yard at Tientsin. " Pure, sweet and fair Ere thou couldst taste of ill, God willed it, and thy baby breath was still ; Now 'mong His Lambs thou liv'st, thy Saviour's care Forever as thou wert, pure, sweet and fair." Marie Jessica, the second sister, lived to beauti- ful young womanhood. The four years that separated the ages of brother and sister made the elder sisterly relation very sweet and strong as the years passed on. A part of the new environ- ment was that chivalry of the home life, which meant so much for the future. The missionary home itself was full of merriment and song. With a devoted mother, so happy-hearted, and a father who, though wise and strong, made life glad for others, with quip and merry turns of thought and speech, and often with amusing tirades at the conventions of life, it was quite fitting that the child should always show a happy face, or learn to endure criticism with a brave, struggling impulse. The winning smiles of babyhood foretell the sympathies of later life. It was this which led to the dear " milk name," as the Chinese name it. " Honey Bee," drawing sweetness from every flower of happy intercourse, was the name which long clung HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 17 to the sparkling eyes and curly locks of the happy child. He was as determined in a way as he was win- ning in smiles. A day came when he refused to drink from the accustomed bottle. The Chi- nese amah solved the dilemma: " He is disgusted with the bottle and wants a cup." Thus he graduated with honor from "mere babyhood." One language would seem to be enough to occupy the powers of even a strong and vig- orous child. In foreign lands one notices the marvel of a bilingual process. The theory that one can learn only his own appropriate native speech is daily disproved by abundant facts. Especially is this true when the second lan- guage is thought to be essentially difficult. The missionary child, cared for and followed closely by a native woman, learns to absorb the double speech with equal ease. He turns from one to the other apparently uncon- sciously, using each with a freedom that may well astonish those who learn in a less natural way. The childish vocabulary may not be very large, but is in this case made double and thereby an added marvel. In Henry's case this aptitude was no doubt increased by the abundant flow of speech of his father. It was a family amusement to recall that the elder sister at about four years of age had expressed her pleasure 18 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH when her father was away in the country touring, " Because then I have a chance to say some- thing." Henry enjoyed such speech before he could talk plainly, and doted on being governed by " jawbreakers." His mother records that a perverse habit of refusing to go to sleep at the right time was broken up by a long and irrelevant speech from his father. There floats up from the early reminiscences the time when the pres- ence of guests made an early sleep most de- sirable. Why should papa not try his entice- ments ? There rolled into his little ear the solemn combinations: "Henry, do you know that ow- ing to the revolution of the sun, moon, and stars on their axes and owing to the precession of the equinoxes every form of unnecessary bedcloth- ing is contradicted? Do you know? Do you understand?" ''Stand," said the two-year-old, with a sigh of perfect content, as he took the closely gathered bedclothes from his head and went to sleep. He learned to read in the new way by words and not by letter. It is on record that the family poet prepared two envelopes. One was marked, " All of these Are Honey Bee's." When he forgot, it went mournfully into the envelope number two; HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 19 " All the others, Are Honey Bee's Mother's. Energy easily develops in a growing child, and great hopes arise. When he first saw the moon he said: " When I'm a big boy, I'll dig it down with a stick." The baby days swiftly pass into childhood. The first furlough of his parents took them to America and into the swirl of missionary visits and talks. In some of these visits and talks the children joined. It was an ordeal, no doubt, for them, and required a little bribing. A large motive was offered one time when singing a hymn in Chinese was on the programme. " If you don't sing, I can't give you the red balloon bladder." So he went through "Bright gems for his crown." But the last verse had a varied ending. The lad seized the hard-earned bladder and blew a blast. No wonder the audience laughed. This visiting brought them at last to Wellesley and its lovely group of teachers and scholars, six hundred and more. The artless action of an eager child, curly-haired and bright- eyed, made a deep impression. One day, the morning service over, "Perpetual Motion," as his mother called him, felt the reaction that comes to a rapt audience when the listening is done. He had been a good boy through the long ser- 20 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH vice. His conscience was clear. An idea struck him. Swift as an arrow the child darted up the aisle and flung himself into the arms of Miss Freeman, the President, with both arms about her neck. No matter that it was Sunday, no matter if a beautiful Voluntary was going on. She just looked at him and smiled like a seraph. She understood and " loved back." This re- minded his friends of a scene on the Road " Vic- toria," Tientsin. A little maid about his age appeared on the street daintily dressed. The lad from the country, unaccustomed to other than Chinese sights, ran up to the little maiden and kissed her with a vigorous hug. " I just kissed that little girl," was his simple comment. One of the Wellesley Professors who never saw him after he was four years old noticed one trait of his character. " Henry was the soul of honor, unimpeachable." There w r as a touch of endur- ance and bravery in the child. His father ex- plained to him that his tonsils were swollen and must be taken out; if he would be brave and sit on papa's knees without making a fuss he might choose anything he liked for a gift. The child came home in triumph, with a gay red checker board. One winter of the furlough was spent at Pasadena. A pretty reminder of that open- air winter is found in a neat little water-color of HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 21 Marie Smith and Henry standing under the gracefully lovely pepper trees of California. The kind lady who painted this will be fully re- membered. A second winter was spent in Hono- lulu, with grandmother Dickinson and Mr. and Mrs. Merritt, then of Oahu College. "The Friend," published in Honolulu, for October, 1906, contains the following in a Memorial paragraph: " In the early months of 1885, dur- ing the Presidency of W. C. Merritt, Rev. Arthur Smith, missionary to China, with his wife, Mrs. Emma Dickinson Smith, and their two lovely children, a girl and a boy, made a delightful visit at Punahou. Mrs Merritt and Mrs. Arthur Smith were sisters most tenderly loved, and the visit of the missionary family is still remembered. The sweet little girl, Marie, died a few years later in California. She was a most saintly girl whose life and death were widely known in Oakland, where the parents were on a missionary furlough. The ladies of the Board remembered the young man as a curly-headed boy who was called " Honey Bee Smith," and as such he is well recalled by those who were here twenty-one years ago. M. C. A." The return from Honolulu to China was by sailing vessel to Hong-Kong, a long six-weeks' sail, monotonous, no doubt, but with the unfail- ing charm of the sea, which neither child nor man 22 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH escapes. The hardships and crudities of such a trip are a part of its remembered joys. Of this voyage the mother merrily said: " The soup was cold, the wine hot, and everything else was sour except the vinegar. The excitement of the trip centered about the ugly creature which followed the ship for days which the captain tried to catch. He swallowed the pork, but not the hook, and got away. Finally one proud day the creature came once too often and was hoisted on deck. It was not the ' Big Captain,' but the little captain in kilts and curls who boasted, ' We caught that shark.' " Henry was but six years old when he returned to the quiet compound at Pang Chuang to join the little circle of children in the happy rounds of their isolated life. It was another six years before the family were compelled to take another furlough. Six radiant and happy years with two or three companions older and younger, a group large enough to make life strenuous either in play or study, for its congenial members. At one time there were two girls and eleven boys with whom to study or to romp. These were years of rapidly increasing acquisition. A mis- sionary child has the advantage or disadvantage of being much with his elders, of training under the guidance of father and mother, of speech upon many of the larger rather than the lesser HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 23 interests of life. The tasks set for such children must be very methodical and persistent lest they lose the fresh opportunity given to children in the home land. A seat in the father's study with appointed hours of study, recitations at suitable times, mark the daily course for years. We need not follow all that quiet, exacting dis- cipline except to note its progress and value. Going to Mission Meeting every second year with its long picnics of slow river-travel and the excitement of meeting the large companies of mission workers and the bands of children, add zest to the outing and store up treasure for long months of isolation. On one of these trips the growth of the appreciative boy was noticed by a lady friend at Tientsin. She had taken him to ride. An auction bill was thrown into the jinrikisha. The lad picked it up and read fluently and with a sense of the fun concealed in it, " On Thursday, these goods will be ruthlessly slaugh- tered/' These are the days when a boy's love goes out to all animal life. It was a pretty pic- ture which the eager lad showed, returning once from a northern trip; a cat in a bag, head ex- posed, a bird in a cage fit to hold it properly, and a small dog to be educated and duly disciplined. These called forth the best traits of character through the interest and care involved. When a bleating goat was added, how complete the 24 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH joys of life! Alas, that goat! Tied by a rope too long to the knob of an outside door, near one's bedroom, of course, what should the poor thing do, but hang itself in the night ! The little dog was the surest companion and comfort. As it grew old and had a most unfortunate cough and asthma, affection alone could desire to keep it alive to its last days. And such affection was loyally given. A boy loves to imitate his father. So Henry carried with him in his pocket a small book from which to read aloud when occasion required, the other lads assisting with merry shouts when a good thing was on. Among the treasures of this period was a small booklet containing all the fine conundrums, dear old chestnuts of the father's, known to the present age. A mine of delight to Henry, and faithfully pondered, nest eggs for future fun. If an occasional proverb was swiftly hurled it was but following the ways of the Author of " The Proverbs and Common say- ings of China." As the children grew older it became necessary to lay plans of study out of the ordinary course, which might embrace as well the older sister, now on the verge of girlhood. The subject of politi- cal economy was one of those chosen. During several months the sister and two boys, eleven years old, listened for an hour each morning to HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 25 a most inviting and practical talk on the varied themes of Production, Distribution, Wages, and Trade, fully illustrated from abundant material at home and abroad. About the same time another half hour was given in the afternoon to physiology. The local physician was supposed to know something about that. The little class was enlarged by having two younger lads, to whom the comparative anatomy of birds and cats and dogs was equally interesting. The older boys, already well along in Latin, enjoyed strong meat in the names of bones and muscles. They vied with each other in the effort to remember these and to rattle off, as Dr. Wendell Holmes did in his classroom, the happy combination of the " auriculo-ventricular orifice." When the Christmas of that year came, it was the teacher who got the diploma instead of the pupil. Henry had gotten the skillful Chinese writer to copy on a piece of delicate white silk, the frontispiece of his book, a fine specimen of the human skeleton. This was found in his teacher's stocking on Christmas morning. The theory of the relation of children to the church has undergone an entire change within the last half century. It had always seemed to these missionary parents that the suitable place for Christian children was within the fold rather than without. Whatever the future might have 26 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH to change through growing thought or larger ex- perience, the hope was that a genuine Christian life might grow even from early childhood. The sister, Marie, had united with our Chinese church at the age of eleven. Henry wished to follow the steps of this dear sister. On his own applica- tion and eager desire he was received into the fellowship of the Chinese saints and of the church universal. It was always an impressive sight at each communion service to see often half a hundred Chinese making devout confession of Christ. No little pleasure was added when a for- eign child could stand with them in the midst of the great congregation. The test, of course, must come when the environment, somewhat se- cluded, should be changed. The spring of 1893 found Mr. Smith's health much impaired, as well as that of the dear daugh- ter. On returning to the United States, the autumn of the year found them making a home in Oakland, Cal. Henry entered at once upon a high-school course. The Oakland High School has one of the finest and best-equipped buildings in America, and its course is of a high order. The lad began this course with great pleasure. The long illness of the daughter, followed by a season of partial recovery, was full of discipline for them all. Rev. Arthur Smith returned to his work in China in the spring of 1895. Madame HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 27 Dickinson, now in a gentle lovely old age, was a noble and chastening influence in the home life. In the autumn of this year, Marie, in the joy of the hope that she might begin a new a course of study, had entered the high school. Her clear and penetrating mind and gentle sweetness of Christian life gave promise of much usefulness. God willed it otherwise. In a few weeks her illness returned with new complications and she faded into the eternal life, November 21, 1895. There is no record of the immediate effect of this great sorrow upon Henry. The loss of an older and only sister, so dear, so gentle, so bril- liant also, must have greatly influenced his moral growth and life, deepening and elevating his thought, enriching his experience. Henry had chosen a classical course. He pursued it with unwonted zeal and determined effort. He was already attracting attention through his quick intelligence and energetic enthusiasms. His schoolmates could find no better name for such an one than "Freak Smith." His having come from China added uniqueness to this em- phasis.* *Mrs. Hinckley, the wife of the Clerk of the United States Court at Shanghai, was from Oakland and a member of Henry Smith's high school class. In speaking to a friend of those days she remarked that Henry Smith was to her a most in- teresting fellow student. She could never keep up with him in their mutual studies. 28 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH Vacation days often show the measure of a lad. Henry always found some " job " to take up. He secured a bicycle and ran on errands. His mother records this. Passing a house a strange lady called to him. She was alone with a sick baby. Would he please go to the drug store and buy her some medicine? "Mamma, she just chucked her whole pocket book into my hand. I made change all right and brought it back at once. When she tried to pay me I wouldn't take it, for you know I promised God, if He'd give me a bicycle,, I'd do errands for Him." It was an axiom in the family that God was a very present help and ready to hear the desires of each, even in the little affairs of the daily life. We are again told of his finding a place in a cannery, with long hot days of work and slow advance in wages, or again as an eleva- tor boy with the daily incidents and perils. At length the high school course was com- pleted. His successes in study brought him to graduation in the spring of 1897, ready for col- lege. During the waiting months Henry decided to go into business. The question arose should he enter the University of California, or go East to Beloit College, the early home of his mother, and the college of his father and of Henry Dickinson, his uncle. The associations of school companionship and the vigor of California life HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 29 would persuade him to remain. The wisdom of his father urged Beloit as a quieter and more fruitful place of study, with personal associa- tions all in its favor. Meanwhile he went to work in a San Francisco store. In the glad eagerness of earning money he gave himself with enthu- siasm to the new life, and the details of business. That great world of active effort, with its hustling energy* was opened before him with awakening emphasis. He decided to spend a year in business. A cousin of his mother now offered him a place in his business, greatly in- creasing his impulse toward a business life. This was well suited to the energies of a growing youth. The steady work of lifting, carrying, and arranging goods was well suited to his needs. His physical powers developed rapidly and he grew to the measure of a tall, large man, some- what above the average height. He rejoiced in the new found energy. But the question still remained should he give up study, and accept the attractive offers of promotion and respon- sibility? The advice of his father was finally, wisely, however reluctantly, accepted. His mother had returned to China in the autumn of 1897, leaving him thus alone to decide upon his future. The traditions of the family finally led him to decide on the college career. In the autumn Septem- 30 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH her 1898, he went to Beloit and was entered a member of the class of 1902. COLLEGE DAYS Henry found at Beloit a circle ready to re- ceive him on his own and on his parents' ac- count. His Pang Chuang playmate and fellow student had returned from China the year before and was thus in the class above him. These early friends were able to be very helpful to each other, Henry receiving with pleased deference the suggestions of his Sophomore elder. It was one of the traditions of the college that Henry's first year in college lacked the finer purpose of his after years. Business life and its more care- less ways needed time to be outgrown. Every youth must pass his periods of testing in works and ways. The siren of unbelief undoubtedly sang its song, doleful as it may be. Happily other influences near at hand prevented any stunted growth. The record of his scholarship for the first semester does not bear out any tradi- tion of lack of purpose in study. Out of six courses taken, four are recorded with an "a," excellent work, and two with a "b," good work. In the autumn of 1899 Mrs. Henry Porter, returning from China, made her home in Beloit. Henry became a member of her family and re- HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 31 mained two years in the home. He roomed in Chapin Hall during his Senior year. The en- thusiasm of student life had returned to him and he made the best of those good years. His in- terest in debate showed itself very early. His initial entrance upon the contests in which he was to win such fine repute was in the Beloit-Ripon debate of his Freshmen year. Beloit did not win, but the ardent youth had learned lessons full of meaning for his student life. In his Sophomore year he received an appointment as one of the prize speakers, but the prize went to his competitor. During his Sophomore year the Beloit-Knox debate was open to the three upper classes ; since then it has been restricted to the upper two classes. In the preliminaries for this debate Henry, although a Sophomore, was chosen among the elect three for the team. It was characteristic of his unselfish character and sensi- tive nature that he declined to accept this favored election. He felt that the upper class man would really strengthen the team and that he himself should have more maturity. He therefore gave way to the older student and had his reward in very full appreciation of his fine power of leader- ship later. The debate that year went to Knox, not necessarily because he was not upon the team. 32 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH The long summer vacation gave Henry oppor- tunity to develop his taste for business and the pleasure of self-help which he emulated. During the second of these vacations, in the summer of 1900, the terrible reports of the Boxer massacres in China were received. Know- ing that his parents were incarcerated in the seige of Peking, he was in great anxiety. When the graphic account of the wholesale slaughter of all in Peking was published, he left his sum- mer work and hastened to Beloit entirely cast down. His whole course of life would be changed and overclouded. Reassuring telegrams from Chef oo ere long served to overcome this despondency. When the rescue of the beseiged bcame a great reality we may well imagine his personal joy. " If the Hand of the Lord had not been with us, we should have been swallowed up quick alive." The problems appealing to a collegian are much the same in all our institutions. Shall I be an athlete, as I long to be, or give scholarship the first place? Early in his course Henry wrote his parents as follows: "Of course a fine athlete may also be a fine scholar. I have known a few such. The combination is not impossible, but improbable and extremely rare. The reason is that training takes so much time and strength that few men have enough left to make good HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 33 scholars, and besides an enthusiastic athlete is very apt to do this one thing, and have very little interest in anything else. A good athlete must be careful in his diet, regular in his training, and must never sit up late. A good student is often obliged to study hard and long. A man may start out with the intention of doing both things well, but sooner or later they are most sure to conflict. He will find himself face to face with four or five hours of hard studying which must be done before to-morrow. Then he has to make his choice. If athletics are uppermost in his mind, he will study what he can and then go to bed. If this happens often, his scholarship will suffer. Then, since he has lost one ideal, he will devote himself more to the other. After this he may be a good athlete, but unless he stops train- ing he will probably never be a good scholar. The extreme opposite of these are those whose whole existence is bound up in books. They seldom witness a baseball or football game and never think of taking part in one. They take no in- terest in athletics or society, and if one of them joins a debating society it is with a view to study- ing rhetoric. " A third class are interested in athletics and society, but not to the exclusion of studying. Though they may study hard it is always with limits. These are moderately esteemed by the 34 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH professors, though they may never be brilliant in any line. An athlete may meet with continual disapproval of the faculty and yet be a popular hero, while a hard student may have the pro- found admiration of every professor and yet be disliked by his classmates and the college. I have settled for myself that I will not join the first class. I am passionately fond of football and moderately fond of baseball, but not fond enough of either to let them crowd out my studies, nor to give them the attention necessary to those who get on the team. Between the other two the choice is harder." (April 4, 1899.) Nothing could have been more natural than that Henry should turn toward oratory and de- bate. Beloit had an established reputation as a college of orators. Beginning as far back as 1874, a Beloit man won an Interstate first place. Since then Beloit's record was five firsts and one second in the Interstate. Of thirty-three such Interstate contests, Beloit was represented in twenty-two. The Association includes sixty- three colleges. Such well-known names as Bryan, La Follette, Beveridge, and Finley were among the contestants and winners. The Inter- collegiate debates were equally maintained, and opened avenues full of interest for each incom- ing class. In the Codex of 1905, Professor Chapin writes : " Under the stimulus of inter- HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 35 collegiate competition, the old-time interest in debating has revived." Beloit's first inter-collegi- ate debate was held at Knox college at Gales- burg in 1897. Mr. Rowell, instructor in oratory, writes: " At the present time there is no college in the country that has a faculty more loyal to the value of oratorical training. The student body is thoroughly imbued with the oratorical spirit. Almost every man who has any ability has at least made an effort to win a place on one of the various contests." Henry had taken part in the Freshman debate, as already noted. With the Junior year he entered more fully into the work of public speaking. Early in his Junior year he was invited by Professor Bacon to be one of the selected assist- ants in the Library. He felt this as a high com- pliment, since the work was exacting, demanding a peculiar grade of efficiency and intelligence. There were four such appointees, two in each upper class, with forty hours a week to divide between them. Professor Bacon wished only such men as could carry the work and still main- tain a high grade of scholarship. In close re- lation to Professor Bacon, whom Henry admired very greatly, and whom all the college revered for his valorous surmounting of unprecedented physical disability, he passed from one intense effort to another. The first of these during this 36 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH year was his effort to gain a place on the oratori- cal contest. Naturally enthusiastic as well as sensitive and introspective, his letters to his father unfold his growing methods of discipline and his triumph over difficulties. Early in the year he wrote: "I have only been on rhetoricals three times. The principal difficulty in my case is I am apt to talk faster than the audience can listen. When appointed, I spend from two to five hours thinking up as good a speech as I can, repeating it and timing myself until I have a mastery of the points. I am apt to think of too much to say in six minutes, and to lack time to condense and discard. Then I am tempted to try and give a fifteen-minute speech in six by sheer speed, and the effect is lost. Have you ever had this difficulty?" (January 13, 1901.) "I do not remember having said anything about the oratorical contest in which I took part last autumn. All summer I had been planning and thinking and found a subject in the Chinese problems viewed from the standpont of the duty of American world-leadership. For seven weeks I worked at it with tremendous energy. I spent from twelve to twenty hours a week in writing and re- writing." Sixteen men were to take part in the preliminaries, eight were to be HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 37 chosen in December. The competitors were some of them very strong and competent writers of the upper class, the contest being open to Juniors and Seniors. It was a disappointment to such eagerness to fall behind in the race; not attain- ing to the first three. He writes: " I have met defeat before, never one quite like this. It came as a storm from the blue sky. It crushed the life out of me and took away all my energy. I can't seem to get up any interest in oratory now, al- though but a short time ago it was the principal ambition of my life." (Same date.) The studies of Junior year, psychology, ad- vanced Greek, Biblical study in the new required course, were full of interest to him, and debating preliminaries added their own weight. " The spring term of my Junior year was the hardest of my life, and at times it seemed as if I could not bear it, but by easing up at a crucial time I averted a crisis." He ran the gauntlet of the preliminaries and was selected leader of the team for the Knox debate. The two other members were Seniors. In preparing for this debate Henry showed a disposition, which steadily grew upon him, to devote himself aggressively to the matter in hand to partial neglect of other duties. The question chosen for debate was : " Re- solved, that Labor Unions, as now conducted, are for the best interests of the United States." The 38 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH artlessness of his own estimate of the effort will add interest to the result. A letter gives this full report of the debating experience : " During the spring vacation I went to Chicago and studied union labor there. The policy of the Buildings Trades Council had been such as to supply me with abundant material for the negative of the question. I felt keenly the responsibility of being leader of the team. It means forethought, detailed planning, continual readjustment of material and generalship. A good leader ought to do more work than the other two men. My own speeches required more work and more time,, and I must keep ahead of the two seniors. The debate took place on the 19th of April. We were met at the station and escorted to the hotel. Throughout our stay they were most gentlemanly and cordial in entertain- ing us. We were not well prepared, having had really a short time for practicing together. I had lightened my school work and postponed everything that could possibly be postponed, to work day and night on the debate. The Chicago trip had brought me great results in facts and figures. The manager of the debate called, and said he hoped we would not think it discourteous, but that the local labor union had agreed to attend the meeting in a body. This meant that we must wage war on the Labor Unions in their own HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 39 homes and before a hostile audience. He thought it only fair to tell me that in anticipation of any oh! demonstration he had arranged to have several policemen present to preserve order. I offered no objection, provided in case of any dis- order, we should have the extra time that was lost. I was far from feeling as cool as I ap- peared. The Knox men all memorized their speeches. We outlined ours carefully, wrote them out, polished them up, put the main heads on cards. The outline method gives one control of excellent language, yet leaves him independ- ent of words and sentences. A glance at the card concealed in the hand was a sure preventive against forgetting. The debate was to take place at eight o'clock. At seven-thirty, on looking from my window, I saw a brass band, leading a huge torchlight procession of working men, with banners and mottoes, ' We are for Labor Unions ; Organized Labor for Knox.' But these could not prevent Beloit from making a good showing. When we three met in my room I told the others how I felt, and then an idea came to me. I said, we were all three Y. M. C. A. men, and that it was a good time to keep our Christianity with us. Then, bowing our heads for a few minutes we prayed that whether we win or lose, we might not at any time forget that we were sons of Beloit and Christian gentlemen. 40 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH " The great debate was on. The presiding officer called on Knox's first speaker. His argu- ments were carefully prepared, thoroughly memorized, well delivered. In reply, I briefly referred to his speech, stated what each of our three speakers intended to present, outlining my own speech. I spoke on the growth of the Build- ing Trades Council, the most gigantic tryranny ever established by any human institution or agency in any free American city. A curious thing happened here. There were in the audience a few non-union plumbers who had been in Chicago and had felt the bitterness of that des- potism. The only demonstration of the evening was when I summed up the effects of the Build- ing Trades Council's conduct in Chicago. ' What was the result of such an attitude on the part of ignorant, unscrupulous labor leaders in Chicago? Contractors, unable to satisfy their unreasonable demands, were driven out of business; building came to a standstill ; more than fifty million dol- lars' worth of contracts were lost; workmen lost thirty million dollars in wages; industry was paralyzed; law was set aside and utterly disre- garded; the liberty of American workingmen was trampled in the dust/ I gestured toward a body of rough-looking men on my right who wore no union badges. From them broke out a crash of applause. The offending workmen were HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 41 the scabs of whom I had been speaking. They felt the truth of what I said. I went on to show what I considered the true sphere of usefulness of the unions and their limitations. It does not increase production, nor in any way add to the sum of the nation's wealth; it does not increase the efficiency of its members ; it does not enlarge profits, although by force of arms it can compel the employer to part with some of his share, as wages. Our opponents have not tried to prove that the employers' share is too large or that reason and justice demand such readjustment as the unions try to enforce. The unions do not claim to be altruistic organizations, working for the good of society, but only claim that they ben- efit the people of the United States indirectly. Now only one -fourteenth of the working class and not more than one-third of the total adult population of the United States are members of the unions, and what benefit there is may not be necessarily for the benefit of the whole people.' ' The debate grew more fierce, the excitement more intense as the argument drew to a close and the contest was seen to be nearly equal. In the Knox rebuttal I was watching every word like a tiger crouching for a spring. The leader said : * It is not fair to say only three per cent, of the adult population of the United States belong to labor unions, because that is comparing the wilds 42 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH of Arkansas with the highly organized industrial centers. In the great cities, where four-fifths of the labor is organized, you may properly study industrial conditions and tendencies of to-day.' The applause for this speaker lasted several minutes. ' When it died away, I rose to reply, feeling the supreme moment had come: * Ladies and gentlemen, I have spent nearly one-third of my first speech in a survey of the largest industrial center in the United States, where four-fifths of labor is organized, showing the conditions and inevitable consequences of that strong highly centralized form of organization towards which all labor unions are striving, and what did my honorable opponent say? * Oh,, that is Chicago, that's an exceptional case.' He says we must go to great industrial centers to study conditions and tendencies. It is the truest thing he has said to-night, and the most utterly destructive of his line of argument.' I closed by putting my whole soul into an appeal for the stability of industry, the promotion of commercial prosperity and supremacy and purity of city politics, the main- tenance of social unity and peace, and the sanc- tity of individual liberty, social status, and moral law, so often violated by the labor unions of to-day. The strain of the speech was something terrific. I do not believe I could have walked off HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 43 the stage without help. Every one of the judges gave his decision for Knox. Either the audience was too much for them, or they gave their vote to the men who had made the best speeches, but they could not see who had made the best argu- ment. "For a time I was heart-broken, but since then there has come a stern resolve to take life more seriously, and win things after this." (June 23, 1901.) It was quite true that Henry returned to Beloit exhausted physically, and greatly op- pressed because his team, finely equipped as they were, had not carried the day. The sense of de- pression lasted many days. A later letter gives further comments on that debate : " I think I told you my college experi- ence up to and including the Knox debate. Lu- cius Porter and I were very much disappointed at the result, and I felt exceedingly tired after four months of extremely strenuous work. There are some disadvantages about working on an in- ter-collegiate debate, but I believe it is worth all it costs. Few men can have the privilege of taking part in such a contest, and no one who has not can understand how much it is worth. Last year's debate was of more use to me in teaching me how to face the world, how to deal with men, and how to enter the battles of life than any 44 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH other semester of study that I have spent in college. I have been asked to go in for it again and am seriously considering the idea. I would like nothing better than to win one decisive vic- tory for Old Beloit before I graduate. It would be worth all it cost." (July 26, 1901.) But Henry's work in debating for that year did not end with the defeat at Knox. Professor Bacon, in spite of his physical limitations, was always one of the most valuable debate coaches. But even his determination could not make his strength equal to evening work that spring, and he called in Henry Smith to aid the Freshmen in their Ripon debate. Henry writes : " When the Shakespeare play was over, I gave all my spare time to coaching the team. I worked with individuals every spare hour I could get through the day, and every evening we had a consultation with Professor Bacon and Professor Chapin. Ripon had un- dertaken to prove that in cities of the United States of a population of 50,000, municipalizing of public utilities, gas, electric light, and railways, was preferable to private ownership. This was a question that I knew very little about, so that every night I had to study for several hours. I made the men work strenuously all day and go to bed early. As for myself I did not miss a recitation. I don't believe in neglecting regular HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 45 work for outside enterprises, and was careful to set my Freshmen a good example. I became so interested that I went with the team to cheer them up. The Beloit men did amazingly well, though defeated by unanimous decision. But they had gained a great deal, and I had learned almost as much about debate as they had." (May 24, 1901.) This full year ended with another speaking contest for Henry. He writes: "Commence- ment was as impressive and beautiful as usual, and a great deal more interesting to me than any previous, since it came nearer home. Professor Bacon always wants the men whom he honors with an appointment on the library corps to take front rank in whatever they undertake. He was disappointed when the Rice prize, extempora- neous speaking took place. Six of us took part. The subject was given out at 7 A. M. ' The rela- tion of the steel trust to the people of the United States.' Twenty-seven hours of mental torture followed. I read, wrote, tore up, rehearsed, and waited. The judges gave the prize to one of my classmates. The only criticism suggested on my delivery was that I talked too fast. All three judges gave the first place to Beaubien. No defeat is tolerable to me till I have learned some useful lesson from it. I have learned two things: I must improve my delivery, especially 46 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH in learning to talk more slowly. It will be only by doing more work than others that I can rely on any superiority." (August 11, 1901.) In the early days of the summer vacation Henry attended the World's Students' Assem- bly, at Lake Geneva. He enjoyed this greatly. His deepening religious life found new scope. He joined the " Student Volunteers," and re- turned with real enthusiasm. Mr. Beach, once of the North China Mission, was perhaps the special influence. " At Geneva," Henry writes, " we had ten days of most delightful and inspiring combina- tion of physical and spiritual uplift. The most impressive feature, to me, was the life-work meet- ings. Many men had come to settle such life work problems, and many others were led to con- sider, or reconsider, such questions in a new light. I found myself in the latter class. I had no definite aim most of the time, but toward the lat- ter part of Junior year my predominating inter- est in Political Science had seemed to indicate a legal career for me. I had not considered it much from the standpoint of the world's need, nor of where I could be of most service to God and humanity. No one was urged to sign the Volunteer declaration: ' It is my purpose, if God permits, to become a foreign missionary.' It is no pledge, and is not considered such, but may HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 47 be changed as one's purpose changes. After thinking the matter over from every possible standpoint, I finally signed the declaration as a Student Volunteer, and have felt much better ever since. My doubts and troubles have lasted for several years, and are only just now begin- ning to get cleared up." (August 13, 1901.) During the summer vacation Henry went to Chicago for a few weeks to study oratory in a summer school at the University, with Professor W. B. Chamberlain. He took fifteen lessons. He says of these: " I worked hard at public speaking with Pro- fessor Chamberlain. He saw through my diffi- culties at once and started me on the right way to overcome and remedy my deficiencies. He helped me immensely, and what he did will be of lifelong value to me." Along the line of spiritual development it is interesting to read from a letter to his mother: " I am coming to sympathize more with some of your views than I did at Oakland and get great help from the " Daily Light " which you sent me. I received your letters late in May, and it has kept me thinking ever since. I believe it had more influence over me than any one letter I have ever received. Next year is to be a busy happy life, but not too strenuous." That next year was his Senior year. 48 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH One of the duties of the vacation was the prep- aration of the Y. M. C. A. Handbook. His business experience made the solicitation of " ads " less burdensome to him than it would have been to others. He made a genuine success of it, and the literary part, full of happy hits and quaint suggestion, made it one of the best of the series. The athletic interest in the college life had awakened the physical energies of this stalwart youth. As vacation drew toward a close, Henry joined a camp of athletes on the banks of the Mississippi, hoping, if possible, "to make the team." He had, however, special limitations. Owing to bronchial trouble he could not run or hurdle as others. But he could throw into it the intensest effort. He could enjoy the elan of the strenuous struggle. In such an effort he was full of muscular energy, eager as a racehorse to make the supreme effort. He did not make the team, but they elected him to the second eleven, of which he became captain, much to his delight. After the season was over he reported the ac- tivities of the term: " I want to tell you as much as I can of what I am doing and of the things that interest me most. The Y. M. C. A. Hand- book before referred to says: 'Make study first, that is what you came for.' I know, be- cause I wrote it myself. Which only shows that HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 49 it is easier to preach to Freshmen than to act rightly as Seniors. International Law is a splen- did course under Mr. Matheson, a successful law- yer in Janesville. It is intensely interesting. Ethics comes on Tuesday and Wednesday. We are studying it from the point of moral standard and of the concrete moral life. Philosophy is a course in the history of Modern Philosophy and the lives and ideas of the world's greatest thinkers. This is in some respects the most broadening course I have ever taken. Finance, under Professor Chapin, interests me very much, as all study and research along the line of politi- cal science and political economy always does. It deals with the how and why of government incomes and expenditures. Victorian literature is, with Miss Pitkin, an extremely interesting study. This is by far the hardest course, requires a vast amount of reading of the most absorbing kind. Classic art, under Professor Wright, is easy for me, because I have studied Latin and Greek so much. I recognized that I was almost wholly ignorant of art, and wanted to learn how to study it. " I am captain of the second eleven football team now. The scrub team includes those play- ers not chosen to play on the first eleven. The second eleven men play against the first, or l Var- sity,' every night to give them practice. I told 50 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH you why I desired to make an athlete. I care little for football as sport. At first I hoped to get on the first team, but the coach appointed me captain of the second eleven and asked me to de- vote my energies to keeping it up to a high grade. The responsibility is by no means small, and it has put me in hard positions many times. I pick out the hardest things for myself. Every captain does that. We play every night against the strongest and most experienced athletes in college. An hour and a half is most exhausting. It brings as desirable results magnificent health and splendid physique. A hygienic mode of life is a balance-wheel, preventing excessive mental work, and responsibility matures and strengthens. On one occasion the first eleven had a practice game with Rockford Y. M. C. A. When the game was half over, the coach took out the first eleven and put in the second. The score for the first half was 17-0. At the end it was 34-0, for my team had done as well as the 'Varsity, scor- ing a triumph and making quite a reputation. A return game was arranged. I took the scrubs to Rockford. They did splendidly, so that the result was in our favor 35-0. Work tells. That is enough of athletics. " The library work seems less to me since Pro- fessor Bacon is no longer there; but a man ap- pointed to an honorable position is supposed to HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 51 stick to the place while he is in school. Professor B. picked his men and rather encouraged all his assistants to enter into everything they could, releasing them from library work if necessary." (Oct. 10, 1901). The letter-heads show that Henry was elected Treasurer of the Y. M. C. A. " It is enough work to occupy all the spare time of a very busy man. The problem of raising and spending (for the Y. M. C. A.) $175-$200 a year is not a small one. Seniors always lead in college affairs and for obvious reasons. My class contains only twenty men, of whom only half are members of this society. I hope to break in the chairman of the finance committee to take much of the work off my hands." From the Codex of 1903 we learn that Henry was associate editor of the Round Table, Presi- dent of the Cliosophic Society, and one of the eight speakers on the Home Contest in oratory. Of the former he wrote: "At present I have only to take three or four hours a week to read proof and write occasional editorials. I am President of the volunteer band now. We are studying Mott's ' Evangelization of the World in this generation.' I am surprised at his mod- eration, and am inclined to think he is about right. I find more time for social recreation this year. I very much regret that I have not sue- 52 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH ceeded in getting in more music than I have. The few lessons that I took when a Sophomore represent all the training I have had, and now I cannot sing. I am trying to cultivate a thought- ful life more than ever before, realizing the su- perficiality of a life made up of doing innum- erable things at lightning speed, without much thought I read the "Daily Light " which mother gave me every day almost and try to cultivate a prayer life of my own. You will remember that I wrote of my bitter defeat in the Home Ora- torical Contest and my consequent discourage- ment. Professor Bacon said to me on my re- turn: ' Three hundred and sixty-three days to the next contest, Henry.' This year I had but little time to give to it and scarcely expected anything but ignominious defeat. My work last year was not wasted. I got on the first eight this time and am planning to get to work for the contest. Heredity is cropping out in great chunks." Professor Bacon, to whom Henry was greatly attached, passed through a period of great feebleness, and at last succumbed in October of that year. Henry writes : " I think I wrote you of the death and burial of my friend Pro- fessor Charles Bacon. Since then a memorial number of the Round Table has been issued. I have taken the place of the editor in chief, so the editorial is my tribute to my dead friend. I have HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 53 attacked my oration seriously and am tremen- dously perplexed to know what to do to make it five hundred per cent, better than it was in the last contest. Here is where I miss Professor Bacon most. What I need more than help is to concentrate my mental energy on this one thing and do the work necessary to achieve excellence. The Home Contest comes December 13. Per- haps I have not told you of the recent formation of an English Club here. The idea is that of a voluntary organization to meet for an hour once in two weeks. I pushed Professor Wallace's idea vigorously. It became immensely popular. About a third of the students attended the first meeting. I was appointed a committee to draw up a Constitution. They accepted my Constitu- tion and elected me President. I didn't kick. Professor Bacon cured me of that trick long ago." (Nov. 9, 1901.) The Oratorical Contest came off at the ap- pointed time. The judges gave Henry only the third place, thus leaving him off from the In- tercollegiate. He began planning for the following year. He thought of the alternatives of Teaching or Post-Graduate study. " The possibility has oc- curred to me that I ought to go to some Theo- logical Seminary. I have not planned for this, because I do not believe I am ready for it yet. 54 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH If you see reasons that I cannot, why should I not hasten to China as soon as possible. I suppose I could plan for 1905. In one of your latest letters you ask what I read. Perhaps you will be interested to know what books are on shelves of my table now. The most are library books of which as librarian I draw a great many." There follows a list of some fifty books, covering the themes of semester study, or those of oration and debate. "My library training has taught me how to read large numbers of books rapidly and at the same time to get from them most of what is worth while. I expect to change at least half of them before New Years'. I am sometimes tempted to drop all of my numberless responsi- bilities and retire into such a life as some of my classmates live, of seclusion and leisure, learning their lessons and reading many good books. " Before I forget it, I want to answer some of the questions in some of your letters. I weigh about 149 pounds stripped, or about 157 with my clothes on. The football players all weigh after undressing and before putting on their football suits every day and again after practice to see how much weight they have lost by hard work. The average loss runs from two to four pounds* but I have lost as much as six pounds in a hard-fought game. Of course I would gain it back in the course of twenty-four hours. My HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 55 throat has troubled me very little since the win- ter of my Sophomore year, when I was thought to have consumption. That danger is now gone, but I am always rather careful. " Examination week is always a trying ordeal, but it was particularly wearing for me this time, because I have been doing almost everything ex- cept study. I worked furiously during the week reviewing and cramming for exams, and thereby added four or five credits to what I could other- wise expect. Only one or two in my class got higher averages, so that I feel fairly well satis- fied. I feel how far short I have fallen of a scholarly ideal. I appreciate the force of the suggestion made in your last letter that there is danger of superficiality in dissipating one's ener- gies, and am trying now to do fewer things and do them better. I am still Treasurer of the Y. M. C. A., but the work of collecting is being done by the Committees, and I merely supervise and urge the work on. Instead of going on a begging expedition whenever a little money was needed I inaugurated a plan of having regular membership dues of twenty-five cents a term. In this way $170 was raised in pledges without any difficulty. Then all who were not members were asked to contribute, and their generous subscrip- tions showed that even the unreligious men ap- preciate the value of the work. In trying to 56 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH change all this I have encountered many obstacles and much opposition, but at every point I have insisted on being businesslike, and the others have let me have my way. I have already dis- bursed $250, including the Handbook. The peo- ple who don't approve of my methods are de- lighted with the results, for this is the most prosperous year the Y. M. C. A. has had. We have started a very good Missionary Library, which is used a good deal. This is the first thing I have ever done on a large scale to help any re- ligious organization, and it has been an unquali- fied success. I am now editor in chief of the Round Table, and although it involves some re- sponsibility, it does not bother me much. I say to one: 'Do this, and he does it, and to another, Go, and he goes.' I determine what the policy of the paper shall be, write some of the editorials, keep the editorial staff at work, and bother very little about details. I think I have told you that I have gone back to the library for five hours' work a week. I did not want to go back into something from which I had escaped. Professor Chapin besought me as a matter of service to the college, which he said needed my service very much." (February 15, 1902.) The event of the Senior year, aside from faithful study and library work, was once more the Knox debate. Although it was not custom- HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 57 ary to give the honor of this debate to the same person in successive years, he was urged to enter the contest again, and feeling that it was due to the college to win at least one such prize, he once more entered the lists. It is unnecessary to suggest again the enthusiasm and energy with which he entered the contest. He was duly elected leader of the fateful three. The Knox debate was held this year at Beloit. The Beloit spirit was manifest in the anticipatory expectation. The usual incidents of debate appeared until the final rebuttal, which fell to his share. Professor Collie, in a graphic sentence, sums up the result: " Henry was a power in debate and became, perhaps, the most famous of undergrad- uate debaters in our history. In this debate, 1902, Beloit had apparently lost, when Henry rose to make his argument in rebuttal. No one present will be likely to forget that speech. His generalship, his quick wit, with his eager, pas- sionate argument simply swept the Knox men from their feet and Beloit won the decision. The ambition of the college youth was satisfied. Eager intensity and strength carried the day." Of it Henry himself wrote : " The general impression of it remains with me as being one of the fortunate events of my Senior year. It en- abled me to leave college with the sensation that life didn't owe me anything. It was the fiercest 58 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH and most desperate battle I ever took part in." The remaining interests of this year are best summed up in his own words. " Immediately after the Knox debate, April 19, 1 began work with the Freshman team, which was to debate May 23, and the Sophomores, for May 29. There was nobody else to do this and the school looked to me in the emergency. From one point of view it was sheer sacrifice and loss on my part. I was tired and somewhat behind in my studies and desirous of making them up. On the other hand, coaching two teams would be good practice for the Oregon place, and win- ning those debates would be the finest kind of recommendation and might get me the place. Besides, the prestige and honor of Beloit were at stake. Each team called on me in a body and asked me themselves. I made my own terms. They were to follow my instructions in every detail, and I was to do for them everything that energy and experience in debate could do to en- sure their victory. I watched over them, sent them to bed early, and to regular and hard work. I would not let them go to the theater, nor smoke, and made them work hard. It was just what Professor Bacon had done for me. The last week I used my influence with the faculty and had the men excused from recitations. The Freshmen were colts and hard to handle. The HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 59 leader was quick, bright and rather hard to man- age, on the whole. The debate took place at Beloit. '* The Ripon boys tried to prove that compul- sory arbitration of labor disputes should be adopted in the United States. The Beloit men claimed that voluntary arbitration was better, and that compulsory arbitration involved a viola- tion of personal rights and a sacrifice of individ- ual liberty. The Beloit speeches were better, and better delivered than those of their opponents. Two judges voted for Beloit. A great weight was lifted from my mind, but I became doubly anxious over the Sophomores, who were to de- bate against Carleton. Of course I went to Northfield with the team. It was a fast, hard battle clear through, and the result was doubtful more than half of the time. Gradually the splendid condition and training of the Beloit men began to tell. They braced up as their op- ponents weakened and won clearly in a furious finish. The judges' decision was two to one for Beloit. Maybe we did not get an enthusiastic reception. I never was so lionized in my life. The Sophs made old Beloit ring with their yells and illuminated the town by burning red fire up and down the streets. We had to make speeches and receive congratulations and there was music and rejoicing, ice cream, and cake. 60 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH " For over three years I had planned to com- pete for the Hay Prize, given each year to the Senior who writes the best essay on some topic connected with American citizenship. I thought winning such a prize would probably please you, for it is a considerable honor. It is announced at Commencement and printed in the catalogue. In the Library I learned that only two days and three nights remained before the essay should be handed in. There came a fierce determination to make the desperate attempt. I selected the best of the available topics : ' The Influence of the Reconstruction Policy of Abraham Lincoln upon the Subsequent Reconstruction Policy of the Southern States.' Never in my life have I done so big a piece of work at one sitting. I began to typewrite the essay in the early dawn of the third day. After the essay was handed in to Professor Chapin I heaved a sigh of relief and turned to my other work. The examinations were now coming on. At last I finished my work satisfactorily and went off with my class for a lark and a rest. We had a wholesome, jolly kind of a time together, and came back sunburned and happy. Altogether Class day was a pretty strenuous day for me and I heaved a long sigh when the last enthusiastic burst of applause had died away. The next morning I went to Com- mencement and found the exercises rather tedi- HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 61 cms except what concerned me. I drew a sheep- skin tied in gold and labeled cum laude. Tak- ing it all in all I was satisfied. After the Acting- president's farewell, we took our front seats for the announcements. Dr. Collie read from his lists, ' The Hay Prize of $35, for the best essay upon a topic connected with American citizen- ship, is awarded to Mr. Henry D. Smith, of Pang Chuang, China.' I gulped hard and looked unconcerned, while my chum squoze my arm. My rival had drawn the other prize, which he sought, and we both were happy. Ten minutes later a messenger boy handed me a telegram, as I walked in with my class to the corporation dinner. " Forest Grove, Oregon. " You were elected instructor last night. Will write to-morrow. " WM. N. FERRIN, DEAN." " My three wishes had come true. I had my diploma, my prize, and my position. The four years of hard struggle and bitter disappoint- ments were over. * The corporation dinner is the last ceremony of Commencement week. It was a swell affair and I enjoyed it to the full and went out feeling older, for college life was ended and real life had commenced." (September 11, 1902.) " The last afternoon at Beloit I called and 62 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH said good-bye to my friends. Aunt M. cried and her father wished me well. Mrs. Chapin and Miss Chapin and Mrs. F. gave me their best wishes. Aunt Bessie wished me in Chinese ' I Lu Ping An ' ; parting with Uncle Harry was very sad. He spoke of your long friendship and of the blessing of such love and almost broke down when it came to say good-by. My heart was heavy as I left him, for we may never meet again on earth. My most solemn farewell was to the college library, silent and deserted now. One spot in it is forever sacred to me. Professor Bacon's wheel-chair used to stand there and he used to work there every day. For three years I watched him work there; for two years I worked and studied with him ; for one year I was his right hand-man, and after he had gone ' Over there/ I still worked on that spot. There I had vowed to beat Ripon, if it were possible to over- come such odds as we Freshmen fought against that year, and to that spot I returned forlorn and comfortless to gather fresh resolve. On that spot I had vowed, as a Junior, to defeat Knox, if it could be done. Here Professor Bacon had bidden me godspeed with his firm warm hand- clasp and his cheery voice, * God bless you, Henry, go in and do your very best.' Two days later, when I returned beaten, but not conquered, his earnest, vibrant voice greeted me with, ' Well, HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 63 Henry, there are three hundred and sixty-three days to the next Knox debate.' His indomitable courage was contagious. On this very spot I had solemnly sworn that I would fight one more bat- tle to the very end, and to this place I had re- turned after the bonfire had burned out and the shouts had died away, and the crowd had gone home, the night of the Knox debate, to thank God for my first victory. On this same spot I lingered in farewell. The finest students I had ever known had worked here and grown under Professor Bacon's care into splendid men. The place was consecrated by his heroic life and death. " O God, to us may grace be given To follow in their train." I thought a moment and prayed on that spot. No place has ever been associated, for me, with so much of the strenuous endeavor and purpose- ful resolve." (September 11, 1902.) INSTRUCTORSHIP AT PACIFIC UNI- VERSITY On leaving Beloit Henry hastened West, to spend a short time with his Grandmother Dickin- son and his aunt Mrs. Merritt, at Tacoma, be- fore entering upon the school year at Forest Grove. It was four years since he had left, to pass his college years. 64 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH We have his own full record of the new ex- perience as instructor: " Forest Grove, Oregon. I don't know how many aeons it is since I wrote last, so I shall have to go back to the beginning. I think I told you of my playing football last term with the boys here. The idea was suggested by some of the faculty, and I hesitated for some time. But the precedent had been set for me by my predecessor, Mr. Lyman, and not without some good reason. I wanted to have as strong an influence as possible for good, so set to work to get in touch with all classes of students, if possible. The athletes besought me to come and play, the coach implored me to help him out, and the faculty advised me to do so. I helped coach the team throughout the season. " I showed them how football is played at Beloit; my experience there last year was worth a lot. The only victory that we won was the result of a tackles-back tandem play which I in- troduced from Beloit and in which I led the in- terference again and again, as we used to do at Beloit, until somehow we smashed our way to victory. I was abundantly repaid, for the foot- ball men appreciated my sacrifices and I gained a hold over them which I could not have any other way. I refused the first invitations to at- tend the faculty meeting, and to vote and act with them, but a third invitation came in the HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 65 shape of an unanimous request that I join their number and share the responsibilities and burdens of their work. They treated me splendidly, and have passed every motion that I have made. " A chance came in my way to get in touch with the other class of students, the girls. My predecessor was elected the business manager of the girl's basket-ball team as a sort of joke. He accepted, but never did anything. This year the girls came to me to know if I would help them. They elected me manager and I set to work. There was no place to play and they were obliged to play out of doors. In order to play basket-ball girls have to wear a gymnasium cos- tume, that is sailor blouses and bloomers with knee skirts. Practicing out of doors would at- tract a crowd and was hardly creditable to an institution with such a history. The trustees, ' tumbled ' and hastily raised enough to fit up a large room, and now for the first time Pacific University has a ladies' ' gymnasium.' The result is showing right now. Pale, delicate girls, who can get no other exercise on rainy days, come flushed and hungry from the Gymnasium. The girls' team from the Academy here is to play a game with the team from St. Helen's Hall in Portland. :< I have tried at all times to co-operate with the Y. M. C. A. here and often go to their meet- 66 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH ings. I joined the C. E. Society, and am teach- ing a class in the S. S. On Sunday, December 21, I filled the Congregational pulpit and was favored with a large audience. I spoke on mis- sionary work in China, and some weeks later ad- dressed a joint meeting of the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A., describing some helps and hin- drances to mission work in China. I am an hon- orary member of the boys' debating societies. It seems to be the only way in which one can do young people much good, that of entering into close and friendly relations with them. ' Within a month I have been obliged to re- fuse calls to preach, but have accepted two calls to speak on China. I shall continue to accept these missionary calls as long as I can. Oratory and debating are the chief interest in the school just now and I am bending all my energy to bring to the institution such success as it has not had before. Lyman worked up some good men, and I am trying to bring out every man who has any oratorical possibilities in him. This week the Home Oratorical contest takes place and a month later the State Oratorical at Eugene. For the Home contest eight men are working furi- ously, rehearsing with me every day, which takes five and six hours, in addition to regular duties. We have two intercollegiate debates, one with the University of Oregon, which is the strongest HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 67 debating school in this part of the United States. All the hard work I did at Beloit last year coach- ing two winning teams comes in handy now." (Februarys, 1903.) " I don't think my moral and religious in- fluence has been as strong and steady as I meant it to be. During the busiest part of the winter I drifted away somewhat spiritually and have not quite got back yet. Somehow the terrific strain of overwork always breaks down my good resolutions and I neglect the deepest things of life to accomplish my immediate aim. But after the aim is secured I find I have lost something not easily regained. This year my eyes have been opened to this danger and remedy and next year I hope to avoid it. " Aunt Marie writes me that grandma has had another serious attack but has rallied well. When school is out I expect to accept their urgent invi- tation to visit them for a while. Later in the summer I shall go to Oakland and San Fran- cisco." (May 21, 1903.) " I had a rather exciting time making connec- tions in Portland, as I missed the train for Forest Grove by a few seconds and had to make a mad dash for it in a cab. We overtook it in a mile and a half, as it runs slowly through the town. It was just beginning to go fast when I jumped from the step of the cab to the last car and threw 68 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH the cabman his fare. The evening train would have made me too late to vote in Forest Grove. I voted for the first time, casting my vote for no license. The town went ' dry.' " I think I told you how I came back 175 miles from Tacoma to vote in the election and cast my first vote under the local option law for * No License.' I am neither a Prohibitionist nor a teetotaler, but I know a moral issue when I see one, and I don't believe there is any man in Oregon more anxious than I am to * get in the game,' when a hot fight is raging over a moral issue. We won by a majority of forty-one." (July 14, 1903.) A part of the summer vacation was spent, as he had planned, in San Francisco, in the business of his cousin, Mr. Howard. Henry was as eager for a fight in business as in debating. " In the store, good fortune began to come to me about the time that I began to be rested and recuperated. After six or seven weeks a chance came to me to do some work in the office. I have always wanted to work in the office. I did not know anything about short- hand, so missed my chance. But soon after there was a chance for me to do a little work in San Francisco as a drummer, and I jumped at the chance. It was a hard graft, for he set me to introduce a new line of hardware in a field HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 69 crowded to death with competition. I had only a few days to work before going North, and the old spirit of dare-deviltry from college days came over mej and I went into it with more enthu- siasm than anything that I had had a chance to do this year. The first customer upon whom I called said : * Why, there was a man around here yesterday trying to sell a lot of that stuff.' To which I responded with cheerful recklessness, ' I have no doubt of it. There will probably be an- other to-morrow, and I'm four weeks ahead of the man who will be here a month from now, but we've got the very thing you want and at the right price.' I stayed with the gentleman more than an hour, and returned with an order for more than four hundred dollars' worth of as- sorted hardware. In five days I sold little less than a thousand dollars' worth of goods, besides working up some deals of which the harvest will be reaped later. It was lots of fun. Besides it is most excellent experience. I left Oakland September 12, having stayed two weeks longer than I had planned." (October 7, 1903.) The new term opened at Forest Grove and Henry entered upon the work with renewed eagerness. His letters reflect it: "I began my new course in ' Vocal Expression and Delivery ' in which I am trying to give the students here what I got in my post-graduate work in Chicago 70 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH University. This last course has proved very popular. I intended it only for the select few, out of whom I hope to be able to make orators and debaters who will win this year's contest in public speaking, but a whole raft of people wanted to take the course. No such course is offered at Beloit, but if there had been any such thing it might have saved me from some of the bitterest experiences of my life. Two of the twelve pupils are ladies who expect to teach elo- cution, and one of them is doing special work with me fitting herself to go to the Emerson School of Oratory, in Boston, for a two years' course. I do not play football this year, but help coach the boys at their request. I am coaching the second team. Of course I am under no obli- gation to do this, but I like it and need the exer- cise. The students appreciate the help. I go to the meetings of the Y. M. C. A., to help them out, as it is rather small and needs all the help it can get. I believe strongly in college associa- tions ever since the one at Beloit straightened me out." In a, December letter Henry wrote more inti- mately of his inner life: " Dear Pater: I want to talk to you a little. I wrote to mother from Tacoma, so you know of our Thanksgiving there.* It was a blessing to me, as it always is, * Henry's maternal grandmother had one granddaughter, largely brought up by herself, who filled her heart. When this HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 71 to get away from here and to be with them (his relatives) for a little. When I got back here, everybody was plunged into the midst of prep- arations to entertain a large Y. M. C. A. convention. The convention was a tremendous success in every way in numbers and interest. It was said to be one of the best ever held in Oregon. Before it was over a number of young men, including several from Pacific University, had made a start in the Christian life. It brought a great blessing to this col- dear one's marriage removed her the width of the continent it left an aching void. Just at this time the providence of God sent the only living grandson to the Pacific coast to live, where he could spend his vacations with her. Into the dear grand- motherly heart, that never grew old, nestled this strong, eager personality, loving her back in full measure and partly filling the vacant spot. As each vacation came they sent a joint letter to China, which was grandma's great delight. It was scientific division of labor. Grandma on her bed dictated half the ideas and Henry half. He did the writing except at the end. The words, " Your Loving mother " and son, "L. S. DICKINSON, "H. D. SMITH"; used to fade away in the midst of tears for the reader, as the first became fainter and more tremulous and finally ceased to appear. It was good for Henry to sit by the bed and learn to be quiet and tender and gentle, and he brought much ozone into the sick room with him for her. How little we thought that after a little parting, grandmother and Henry could go right on where they had left off in that little room in Tacoma. Grandma had said, " How I wish that boy Henry would stay here all the time, since he adds greatly to our happiness." 72 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH lege and helped everybody immensely. I know it did a world of good to me. For months I had been drifting. You know how it started. For a long time, I had known that I was sliding along a dangerous way, but it seemed that I could not stop. This convention gave me the needed impetus and although my worst problems are not solved, I know that I am trying to do what is right. " It was eight months since I had received a call to preach or speak anywhere on Sunday, but within five days after the convention and after I had resolved to begin again, I received a hurry call to preach twice on a Sunday, in a neighbor- ing town. I try to leave no duty undone ' What- soever thy hand findeth to do'; and I have wonderful joy since that convention. It struck me as being a remarkable coincidence perhaps mother would call it something else. I had never before attempted to speak twice on Sunday, nor to conduct an entire service anywhere, to say nothing of two of them in the same place. But I never yet refused any such call when I could possibly accept it, so I went. I was extremely busy and had almost no time to prepare, about four or five hours for my morning sermon, more for the evening. Never have I felt more de- pendent upon a kind Providence for help or more conscious of receiving help and ideas when I HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 73 needed them. I preached from Matthew xi. 2, 3,* explaining what I thought it meant and should mean to each one of us. In the evening I talked about China, giving them the same address that I used last winter. I found the conducting of two such services no small strain upon one's strength and nerve, and am a little doubtful about accepting any more such calls, but perhaps I had better not cross the river before coming to it. The people were very appreciative and want me to come again." In the spring of 1904, Henry's cousin in San Francisco renewed offers to him to join him in business. The inducements were attractive. His estimate of them appears in the following letter: " Spiritually I am not fitted for the ministry and doubt whether I was ever created for that calling or any other like it. I don't believe any man is ever called to be a round peg in a square hole. And yet I am by no means prepared to say that I have chosen once for all. And I know that to go into business with N. would practically be to choose before I am ready. For I know that I could make a success of business: I like it, I do not take a sordid view of it, as I believe you think I do. I am pretty sure that if I should go into business for a year or two it would be next to impossible for me to get out. * Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another? 74 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH Now the offers which he has made me are in some respects the best and the most attractive which were ever held out to me; the position would be almost ideal from my point of view, and the inducements far beyond anything I had dreamed of in my most enthusiastic moments, amounting to making me a partner in the firm to a certain extent. The work would be pleas- ant,, the surroundings congenial, and yet Well, I have not accepted. " I chanced to mention this uncertainty of mind in a letter I wrote to President Eaton, trying to get a scholarship for one of the stu- dents here who wants to go to Beloit. By return mail I received a call to Beloit, which I enclose, together with various and sundry documents in- cluding comments from people interested. I had done nothing whatever to fish for that call, al- though of course I regarded it as a very high honor and was tickled to death to receive it. There is no man in this country that I would rather work with, and no institution that I would rather serve than Beloit. Accepting the call would not pledge me to remain there more than a year. Only two men have held the place before. One, Professor Holden, is now President of Wooster University, Ohio. The other, Mr. Vogt, is now General Secretary of the United Society of Christian Endeavor. The place and HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 75 the work might lead me straight into the minis- try. I can see how filling the pulpits of different churches every Sunday might have that effect." (June 3, 1904.) President Eaton's letter: BELOIT, Wis., February 4, 1904. " MY DEAR HENRY: Your letter I have read with great interest and satisfaction. I am glad you are so deeply engrossed in your present work, and am still more glad that the work which I have suggested to you, for your Alma Mater makes the appeal it does to you, and from the motives which weigh most with you. Your letter increases my conviction that you will find in the work pro- posed a sphere for your best energies, in which you would accomplish great good and at the same time grow steadily. " Suppose you were to inspire twenty young men a year, who otherwise would not be reached, with the motives lead- ing to an education, for a career of positive usefulness, and that you should repeat this every year for five years, which is not at all an improbable supposition. What would it mean to have a hundred lives parallel to your own, working through your lifetime, all contributing to the world's uplift, through the impulse you had given them! How profoundly inspiring the thought is! It only sug- gests how distinctly the sphere into which we call you is one where every day's work has large issues, many of which can be measured and estimated far more than is the case with ordinary service. What you say about the business positions offered you interests me much, as indi- cating the justice of my thought in believing that you would have good access to business men and could in- fluence them strongly toward an interest in Christian edu- 76 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH cation. The great importance of this can hardly be esti- mated. To help gather about the college a body of intelligent men of means will assure its development for the future in these material interests which are so essen- tial to its large usefulness. Personally I look forward with keen satisfaction to having you associated with me in this arduous but delightful work. We know each other thoroughly and we know we could co-operate so that each should strengthen the other. As I think I said before, I know no other of our younger alumni who would, I think, be so personally helpful and effective as yourself. I have laid the matter before the committee of the trus- tees of the college by whom this matter is entrusted to me. Mr. E. and Mr. P. both agree with me in the desire that you enter upon this work. As you are the man we want and as you cannot come to us until August, there is no necessity of our hurrying you to a decision before you can have your father's thought. " With cordial regards, " EDWARD D. EATON." The decision was made in favor of Beloit. The intimation that Henry was given to over- work had evidently reached his parents and they had wisely given him, as other friends had also, some good advice on that subject. As always he was fond of " rebuttal." " I think you exaggerate my tendency to over- work. I am tired, but in no danger of nervous breakdown. I have learned some things by ex- perience and am more sane than you think. I work hard from morning to night and shall HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 77 stoutly defend my right to do so. ' Idleness is the American Hell/ Of course I work hard. I think the results justify me. The football team tied with the best in the State. The orator whom I trained won the State oratorical contest. Our debating team went one hundred and fifty miles and whipped the State University on their own grounds. When I came the college loyalty was low, athletics and debating were in a most dis- couraging condition. This year we have won everything. Of one thing I am sure: If I ever make a success of anything in life, it will not be through talent or inspiration, but through hard work. I never expect to do less than the very best I can. Of course I don't intend to kill my- self with overwork. As my judgment matures I hope to avoid setting my heart on impossible things, and thus stave off an early death. I think I said that my tendency is easily explained, since I inherited all your energy and all my mother's as well. Just now we are hard at work preparing for commencement. I have to pre- pare twelve speakers to appear in public. In- cidentally I might mention that I am to sing in one of the closing recitals of the Conservatory of Music. You know I have been taking vocal les- sons ever since I came here, two a week. Next year I intend to take lessons at Beloit if I can. Music has cost me $180 this year. It has been 78 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH worth it, and more a great deal than I could pay. I only wish I had started earlier. For the last few days we have been working hard on a com- mittee which is rustling up a delegation to rep- resent Pacific at the Y. M. C. A. at Gearhart. This corresponds with the Geneva Convention in Wisconsin, which I attended in 1901-2. Ever since I was helped so much there I have done all I could to promote such things. Last year we worked hard raising money and getting men to go, but succeeded in sending only four. This year we aimed to get ten men. We have prayed earnestly and worked hard. For the last week we have been having noon prayer meetings, when the committee and a few faithful ones have planned and talked over the campaign. I have done all I could to encourage this thing, for I know what it means. My devotional habits are not always what they should be, but I am very much in earnest about this and am not ashamed to pray, nor afraid to fight hard for something that I know is right. " I seldom have time for recreation, but last Saturday I went with a crowd of college boys and girls on a straw ride. I went as one of the chaperones. A boy who had come in a road cart, driving a black colt* in the afternoon took one of the girls to ride. The colt got scared, ran into a chuck hole, tipped the cart so that it pitched HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 79 the girl out. I saw her fall and ran as I used to run with the football when I had a clean field for a touchdown. Her foot caught between the spokes and was dragged up to the shaft, which would certainly have broken her leg in another instant. I had only fifty yards to go and reached her just barely in time to yank her out. She was shrieking like a maniac with fear; the boy white, but determined, gripping the lines with all his might to steady the plunging beast. The girl narrowly escaped a terrible accident, for she went out of the cart headlong and might have been hurt, and the colt barely missed stepping on her. Never in my life have I been more thankful for athletic training. Nothing in the world is so good as football to teach a man to think fast and to act while he thinks. I am planning to take back to Beloit one of the students with me. He is one of my best friends here. Last year he won the Home contest here. Beloit is a Christian college and he needs Christian influences." (May 29, 1904.) Mrs. Lucilla Stanley Gary Dickinson, Henry's maternal grandmother, died at Tacoma in June, 1904. She had passed her eightieth birthday. Mrs. Dickinson was a woman of most interesting personality. The Carys were Quakers from New Jersey. They had all the quiet and sterling qualities of their well-known sect. Some of us 80 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH remember the admirable character of Dr. George Cary at Beloit, a friend of multitudes and a wise and careful physician. Mrs. Dickinson was a cousin of Dr. George. Lucilla Cary married Mr. Ansel Dickinson, from Amherst, Mass., who on account of ill health had given up his study for the ministry and with a brother had moved to Mount Zion, a few miles from Janesville, Wis., in 1838. Deacon Dickinson was among the men who formed the Congregational Con- vention, in Wisconsin, fully imbued with the spirit of church union. The early death of her husband led Mrs. Dickinson to dispose of her farm and to move to Beloit to educate her chil- dren. The simple happy home on Church Street, Beloit, will long be remembered by her many friends. Her eldest child and only son early de- veloped mental and spiritual qualities of the highest merit. It was natural for the son of such a mother to take rank as a student. Through him we learned something of the mental power of the mother, sustained and exact. Henry Cary Dickinson, for whom Henry Smith was named, was easily the first man in his college class, grad- uating as valedictorian in 1863. After teaching for a year he was called to Beloit as Instructor in Rhetoric. His pupils remember the enthu- siasm and exactness of his scholarship, and the beauty of his life. The ministry attracted him HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 81 and he left Beloit for Andover Seminary in the autumn of 1865. He graduated from the Semi- nary with very high rank in a class which had such men as Joseph Cook, Daniel Merriman, John Taylor and Ezra Brainard, one of the splendid classes of old-time Andover, with a membership of forty. Mr. Dickinson accepted a call to the church at Appleton, Wis. His brief ministry was distinguished. In noble aspect of countenance, he closely resembled Frederic Roberston. And his friends were often reminded of mental fellowship with the rightly distin- guished minister of Brighton, England. Mr. Dickinson was called to the Professorship of Church History at Oberlin Theological Semi- nary. He felt, however, that his avocation was rather that of preaching. He showed remark- ably winning powers of address in evangelical efforts in aid of Wisconsin Churches. One such series of meetings at Beloit will be long remem- bered. The depth of his probing of the human spirit and the tender richness of his appeals were most effective. Ill health caused him to find re- lief in Colorado, where he preached in Central City. From Colorado he came home to die, in March, 1873. One learns something of the mother's thought and life from such a son. Mrs. Dickinson spent two or three years in work for the American Missionary Society in the South, 82 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH Mississippi and Texas, before removing to Cali- fornia. Later her elder daughter's home was her own through all the years of a serene and lovely old age. A brief reference is made to this noble woman in the following letter : TACOMA, July 31, 1904. "DEAR MAMMA: Aunt Jennie and I have just returned from the cemetery. The grass is green and thick where Grandma lies, and the clover blooms and the little birds sing, and over all that peace and quiet was the golden glory of the setting sun, like the smile of the dear God above. ' And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain/ By her grave I prayed God to make me worthy of the good women that have been dear to me, Grandmother, and mother, and sister He gave me. And to-night I go to the new life Beloit to begin again and try. I enclose a few little flowers from Grandma's grave. They will be withered, I know, when they reach you, but something tells me they will be dear to you. And I send you a lock of her hair, the only one that was saved. It was mine, it is yours now. And I love you. HENRY." LAUNCHING A GREATER BELOIT Early in August, 1904, after an absence of two years, Henry returned to Wisconsin to en- HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 83 ter upon his new work, as General Secretary to the President. The year at Beloit was full of the deepest interest to him. He traveled widely, visiting high schools as well as churches in the interest of the College. He was well received wherever he went. It brought him into imme- diate contact with the young people who were planning further study. He carried forward his work with happy energy, often occupying a pul- pit on Sunday with his eager theme: " Christian Education for Young Men and Women." The Rev. Stanley Lathrop recalls such a Sunday at Ashland, with the North Wisconsin Academy. His address had a freshness and fine adaptation to the work he was advancing. He was acquir- ing a masterful way of presenting the claims of college life and its value. Among other duties assigned him was that of creating an interest in the college finances among business men. His discipline in business made it possible for him now to meet the necessary rebuffs with a calmer spirit. Of this side of his work he writes : " Since I have been working for the college I have put in most of my time and energy in the effort to raise money. This is the hardest part of the work. Everyone dreads it, and keeps out of it as far as possible. It has some advantages, for it brings one into contact with the biggest 84 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH men in business, many of whom have built up vast fortunes, and many of them men of the noblest character. Also, like any other ex- perience, if taken in the right spirit, it may prove a means of grace. I have had some encouragements, as I have been favorably re- ceived by many noted men, a number of capitalists and financiers. In such cases I have been invited to come again in three or six months. There are over 400 charities in Chicago, all of them soliciting money all the time. Half a dozen other colleges have a strqnger hold there than we have. Most of the large for- tunes are in the cities in these days, and there is the place to work. I value material success per- haps more than I should. It is not enough for me that a man should struggle on faithfully and bravely he must win. Life owes me that, I will take no less. Time and again I have been heartsick and downcast. No friend could help me. Only one thing could console me Success. Of course there is another side to it. I am sow- ing seed which will grow. Others may harvest the crop, but I am sowing the seed far and wide in the best soil I can find. " That is a little consolation, but not much, for the future is extremely uncertain and in Chicago the mortality among seeds of that kind is exceed- ingly high." (February 1, 1905.) HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 85 It was most natural that Henry should take once more a very deep interest in the College contests, oratory, and debate. Vivid descriptions of debating work are re- peated: "In March the Instructor in Public Speaking was drowned. This left the depart- ment in bad shape. The boys asked me to help them by coaching the three teams in the intercol- legiate debates. That is the one thing that I am most interested in, and more sure of being able to do. President Eaton cheerfully assented to my spending my spare time in such work. I worked at it for nearly two months. Little by little things began to look better until it ended by being the most successful year in debating that Beloit has ever had. We won all three of the debates. It never happened but once before that Beloit has won three debates in one year. That was my Senior year. There have been hi- larious celebrations. Beloit has been quite stirred up and enthusiastic. This year in the Knox debate all three of the judges voted for Beloit. It was great fun for me. You remem- ber I had some old scores to even up with Knox in regard to debating. The debate took place in Galesburg this year and was held in the same church in which we spoke in 1901. That year the decision was unanimous for Knox. This year it was unanimous for Beloit. The Beloit 86 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH men were prepared for every argument advanced by KnoXj and answered each one with lightning rapidity and terrific force, so that after it was over the Knox men cheerfully admitted that they had been beaten. I got a heap of satisfaction out of that verdict. Another of our teams won in a debate against Carleton College, and an- other won against Lake Forest University. Al- together we have had good cause for congratu- lations. You know that defeat in 1901 nearly broke my heart, but it gave me more determi- nation than I had ever had before. Since then I have never been defeated in debate. Since then I have led one team and coached seven others and have had seven consecutive victories. So this seems to me a good time to stop. Yet I still have a vague hope that somehow, at some time I may have time and opportunity to engage in one more inter-collegiate debate. I hope before I leave Yale I may have a chance to get on one of the teams that debate against either Harvard or Princeton. " You ask me what I am doing for others. Not much, I fear. I have tried to help in the C. E. of our First Congregational Church. The Society has had a very prosperous year and is in a very prosperous condition. Sunday night, May 7, I preached in the darky church here. It was quite an experience for me. I gave them HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 87 just a simple gospel talk from Matthew xi, 11. I am reluctant to fill any but a very small or very needy church, as I realize that I am a youngster and don't know anything about preaching." (May 14, 1905.) " Last night at a banquet in honor of Beloit's victories in oratory and debate, I made a plea for a f Greater Beloit/ and as enthusiasm was high everyone responded well. Next day in Chapel one hundred and fifty students signed cards promis- ing that each would do all in his power to bring one new student to Beloit next fall. President Eaton feared the scheme would not work, so I waited till he went East and got it up in his absence. It is working like a house on fire, and I am sure we shall succeed. Thus victory some- times treads upon the heels of defeat, and after I am gone to Yale, the Freshman class of one hundred may enter upon the wise care of the President who doubted if it could be done. Kiss Pater for me." (May 28, 1905.) The plans thus laid began soon to advance in the line of reaching high school pupils. With a clear vision he directed his efforts to lay a founda- tion for a larger college life. The entering class of 1904 had risen to the number of seventy-five. He thought that by suitable effort the next year's class could be raised to one hundred. His correspondence became large and personal soli- 88 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH citation added to the effect of his urgency. During the summer vacation he devised several plans for advertising and promoting his plans. A small folder booklet was prepared under the Title: "THE REASONS WHY. " SOME INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT BELOIT COL- LEGE." These and a handsome blotting pad, with sug- gestive items and a calendar showing the date of the autumn term were sent out in large numbers and were valuable in directing interest toward the College. Recent successes in oratory and ath- letics gave their own intimation. A special ap- peal was made to the best men graduating from the high schools and academies. The summer was filled full with the new work. Henry writes : " I have not had time this summer to be lone- some, for I have been tremendously at work on our campaign for new students. If we succeed in getting a Freshman class of one hundred it will be the greatest thing that ever happened to Beloit. The largest class so far numbers eighty- one. There is no one who believes we can get the hundred. I am firmly convinced that we are going to succeed and have no thought of failure. We are still far from being sure of success. It is blistering hot weather and everything seems fearfully discouraging. Never mind. It will all ^^s*""" 1 Oap*- i1 ^ HON. ALBERT J. BEVERIDG] Lmtcd Statti Senator from Indiana, in Sal Evening POM, June 10, 190,. HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 89 be over before you get this. My love to Pater." (August 6, 1905.) The effort to secure the complement of men suggested went on eagerly until the very day of registration. Writing from Rockland, Mass., en route to New Haven, Henry sums up the effort and its climax. " I left Beloit early Friday morning. College began there on Wednesday. I had kept still so industriously all summer that no one but Presi- dent Eaton knew how many Freshman we were likely to have. The Freshmen registered on Wednesday from 9-12. President Eaton and I kept the secret. No one believed it possible that we should get one hundred. For seven years the number of men had been from 75-80. As the Freshmen registered I slipped the enrollment cards into my pocket, refusing to allow anyone to see or count them. All was confusion and bustle so that no one could even estimate or count the number of students until it was announced. After the address, President Eaton announced the total number of Freshmen registered up to 5 p. M. one hundred and twenty-six. You ought to have heard that crowd. ' That night on the campus they had a bonfire as big as a house and the most rousing celebra- tion you ever saw. There really was some good reason for their enthusiasm, for no college west 90 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH of Dartmouth has ever done anything like that before. An increase of fifty-five per cent, in the size of the entering class is good enough ex- cuse for a man who is looking for something to ' holler ' about, and Beloit's students are about as loyal and enthusiastic as they make them. " It took me all day to settle my affairs at Beloit, say good-bye to everybody, and pack up. After several months of * horrid drug,' my * nice jam ' had come all at once, and I left in a hurry, partly for fear that I should have too much." (September 24, 1905.) The College Round Table voiced the feeling of the student body over the success secured. In the editorial for September 29, headed " Greater Beloit," it says: " Hopes for the Greater Beliot have been fully realized. The announcement that 126 Fresh- men had been enrolled up to that time was a pleasing surprise to everyone. When the cam- paign was started last May it was hoped to en- ter a class of one hundred this fall. The fact that this mark has been exceeded by almost thirty per cent, is due in part to the hearty co- operation of the student body and faculty, but most of all the untiring efforts of Secretary Henry D. Smith, who has spent the entire sum- mer in an ever active campaign for new students, and his splendid success is a source of gratifica- HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 91 tion to every student. Not only has an immense amount of correspondence been carried on dur- ing the summer, but by personal visits to many who were doubtful he has persuaded them of the merits of Beloit and has succeeded in getting them to come here. Mr. Smith devised a novel scheme last spring for enlisting the student body by having cards given out among the students which all those who were willing to use what in- fluence they could towards getting one new Freshman were requested to sign. Nearly all responded, and these were kept in touch through- out the summer with the progress which was be- ing made, by letters from Mr. Smith. The best wishes of the college community go with him into his new field of work at Yale Divinity School, where he will continue to do things for the Greater Beloit which he has made a reality." One of the members of the entering class writes: "A great triumph for Henry Smith. He deserved it." Everyone was enthusiastic over his efforts. In the Codex of that autumn, Henry writes of the celebration in fitting meas- ure: "THE MAKING OF GREATER BELOIT " That celebration under September skies is memorable only as it marks the beginning of a movement destined to grow and triumph. The 92 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH new idea is really as old as the college : for many years the trustees and alumni have felt that Beloit ought to have more students, that an effort should be made to swell the number of young men and women who enjoy the privileges and opportunities of college life. It remained for the undergraduates themselves to organize and conduct an enthusiastic campaign for new stu- dents with a definite view in aim. The campaign of 1905 centered about the effort to secure one hundred Freshmen in the class of 1908. To all the undertaking seemed a large one, to many it seemed utterly imposible. But few things are impossible when the old Beloit spirit is thoroughly aroused. During the summer many a student worked with untiring zeal. The trustees sup- plied without stint the needed funds for the campaign, and friends of the College who could do no more sent ringing messages of encourage- ment and good cheer. The plan was at best merely an experiment, a theory, and many a mis- take was made and many an opportunity dis- covered too late. Yet a kindly Providence seemed to favor the movement from the first. From the Atlantic coast to the shores of the Pacific new students began to send inquiries and applications to Beloit. Before the sun had set upon registration day a great victory had been won, for one hundred and twenty-six Freshmen HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 93 had been enrolled. Many thoughtful friends of Beloit, remembering well its splendid influence in the days of small numbers, have asked solicit- ously to what this matter may grow. It should be said at once that those who have at heart the best interests of Beloit College do not wish to see it grow into a great university. Nor even into a college so large that the advantages which it to-day possesses will be lost. But Beloit may increase its present enrollment by one half or more without losing that precious individual as- sociation of each student with his fellow students and with every member of the faculty, which is the unique advantage of the small college. Many a student and alumnus must work faithfully and loyally before Beloit can reach her numerical ideal; many a strenuous summer campaign is still to be waged before that victory will be won. : ' The flames of the bonfire are dying down. The students turn away from the gay celebration. In each heart is the conviction that the greatest glory of Beloit is in the future, not in the past. Men may come and do their work and pass on, but the spirit of the college is immortal. In loyalty and reverence for the traditions of the past, with pride and joy in the glories of the present, with courage and enthusiasm and high resolve for the future, the sons and daughters of 94 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH our Alma Mater will press forward to the splen- did achievement the making of the Greater Beloit." In regard to the same, Dean Collie has writ- ten : "The Greater Beloit will come in the future and it will be Henry Smith's credit that he gave it the first great impulse in the forward direction. His methods of advertising the college were models of their kind and will set a standard at Beloit for years to come." THE LAST YEAH The year at Beloit had strengthened Henry's plan for further study. He hastened from the West to join the entering class at Yale Divinity School. He was to make one of ten men from Beloit in the school, eager to complete prepara- ton for a life of service. The outlook for the young theological student is always most stimu- lating. The modern methods of Biblical study along historical lines, open doors hitherto un- thought of. The range of historical and theo- logical studies widens rapidly and the technical student finds himself all at once in contact with the great problems of the moral and spiritual life. He comes into touch with the multitude of thinkers, exegetes, dogmaticians, philosophers, whose problems must be understood, appreciated, and directly applied to the work of practical liv- HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 95 ing, moral and social. Such a trained mind as that of Henry Smith seizes upon the modern and active methods of research with delighted eagerness. In the letter already quoted from he says: " I mean to settle down quietly at Yale, live simply, study hard, think deeply, pray more, worry less, and sympathize always. It is not hard for me to do things, it is very hard to live quietly and think deeply. The man who does not do so is shallow." In the new-found and most congenial Univer- sity life he soon found himself quite at home. His interest in the new work he mentions in a brief letter to the Round Table: ' We have found Yale simply splendid. One can't help being enthusiastic about it. The Yale spirit is magnificent, and the opportunities tre- mendous. The Beloit delegation are trying to give an account of themselves here. Three of the four editors of the Divinity Quarterly are Beloit men and the Divinity choir is made up en- tirely of Beloit men. The work is mighty hard here, and does not leave much time for fun." Rev. Wilfrid Rowell writes of the same great interest: "Beloit men find in Yale Seminary the place they need. They find it supplies the things that the collegiate course could not give. They discover here a goodly fellowship, a thoroughly theological and practical training, and an inspir- 96 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH ation for the greatest work in the world the Christian Ministry." Under such circumstances, Henry Smith found place for some of his exuberant energies. We find him as an assistant writer for Professor Kent in the preparation of his Old Testament Studies, and later as assistant Editor of the Yale Divinity Quarterly. The Beloit Round Table for December, 1905, was issued as a Yale number. The ar- ticles were furnished by the Beloit men at the Yale Divinity School, full of Alma Mater loyalty. Among these papers, it fell to Henry to write of Yale Athletics, which he did in a very enthu- siastic article, entitled: "The Yale-Princeton Football Game." A few paragraphs will show the spirit of the whole. " To a Westerner one of the most attractive features of Yale life is the intense enthusiasm and loyalty of the students and alumni for their Alma Mater. A new student feels its influence at once and finds it getting a stronger grip upon him as months and years pass. This spirit ap- pears in many ways and places. In the fall the chief interest centers about the football games, and it is there that the greatest demonstrations of the Yale spirit may be seen. . . . " After the game the Yale brass band led the HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 97 way round the field, followed by two thousand Yale men, eight or ten abreast, arms locked, joy- ously dancing the serpentine. Before the cheer- ing section of the orange and black they pause to give a long cheer for Princeton's men, which is heartily returned. One side is happy, and both are satisfied, for both have done their best, and there is no greater victory than that. As the happy throng moves homeward one cannot help catching a little of the Yale spirit from their chorus: " ' In after years should trouble rise To cloud the blue of sunny skies, How bright will seem, through memory's haze, The happy, golden, bygone days.' ' His growing interest in the University led almost immediately into lines with which he was happily familiar, and from which he hoped to add to the worth of the Divinity department. This letter is full of the old fighting spirit : " Recently it was announced that a series of in- ter-collegiate department debates would be held for the championship of the University. Some of the Seniors have persuaded me to go into it. The Divinity School has never yet won in the championship, and the men in other departments consider the theologs as pretty poor. So Teddy Lathrop and I went in together with a third man 98 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH from Iowa. Our debate with the Law School was pretty warm, but we won an unanimous ver- dict of three judges. Next Friday, December 8, we are to debate against the Academics, that is, Yale College. If we win, it may perhaps bring some credit to the Divinity School. Each mem- ber of the winning team will receive a handsome silver cup appropriately engraved. Lucius laughs at my debating any more says I wish more scalps to hang at my belt. But I don't feel quite like that. I am willing to do some extra work if it will give Yale men more respect for the Divinity School. So we are out to win if we possibly can." (December 3, 1905.) The end of the first term in the Divinity School found Henry among the recognized scholars of his class. Among others, he gained an Allis Scholarship, the prize given to each man who gained the second grade average. In the middle of January of this year (1906) Henry had the delighted privilege of welcoming his father, Rev. Dr. Arthur Smith, returning from his mission work in China. Dr. Smith had been invited by his Society, The American Board, to return home, and aid in the effort to secure a million of dollars as a Centen- nial Haystack Memorial. Dr. Smith's first ad- dress in the United States was in the Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, this church having adopted HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 99 him some years before as their Missionary. Henry met his father in New York the day be- fore that address. It was twelve years since they had seen each other. In the letter which follows we come into touch with that beautiful family life which no decade of separation nor earthly change can diminish. "NEW HAVEN, January 30, 1906. MY DEAR MOTHER: Of course you will want to know all about Pater's arrival and our meet- ing. He has told you of his triumphal trip across the continent, and of what he saw and did in San Francisco and Los Angeles. I went to New York Friday night, January 18, and met him at the Grand Central depot. I should have recognized him from his latest photograph, but my own memories were pretty vague. We went right up to my room at the hotel to talk it over and then Pater said: ' Come, Honey Bee, let's have a prayer.' ' Isn't that just like him? ' Of course we had a tremendous lot of back conversa- tion to make up, and I don't see when we are ever to catch up. He talks about 250 words to the minute and I do the same that makes five hundred; but there aren't minutes enough. As I had not been in New York for twenty years, I did not know anything about the town. But Pater knows the place pretty well, even if it has 100 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH changed a good deal in thirty-five years. We waltzed around town at a great rate, called at Revell's, at the Presbyterian headquarters, where Pater explained some things about the massacre, lunched with Mr. Beach, and did no end of errands. Pater does not seem to have lost any of his energy. In the evening we went over to Brooklyn. Mrs. Hillis had been so kind as to invite me to spend Sunday too. They have the most delightful home, beautiful pictures and art specimens arranged in exquisite taste. Sunday morning Pater spoke in Henry Ward Beecher's pulpit, and I sat in the Beecher pew and was much impressed with the historic surroundings. Pater spoke in the morning on the relations be- tween the East and the West. He spoke very rapidly, but it was very interesting. People in the gallery leaned over listening eagerly to every word. After the service nearly the whole congre- gation remained to shake hands with him. The people were introduced and hustled along, but even then it took forty-two minutes for the line to pass him. That evening he spoke of the work of the American Board in China. He spoke more slowly and made a tremendous impression. Hundreds of people stayed to shake hands, and so he held another soiree, so to speak. My birth- day was a very happy one, though I could not be with Father. I found on my desk the dearest HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 101 little picture of my * guardian angel' [his mother] and a * Chinese Poor Thing ' (Mrs. Hu, a Bible woman). It was the sweetest thing you could have sent, Mater, and I almost feel as if the long years since 1897 were bridged at one step. It is as natural as can be of Mrs. Hu, and it seemed to me that you had changed just the least little bit, but not near so much at Pater. " I have much work to make up. I have de- cided to try for a place on the Yale debating team, which debates against Harvard in March. Of the 75-100 men who compete for places, three are chosen. The competition is terrific. It is hard work, but I think I can help the Divinity School a little. Anyway I am going to try. " Good-night, Mater, lots of love. We both pray for you every day. As ever, " HENRY." The delight of the son in being with " Pater " once more was matched by the joy of the father in seeing his strong, stalwart son, already win- ning repute for energy and success in his lines of effort. A son has no greater joy than to measure the strength of his father's hold upon men, and estimates the deep esteem of vast numbers .of people over good work faithfully done. One of the fathers of the Church, a 102 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH layman of blessed memory, has embalmed such esteem in the fine sentence, "There is an elo- quence in service." There could be no greater joy to a father than to find his little son grown to be a strong man among men, already finding his way to large service. During the spring Henry and his father were together for ten separate visits a few days at a time, entertained by kind friends, who enjoyed their happy, social intercourse. Dr. Smith was several times with Henry in New Haven. The last of their days together were spent there, precious days made merry and wise, with no shadow of the coming longer separation. God veils our joys from us as well as the shadows which, like the ocean mists, so stealthily steal upon us. The most engrossing external matter during the spring was the Yale-Harvard debate, open to all post-graduate students. As a competitor in the preliminaries, his previous experience stood him in good stead, and he won the leader- ship in this debate. One of his fellow debaters was a Senior in the Divinity School, and the other was in the Law Department. His pre- decessor at Forest Grove, also a Beloit man, had led the Harvard team a few years before and had won. He hoped such a result might fall to his lot also. The subject for debate was the HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 103 " Municipal Ownership of Public Utilities in the City of New York." Following out his previous methods, Henry visited New York and called upon Mr. Belmont, the financial head of the New York City Railways, thus learning from head- quarters all the facts and figures necessary for the debate. The debate was held at New Haven in March of 1906. Perhaps to no other debate did Henry give so much time and labor. He felt the need of the most elaborate effort, and as leader spared himself no labor. He prepared briefs for himself and his two fellows, and spent many hours of day and night in writing and re- writing the essential parts of the arguments. Yale was not the winner of the debate, but the debaters won fine repute for their splendid effort. The Congregationalist of April 7 had a para- graph regarding it : " Rev. Dr. Arthur H. Smith has a son in Yale Divinity School who represented Yale in the annual debate with Har- vard last week. He has the fluency and the brilliancy of his father, and a resourcefulness which is characteristic. Set in this debate to at- tack municipal ownership he went right to head- quarters Messrs. Belmont and Ryan for facts about the situation in New York, as private mo- nopolists see it. When told by the Yale coach that a certain line of arguments advanced by Yale had at least five objections filed against it, 104 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH young Smith said there were at least twenty-five objections, named them, and then turned round and rebutted them." In the Alumni Weekly of Yale University is given a complete report taken verbatim of the various speeches of both negative and affirma- tive. It says of Henry: " Mr. Smith won com- mendation by his able summing up of argument." His very familiar delivery seems to have slightly amazed the less rapid-going Easterners, for we find the editor saying, when he explains the in- completeness of the arguments as reported in his paper. " In such a rebuttal as that of Smith of Yale, however, whose talk was more rapid fire than is heard on the debating or any other plat- form, it is doubtless true that here and there a sentence was skipped." One of his dear friends and fellow students in speaking of the debate wrote: " It was simply fascinating to hear Henry in his swift and convincing speech. He talked like a streak, but every word was clear, and the movement and effectiveness were remarkable. He has a rare gift in being able to say vigorously what he knows, and to think so cogently on his feet." The Rev. Jason Pierce, the other Divinity student on this Yale Team, now a Pastor at New Haven, in writing for the Divinity Quarterly a year later, regarding "Debate at New Haven," said of Henry Smith, " He was in some respects HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 105 the most brilliant man whom it has been my ex- perience to have met." A letter to his mother gives Henry's own story of the debate, with his plans for the sum- mer: " DEAR MOTHER : Pater was here four days last week and will be here three days this week and two next. He has been whirled around so fast that he has only made flying trips here be- fore, and this is almost the first real visit we have had. Even now we are both too busy to visit as much as we should like to. " I was exceedingly disappointed at the out- come of the Yale-Harvard debate. I have asked Aunt M. to send you the clippings about it. I got acute laryngitis in New York three weeks before the debate, and lost my voice, I recovered my voice the afternoon of the day of the debate, but it didn't sound much like mine and I was pretty shaky. After the debate I had an attack which laid me up for nearly three weeks. I missed nearly all my classes for nearly six weeks. That makes a mountain of work to make up. I cannot say the prospect is cheerful. I think I mentioned before that I expect to return to Beloit this summer to work for the college. They will give a campaign fund to work with and as many stenographers and assistants as I want. We are to aim for a class of one hundred and 106 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH fifty. I think we can do it. I am on a committee here to start a similar campaign for the Yale Divinity School. I did not want to get roped into this at all, but the situation here is bad, and something must be done right away. The Divin- ity School is decreasing in the number of stu- dents nearly ten per cent, yearly. I am to write a little pamphlet, setting forth the advantages of Yale Divinity School, before I leave here, and will start the ball rolling. After I leave the Professors are to follow the thing up. " I suppose you have been informed of the uniform and complete success of Pater's tour. He has been enthusiastically received everywhere and has met with a most gratifying response, and I think it is largely due to his work that the American Board has pulled through its greatest crisis. " Probably Pater has told you of what I should like to do in the future. If the American Board will appoint me to North China, I should like to go out in 1908. I should want to live at Pang Chuang the first year ,or two to study Chinese with Pater." (April 29, 1906.) The good work which Henry had done for Beloit had attracted the notice of the Seminary faculty, and he was asked to prepare a brief pamphlet setting forth the advantages of theo- logical study at Yale. He accepted this inter- HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 107 esting task and before the Seminary year closed there was published a handsome booklet of some twenty pages under the title " Why Choose Yale Divinity School." It was issued under the direc- tion of the Students' Committee on Publicity and Promotion of which Henry was chairman. The advantages were collated under seven gen- eral heads, each skillfully expanded by the editor, in finely selected quotations from educa- tional experts, or in his own growingly wise sug- gestions. YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL " I. Offers invaluable University privileges ; "Wide range of studies; Broad culture; Influence of great Masters; Contact with many kinds of men; Humani- tarian study and scientific method, and training to deal with great problems. "II. Yale Divinity School has a strong Faculty. [Here followed a list of the members of the Faculty with a note of the graduate honors and of the published works and articles of each Professor.] " III. Yale Divinity School maintains a broad course of study. For more than two centuries Yale has stood for honest, exact, scholarly study. The Divinity School is particularly strict in this requirement. The spirit of the Divinity School is strongly against bigotry and preju- dice. It is conservative with that liberality which dares to prove all things and hold fast that which is good. " IV. Yale Divinity School furnishes excellent oppor- tunities for special preparation. " The Department of Missions offers extraordinary op- 108 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH portunity for study of a most important subject. The courses on Asiatic history are of great advantage to stu- dents. The Department of Christian Sociology offers courses of great interest. The Department of Pedagogy affords comprehensive training. The system of scholar- ship aid is so arranged as to cultivate self respect and independence. " V. Yale Divinity students enjoy exceptional religious privileges. " Daily service in the Marquand Chapel, Weekly meet- ings in the Y. M. C. A.; The University chapel services on Sunday; The churches of New Haven; The Volunteer Band. " VI. Yale Alumni do good work. " VII. A unique combination of special advantages. Yale enjoys a delightful location; is near New York City; the social life of the Divinity School is exceedingly pleas- ant and attractive. The atmosphere of New England is conducive to calm and thoughtful study of great problems. The religious atmosphere of the Divinity School is a powerful influence for the development of Christian man- hood. " No man ever regrets having chosen Yale." The Divinity Anniversary this year was on June 9. The examination came the previous week. Henry writes of the end of the school year and his summer plans: " June 2, 1906. "DEAR PATER: " I was very glad to get your letter from La Mesa, and drop you a line, although we are in the dizzy whirl of the last days of school. I HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 109 have taken five exams out of seven. Hebrew comes on Monday and later at Beloit an exam in Browning, which will be sent to me. After that is off, June 12, I must prepare and publish a pamphlet for Beloit. This must be published and in the mails not later than July 1. About July 1 I expect to send out letters to about five thousand young men who are just gradu- ating from high schools. After that the work will be merely correspondence. About July 30 I expect to take a stenographer and a type- writer to Lake Geneva or some other cool place or shady resort and spend two weeks in a riot- ously good time, tramping, boating, fishing, and living in the woods. After August 15 I hope to have an assistant for the last month, a young man who graduated last year. I want to break him in to the work, so that perhaps he can take it next year, if I want to do something else. " Last night we four spent an hour in the college yard at one of the Yale ' sings.' The orchestra played until it was dark, then we sang college songs (about two thousand of us) , sitting around the old fence and on the grass. Last of all we gathered in a close group and sang ' Bright College Years.' Yale men always take off their hats when they sing that song, and as they sing the last line they raise their hats and pledge themselves to each other as man to man, 110 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH ' For God, for country, and for Yale.' The commencement exercises of the Divinity School are on Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The four speakers from the graduating class are all from our crowd, three of them Beloit men. I have made out my application and sent it in to the Prudential Committee of the American Board, for appointment to The North China Mission." The Divinity year at New Haven closed on the 6th of June. Henry hurried West to Beloit to carry on once more the campaign for that Greater Beloit which had begun so auspiciously the autumn before. His plan of campaign lay fully before him on the strenuous model of the previous year. His first effort was the issuing of a booklet, similar to that just issued at New Haven, under the title "Will It Pay?" "(Some interesting facts for High School Graduates). This was issued as the Beloit College Bulletin, July, 1906. Vol. 8, No. 5. It easily divides itself into two parts: "I. Will it pay to get a College Education ? "II. Why Choose Beloit? " I. Will it pay to get a College Education? For the man who studies Law? For the man who means to study medicine? HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 111 For the man who is going into the ministry? For the man who expects to teach? For the man who is going into engineering? For the man who intends to go into business? For the man who does not know what he is going to do ? " II. Why Choose Beloit College? Beloit possesses the advantage of an independent college. Beloit has the best equipment, a strong Faculty, main- tains a high standard of Scholarship, has a fine body of students. Beloit's graduates succeed. Beloit offers an unique combination of special ad- vantages/' Each of these suggestions were carefully elab- orated, and a fine series of quotations were fit- tingly summed up in the (selected remark of President Cyrus Northrop of the University of Minnesota, from his address at the Yale Bi- Centennial Celebration : " If I were seeking in the whole West for a Young Yale, I should go at once to Beloit ; and I have no hesitation in saying that there is no de- nominational or independent non-sectarian col- lege in the West that is better than Beloit." Aside from sending out these pamphlets in large numbers Henry hoped to increase an inter- est through personal correspondence. A personal secretary and occasionally three or four type- writers became necessary for him to keep up with 112 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH his overflowing correspondence. Such work, coming after the year of effort at New Haven, was no doubt a drag upon his physical powers. His father sailed for China early in July. He himself in August, with his stenographer, went to Lake Geneva for the relief and recreation which that beautiful resort affords, if it does not compel. Henry's summer letters tell of his work: "DEAR PATER: In one of your letters you refer to Dr. Patton's correspondence with me. I filled out the necessary papers and sent them in. I gave fifteen or twenty references, and I know that Dr. Patton has written to some of them, as I learned from Dr. Leavitt, who was one of them. Your letter of June 15 told of your visit in Forest Grove the week before. P. wrote me that your talk to the students was the most interesting they had heard for years, and that they could have listened to you for another hour with the greatest interest. Your account of your visit at Walla Walla was very interest- ing. It rather staggers me at times to think of my distinguished father, Rev. Arthur H. Smith, B. A., M. A., B. D., D. D., LL. D., P. Q. D., X. Y. Z., etc., after dinner speaker, and Missionary set loose on China, at large!! I guess you will be glad to get back to Pang Chuang. If I should go out in 1908 I hope you will be living HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 113 somewhere where I can go and live with you for a year. I should want to live with you for the first year, if possible, and devote my entire time to the study of Chinese. Dr. Patton seems very keen to have me identified with the Board as soon as possible and sent out just as soon as I am through Yale. I should like very much to come back to Beloit for one year more. I love the college and Beloit seems more like home to me than any other place in this country. There is a great deal to be done here and I should like to do it. " When I reached Beloit I contracted the worst kind of a ' Girl-fever ' that I ever had. Spring weather and the College atmosphere are demoralizing. I would start across the campus to see what my stenographers were doing, but on my way would meet some fair maiden whom I used to know. When we returned after an hour or two from down by the river side I would be very likely to meet another one. As I knew how long and hot and lonesome the summer would be I did not take any pills to cure that June madness, but had all the fun I could be- fore Commencement came and it was all over. Dignified professors observed my antics with amusement, and kind old ladies regarded me with an indulgent smile, for Beloit people are very nice. My attack of feminamania did not pre- 114 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH vent me from keeping three stenographers at work at the top of their speed the entire time. Commencement came off nicely. This one had no sadness for me. I did not feel that many intimate friends were going out of my life and was only happy in meeting old friends and acquaintances." "BELOIT, Wis., July 15, 1906. "DEAR MOTHER: I think I told you about Pater's different visits to me at Yale, and what delightful times we had. I was mighty proud to show him off to everybody, and I think he en- joyed meeting my friends. He had many en- gagements, but we managed to get in some fine visits, which I shall never forget. Have I ever written you about Mrs. Frank Porter, of New Haven? She had heard of Beloit's increase of students last fall and conceived the idea of try- ing the same thing in Yale Divinity School. I prepared a little booklet of twenty pages setting forth the merits and advantages of the Divinity School as a fine place to study theology. A thousand copies of this pamphlet were published and sent to young men just graduating from different colleges and to graduates of Yale who were asked to help. I am hoping they will get a good entering class. " Seven of our ten Beloit-Yale men came back to Beloit to Commencement. It was a delight HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 115 to me to get back, for the longer I am away the more Beloit seems to me like home. We were very much shocked to hear of the sudden death of Professor Stevens of the Yale Divinity School. He was considered one of the greatest theolo- gians in the country, and will be a terrible loss to the Divinity School. He was a delightful teacher. I enjoyed his lectures immensely. " This summer I am working for Beloit again, and we hope to get a class of one hundred and fifty Freshmen. In order to do this we are en- tering upon such a campaign of correspondence as I never heard of before anywhere else. We have the names of all the students who graduate from high schools in six neighboring States this year. I am having printed a picture folder con- taining forty-six views of Beloit, and a thirty- six page pamphlet setting forth the advantages of a Beloit College education. These are to be sent with a personal letter, enclosing stamped envelope for reply to each one of those boys. All will go together, so that next week I expect to send out 6000 personal letters and 9000 of each kind of pamphlet. That tremendous volume of mail will open the battle what will follow re- mains to be seen. I have four stenographers under me, working at the top of their speed, and must have another to-morrow as four can not do my work. Outside of working hours I find de- 116 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH lightful things to do, for there are some mighty nice young people in this town whom I have known for years. Although we hope that this summer will mean great things to Beloit College it is not going to wear me out as it did last summer. The Old Beloit is fast growing into the Greater Beloit that I have dreamed about and worked for. Old John Pfeffer still rings the bell, but he is almost the last of the Old Guard. It is late and I must stop. Give my love to everybody and keep lots for yourself." In the previous letter to his father Henry also wrote : " Professors Porter and Pearson have been granted pensions from the Carnegie fund. Their retirement removes the last of the Old Guard/ The Trustees have authorized the enlargement of the faculty by the addition of four new men. This is the first conspicuous result of the increase in the number of students. My work is pro- gressing fairly well. I was obliged to go in to Chicago for some days to use the city libraries, as I could not get hold of the facts and statistics here. " About August first I hope to take the best stenographer to a nearby summer resort for a few days. " With lots of love HENRY." HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 117 GENEVA LAKE Henry went to Lake Geneva for his rest. The morning of the 7th of August he had at- tended the usual praise service, in which there were that morning some special suggestions, very comforting and refreshing to those weary in soul as well as body. Returning from this service, a morning swim was in order. Miss Ruth Ma- cumber, of Beloit, and Miss Van Aiken were going in also. Miss Van Aiken, not feeling well, was still upon the shore. Miss Macumber was al- ready in the water, and Henry some little distance from them. Miss Van Aiken very soon discovered that her friend Ruth was struggling in too deep water and called for help. Henry, without a moment's delay, pushed out to the rescue. As so often happens the weaker and struggling one pulled down the strong one, able to help. Miss Van Aiken, on the shore, noticed the struggle gave what help she could and summoned others through her cries of distress. Henry's body was in the water scarce more than twenty minutes. It was found that Miss Macumber had quite succumbed. There was, however, great hope that Henry might be won back to life. Dean Collie and his wife devoted themselves to the courageous task, and skilled physicians made the long effort to attain the result. After many 118 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH hours there was a faint flicker of life and to the great joy of the rescuers, a slow return to con- sciousness. Then followed the delicate task of maintaining the life thus feebly restored. Under ordinary circumstances there was a fair chance that the dear patient might be fully recovered. He had, it is true, greatly exhausted his nervous energy in the continuous effort of the summer. When he slowly opened his eyes and began to speak in a feeble way he could not recall the situ- ation, wondering where he might be. The night wore away and a new morning dawned while the effort to sustain his strength went on. At last it became evident that his vital force was slowly ebbing once more. At the end of twenty-one hours of this remarkable effort, due to the patient solicitude of Dr. and Mrs. Collie, the precious life succumbed to exhaustion. Thus ended, on August 8, the splendid energies of a noble young life, so full of hope, courage, and persistent joy in service. The body was taken at once to Beloit, where the funeral services took place in the College Chapel on Friday. It was an interesting and peculiar providence that Rev. W. C. Merritt, the husband of Henry's Aunt, Mrs. Marie Dickin- son Merritt, was passing through Chicago from the far West when he heard of the ac- cident and hastened to the bedside of the dear HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 119 young man. He found, however, that the body had been taken on to Beloit and fol- lowed thither. On Friday, August 10, the few friends still to be found in town during the summer vacation gathered to show their deep regard for Henry and fullest sympathy with the parents in China, who could not know for some weeks of their great loss. The simple and impressive ceremonies were enhanced by the lovely gifts of flowers and by the added depth of sorrow of the parents and friends of the lovely young woman on whose behalf Henry had so unwittingly laid down his life. The par- ents of Miss Ruth Macumber laid a beautiful wreath upon the casket with the well-chosen motto, " Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." The question naturally arose: Where should be the final resting place for the precious body? Henry's uncle had been buried at Appleton; his sister was laid away in Oakland, Cal. Should Beloit be chosen or one of the other now sacred places? Even Mr. Merritt did not feel author- ized to determine the choice. It was therefore left to be decided later, when his parents could make the decision. In the meantime a private mortuary tomb in the Beloit cemetery was kindly placed at the disposal of Dr. Collie, and the re- mains were borne thither. The sunset glow of 120 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH the radiant Wisconsin air fell softly around the closing scenes of this ardent and inspiring life. Spoken words seem inadequate to express the thought or emotion whose depth are seldom reached except in the quiet of the hidden man of the heart. It is enough to say in the words of the Apostle, " Thanks be unto God who giveth the Victory." It is the victory over the mortal life, over time and sense, which unfolds as the years pass on. An effort was made by Dr. Collie and Rev. Mr. Merritt to give Henry's parents word by cable of their great loss. It appeared best, how- ever, others, who had perhaps a larger ex- perience of such matters, to delay, letting the impress of sorrow reveal itself through the let- ters which were sure to hasten Chinaward. The event proved that this was quite the best. Dr. Arthur Smith was just about arriving in Shang- hai, at the time of Henry's death. He planned at once to go to a summer resort near Kiu-Kiang in central China. Mrs. Smith was still at Pang Chuang, but shortly after went to Shanghai and joined her husband on the 15th of September. Her husband met her at Kiu-Kiang, whence they returned to the mountain retreat. On ar- riving at Kuling, in the evening, they received the first intimation that some disaster confronted them in a telegram from friends at Peking HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 121 " Love and Sympathy, Prayers." They waited three days in wondering, fearing expectation, when on the 18th letters came bearing the sor- rowful tidings. Dr. Collie had sent, as others did, a full account of the disaster and of the funeral services. A few sentences from Dr. Smith's personal letters will give a glimpse into the thought of the parents. " During the three days of interval, when we knew that something was coming but did not know what it was to be, we said to one another that no matter what it was, we were not afraid of it and we were not. So many, many people must have been praying for us; indeed most of the letters which reached us this evening spoke of that, almost the only thing that friends could do. I sent a cablegram to Dr. Collie, with the word * Beloit,' because it seemed much more fit- ting that he should be buried there, where much of his important work was done, than in a place with which he had no association. We feel very sure, as so many letters and President Eaton's telegram and letter repeat, that Henry's influence will be much greater for good on the life of the college than if he had lived." On receipt of the cable from China it was at once arranged to transfer the body to a perma- nent resting place in the Beloit cemetery. On Saturday, September 22, the final services, brief 122 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH and simple, were held, attended by members of the faculty and such students as had received word of the interment. A memorial service was further held in the college chapel at Vespers, Sunday, September 30. The services included also a memorial of Rev. B. Royal Cheney, pas- tor of the Beloit Second Church, who had died in Italy, and was buried at Florence. The lovely cemeteries of our land, tenderly cared for alike by public and private interest and love, be- speak the living faith as well as the deepest emo- tions of the inner life. A sweet solemnity gathers round each single tomb, and the universal voice rejoices in witnessing to the " Hope of a blessed immortality." Spiritual longings surround these blessed dead with a reality which even the stress of active living cannot surpass. Whatever be the veil which hides from us our own, with glad Christian confidence we recall the words of the Master to whom we owe this hope. To such a hope there are no Dead. God is the God not of dead men, but of living souls. FUNERAL SERVICES AND ADDRESSES FUNERAL SERVICES* The funeral services over the remains of Henry Dick- inson Smith were held in the college chapel Friday after- noon, August 10, 1906. The service was very simple and impressive because of its simplicity. The casket was fairly buried in a background of golden glow, pure white lilies and carnations. There, in the peace and quietude of the beloved chapel, with the windows of the chapel radiant with the rays of the afternoon sun, a large gathering of college and town people assembled to pay their respects to the memory of one whom they had come to love and appreciate as a friend; as a ser- vant of the highest ideals of Beloit College, whose life had been devoted to the furtherance of these ideals in the attempt to found a greater and better Beloit. Death has stayed the hand of the sculptor, the master- piece remains unfinished, but the inspiration of the noble life such as Henry Smith's will remain forever in the hearts of all true sons and daughters of Beloit. Dean Collie spoke in behalf of the college, Rev. E. P. Salmon in behalf of the trustees. Rev. W. F. Brown offered prayer, and Mr. Darwin Leavitt, '04, who was with Mr. Smith at Yale, told of his life there. The Treble Clef * The following reports of these services, with the addresses given at them, are reprinted from the Beloit College Round Table for October 5, 1906. 126 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH choir sang the beautiful hymns, " Hark, Hark, My Soul" and "Peace, Perfect Peace." Rev. Robert C. Bedford pronounced the benediction. At the close of the service, a telegram from President Eaton was read by Dr. Collie. St. Johnsbury, August 9. " Please express at the service our love and grief for this loyal knightly son of Beloit. His great heart and eager brain were tirelessly devoted in the noblest service. Deploring the bitter loss to earth, we reverently recog- nize his call to a higher mission." The remains were temporarily placed in the Broder vault at the cemetery, but on receipt of instructions from the parents in China, were removed to the grave on September 22. Brief services were held at this time in the presence of the faculty and the student body. PRAYER AT THE CHAPEL BY REV. W. F. BROWN, D. D. O God, the giver of all good, we thank thee for those good things that are given only to be soon taken away. We thank thee for daylight, though it quickly changes into darkness ; we thank thee for the flowers that give us their bloom and fragrance and then fade; we thank thee for the springtime with all its new life, that soon changes into the heat and discomfort of summer; we thank thee for children, the young lives given for our care and for our comfort, those boys and girls who quickly grow up and go off to homes of their own, per- haps thousands of miles away go out of our lives and HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 127 yet not out of our life. So we thank thee for this young life, so briefly enjoyed, his father's comfort, his mother's joy, an honor to his college, the pride of his classmates, the friend of so many. We are glad that he possessed those friends and that they possessed him. With personal delight we all watched the young sculp- tor as he blocked out his life's design and wrought so earnestly at his work. The blows of his mallet were so vigorous, his chisel was so sure and the design so noble that we felt certain he would produce a master- piece. And then came the silent, muffled form and the extended arm and that resistless touch upon the work- er's hand, and he had to go. We know not why the sculptor was taken away from such promise and pros- pect of honorable achievement, but we feel sure it was not because his work was imperfect or the worker un- worthy. He has gone out of our life, yet, as we believe, not gone out of life. If angels bless thee and do thy commandments, harkening to the voice of thy word, we are sure that this redeemed soul will just as willingly hear thy commands and do them in heaven as he did on earth. Lord, let not this name pass from us, but may it re- main in this place as ointment poured. May the fra- grance of this short life of good Christian service, so freely poured out for others, linger here as one of this school's most precious memories. May it not be too much to hope, too much to ask that the inspiration of our young brother's earnest spirit may pass into some other, who shall take up the sculptor's fallen mallet and chisel and yet finish the masterpiece of life which he 128 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH had begun so well. God of mercy, comfort the father on the sea, and the mother in distant China, and the other relatives and friends wherever they are. We know not why this loss has come. We only know that thou doest all things well. Since death is but thy messenger and takes us not out of life, but only to the heavenly place and work prepared, we humbly trust and hope- fully submit all to thee. May even this sad event only renew and strengthen that trust. May full comfort come to all who must bear sorrow, even as springtime comes after winter. We ask it for Christ's sake. COLLEGE MEMORIAL SERVICE Memorial services in the memory of Henry D. Smith and Rev. B. Royal Cheney were held in the chapel last Sunday (September 30, 1906) afternoon. The vesper choir sang the beautiful anthem ; " Peace I leave with you." Rev. W. C. Merritt of Tacoma, Wash., uncle of Henry Smith, spoke of the life of his nephew. He said in part : " I will mention a few of the instances which I remember in Henry's life. The first was when, at the age of four, he came to our home in Honolulu. The bright face and energetic voice of the boy gave promise of the man. The next incident was at a similar service to this, when he stood at the grave of his only sister. His mother was with him, but his father was in China. As a hymn was being sung Henry took a handkerchief from has mother's reticule and wiped her eyes from tears. When later, after being an instructor, he came to our home at Tacoma, he was HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 129 the tall, broad-shouldered, splendid-faced young man. There is a lesson from his life. Life is the great prob- lem, not death. An early or sudden death is for God to decide; it is for us to attain early a strong life. It is not just how long we live, but how strong. Not long ago Henry had to overcome a great temptation. His cousin, successfully engaged in business in San Fran- cisco, urged him to turn his abilities in that direction. He declined, however, for he had dedicated his life to the work of his father and mother in the great mission field in China. Then he took the work of the secretary- ship of the College, and had a vision of ' Greater Beloit.' He gripped the vision and the vision gripped him and Greater Beloit became a reality." EDITORIAL In the bereavements of Rev. B. Royal Cheney and Henry D. Smith the college has sustained an inestimable loss. The tragic sweep has left a feeling of silence in the hearts of Beloit men and women has wrapt our Alma Mater in a pall of sorrow for her sons whom she loved so much and who so much loved her, and whose departure from this mortal life was so unforeseen and unexpected, who "Waned not as light from the landscape at even, As mist from the mountain or snow from the hill But passed as a star from the azure of heaven, A flash from the clouds or a ray from the rill." In reviewing the life of Henry D. Smith two factors become paramount, two qualities in that life, " not 130 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH long, but strong," worthy of our best thought and highest emulation. The one was his enthusiastic and conquering attitude toward all activities into which he entered; the other his profound, loyal, and rooted de- votion to his Alma Mater. It is needless to speak of Mr. Smith as a worker. He was a worshipper of work. The Beloit-Knox debate of 1902, the Yale-Harvard debate and the " Greater B'eloit " are instances in a life whose course was steady and determined, of a person- ality which was firm in its resolve, unremittent in its endeavors, invincible in its purpose. Not only did he work, but he worked with a faith that makes the result come true. In himself, in others, in the object to be accomplished he had faith. It stimulated his efforts and brought to realization the thing desired. On all occasions Mr. Smith exhibited unwearying and unre- lenting fidelity toward his college, for he was a gentle- man always and everywhere. He was interested in every phase and department of Beloit, and in every un- dertaking he stood on lines ready to lend immeasurably of his inspiring influence, which was not the aroma of a violet, but the perfume of a forest of pine whose fra- grance is spread far and wide. What tribute can we pay him, what better and truer, more expressive of the service rendered than link him always with the name, " Author and founder of Greater Beloit." HENRY DICKINSON SMITH DEAN G. L. COLLIE Henry Smith, one of the most devoted and loyal sons Beloit ever sent forth, died at Lake Geneva on August HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 131 8, 1906. His death resulted from exhaustion brought on by his heroic efforts to save Mists Ruth MacCumber from drowning. Henry was the son of Dr. Arthur H. Smith and Mrs. Emma Dickinson Smith. He was born at Tientsin, China, on January 2, 1881. The first twelve years of his life were spent in China, with an interval of two years and a few months spent in the United States and in the Hawaiian Islands. In 1893 Dr. Smith brought his family to this country, leaving them here while he returned to China. The family made their home in Oak- land, Cal., where Henry attended the High School, from which he graduated in 1897. After graduation he spent a year and more in business in San Francisco, where his energy and his marked business ability at- tracted the attention of his employers. He decided that he must have a college education, and refusing all offers to continue in business he turned his face toward Beloit, entering college in 1898. It was appropriate that he should select Beloit as his college. His father was a member of the class of 1867, a famous class in our annals. His uncle, Henry Dickinson, was a graduate in the class of 1863. Both father and uncle had been instructors in the college, both of them true-hearted alumni. Henry Gary Dickinson has been dead more than thirty years, yet his memory is cherished by scores in this community and in the city where he labored, Appleton, Wis. Because of these relationships of the past, this ardent, enthusiastic youth of seventeen, who revered his family, would naturally come to his father's Alma Mater. 132 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH Henry was always a perfect dynamo of energy, his working hours were filled with all kinds of useful ac- tivity, he did not neglect his studies, and yet he did not devote himself absolutely to them. He entered into all of the varied life of the college. He became one of the most famous undergraduates the college ever had, his enthusiasm and undaunted courage were infectious ; they begot like qualities in his fellow students. Who can forget his rooting at games or his rapid-fire speeches in the chapel or on the campus when he strove to awaken the flagging enthusiasm of his fellow-students. Study is perhaps the first requisite in a scholar's life while in college, and yet how important that other activities be maintained, how dull and narrow our life here would be with nothing but study in it. We need the athletic, musical, and literary influences as well. How grateful I am to students like Henry Smith, who have great natural endowments, who could take first rank in their studies, but who sacrifice this laudable ambition in order to develop other sides of college life. This very thing Henry Smith did, and his memory will be very dear to me, because though a student, he sacrificed the high at- tainments in scholarship of which he was capable in order to quicken student life in general. He was an earnest worker in the Y. M. C. A. In the autumn of 1901 he accepted the thankless task of captaining the second team in football. There is honor, no glory in this kind of work, nothing but hard knocks and harder work. It was characteristic of him that he accepted the difficult position and put his energy into it. Never before nor since has the college HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 133 had such a " scrub team " developed. He kept its mem- bership full, he got his men out, and he made them play to the limit of their strength. He was a power in debate, and perhaps became one of the most famous of undergraduate debaters in our history. In the Knox- Beloit debate of 1902, Beloit had apparently lost the debate when Henry Smith rose to make his argument in rebuttal. No one who was present will be likely to for- get that speech. His generalship, his quick wit, his eager, passionate argument simply swept the Knox men from their feet and Beloit won the decision. To show the many-sided character of his participation in college affairs, let me enumerate some of the offices he held while in college: Member of the Ripon debate, manager of the Greek play, athletic editor of the Round Table, participant in the prize declamation, member of class football team, captain second football team, leader of the Knox debate, vice president Archean Union, presi- dent Cliosophic, treasurer Y. M. C. A., assistant li- brarian. From the outset of his career he took great interest in public speaking and debate. He was a hard and consistent worker along these lines. At the Fresh- man banquet he gave a capital speech on the subject of " Co-eds." He was a speaker on Prize Declamation in his Sophomore year, selecting a piece entitled " The Battle of Gettysburg." In his Freshman year, he was leader of the Ripon-Beloit debate, which Beloit lost, but he had the training which prepared him for the notable victory in the Knox debate already mentioned. After graduation he was tendered the position of in- structor in public speaking in Pacific University, Forest 134 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH Grove, Ore. He was very successful in his work there and raised the institution to the first rank in that line of work among the colleges of the Puget Sound region. He threw himself into the work there with characteristic abandon and intensity. His uncle, Mr. Merritt of Ta- coma, tells me that he would come to his home occa- sionally so exhausted that he would sleep for a day or two, only being aroused to take nourishment. This utter disregard of his health and comfort while doing his work was always a marked feature of his career. After two years of labor at Pacific he was called to Beloit to act as assistant to the President. He con- ceived the idea of a Greater Beloit, and gave himself to this idea with rare force and business acumen. He toiled day and night to effect means by which the college could be built up. He convinced doubtful trustees that his plans were feasible, he enthused faculty, alumni and students until all joined hands with him to carry out his purpose. We all know the success that attended his efforts. The Greater Beloit will come in the future, that is assured, and it will be to Henry Smith's credit that he gave it the first great impetus in the forward direction. He had rare ability in collecting and pre- senting facts succinctly and forcefully. His pamphlet, " Will It Pay," is an instance of the successful way in which he presented the arguments in favor of a college education. His methods of advertising the college were models of their kind and will set the standard here at Beloit for years to come. He was a great promoter in his field, and yet he cared little for his position, but much for what he could accomplish. It was his plan to HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 135 give his life for missionary service in China, to carry on the great work which his parents are now doing. He had completed one year of study at the Yale Divinity school in furtherance of that purpose. Already he had made application to the American Board to serve under its direction. The last letter I wrote in his behalf was one to the Secretaries of the Board urging the fitness for that service. He had returned to Beloit in June to carry on his campaign for 150 students. He had sent out thou- sands of letters to prospective students all over the Northwest. Wearied with his exacting service he had gone to Lake Geneva for a brief vacation. A day or two before the accident which terminated his life he came over to our cottage and talked eagerly and earn- estly about the future of the college. He feared that with increasing numbers among students and faculty the old ideals and purposes would be lost. I tried to assure him that this result was not likely, and that we of to-day would make every effort to keep the college true to its best traditions. Within seventy-two hours he lay dead in that same cottage even in his dying hours his whole thought was for Beloit. In a true sense he is a martyr in the cause of the college. He had used up his vitality in its behalf and was unable to overcome the effects of his accident. Since his death many tributes to his worth and zeal have been received and all were sincere and true in their appreciation. On August 10 he was taken to the well-beloved chapel, and simple services were held there, his silent form sur- rounded with a wealth of golden glow, the college color. 136 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH Our deepest sympathies are with the parents in far- away China, now bereft of their only child. Yet even in our sorrow and their grief, we all have reason to re- joice that men of his heroism, his knightly qualities are still found among men. HENRY DICKINSON SMITH AT YALE REMARKS BY DARWIN A. LEAVITT For five years I have been having the privilege of knowing Henry Smith as a student, four of them spent at Beloit and one fruitful year at Yale Divinity school, so that while not intimately associated with him as some others have been, I have yet been near enough to feel that now I have lost a personal friend, one of Beloit's ablest and noblest sons. Henry Smith's student life was marked by its abun- dance, as shown in the variety of his activities and the efficiency with which he conducted them. He was a bril- liant student, as his first term's record at Yale shows: yet he never attained distinction in scholarship, as he might well have done had he devoted himself solely to study; because his conception of college life was too broad for that. So he plunged deep into the literary and athletic activities of the institution, and as captain of the second team in the football season, and member of three debating teams at Beloit and one at New Haven, as editor of the Round Table, and future editor of the Yale Divinity Quarterly, and as an enthusiastic advocate of the honor system in Beloit College, in all these ways he left a permanent impress on the life of the institution. His special gift was in debating, and HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 137 his services to Beloit were not measured alone by the debates in which he actually participated, but by those as well for which he was of material assistance in bring- ing victory to Beloit by his efficient training of other debaters. In 1902 Henry led a winning team against Knox and coached the two lower classes, which were likewise victorious. Three years later, when he was here again as secretary of the college, he coached the three debating teams, and once more won all. These two were the only years in which Beloit won three debates. Henry Smith was a man of marked usefulness and loyalty to his college and to his friends. He would give himself without sparing whenever he saw any need that he could supply, even at great cost to himself and against the advice of his friends. He was always ready to believe the best concerning his college and his friends, and vindicate them against any criticism that might be offered. But his friendship did not spend itself in words. He lost his life trying to save a friend, and greater love hath no man than this. I could not speak of Henry as a student without mentioning his uncon- querable enthusiasm and optimism. Others might be discouraged in the face of an impending crisis, but not he, and before long his courage and hope would com- municate themselves to the rest of the students, and in- spire them to work with him and meet success. In the words of a favorite poem of Henry's he was " One who never turned back his back, but marched breast for- ward, Never doubted clouds would break, 138 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH Never dreamed though right was worsted, wrong would triumph, Held, we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake." He has fallen asleep, to wake into a yet more glorious and fruitful life. MEMORIAL NOTICES. The following obituary references appeared in the Yale Dwmity Quarterly for October, 1906 : HENRY DICKINSON SMITH Henry Dickinson Smith, '08, died August 8, at Camp Collie, Lake Geneva, Wis. The previous day he was in bathing and went to the assistance of a companion who was drowning. The shock and the exposure re- sulted in his death, although consciousness was restored for a few hours by the physicians. Henry D. Smith was the sgn of Rev. Arthur H. Smith, D. D., LL.D., the well-known missionary of the American Board in China. He was born in Tientsin, China, January 22, 1881. He graduated from Beloit College in 1902, and then was instructor in English and Public Speaking in Pacific University, Forest Grove, Ore., for two years. He entered Yale Divinity School in the Junior Class one year ago. He was class deacon, an Allis scholar, on the editorial board of the Quarterly, a member of the Yale debating team that met Harvard in the spring, and was chairman of the students' committee on pub- licity and promotion, in which capacity he compiled the pamphlet, "Why Choose Yale Divinity School?" HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 139 At the time of his death he was Field Secretary for Beloit College. Mr. Smith was characterized by a brilliant wit, a remarkable executive ability, and an unusual power of concentration. His enthusiasm for any work in which he was interested was almost unbounded, and he could put enthusiasm into others. He was most unselfish in his disposition, modest >and retiring in manner, and had a deeply spiritual nature. The foreign mission service was to have been his life work, as he had already applied to the American Board for appointment when he had completed his Divinity course. His promise for future usefulness was most unusual, and his loss is one that will be inestimable to the Divinity School, the mission field in China, and to all his friends East and West. The strong characteristics of his life will always be an in- spiration to all who knew him. W. A. ROWELL. The Middle class has adopted the following resolu- tions in memory of their former classmate, Henry D. Smith: " Whereas, God in His inscrutable providence has taken to Himself the soul of our beloved classmate Henry Dickinson Smith we, the members of this Middle class of the Yale Divinity School, desire to express our great sense of loss occasioned by the death of our brother, withal a noble death, for ' Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' We remember with pride his unusual bril- liance and ability, and the large promise he gave of 140 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH usefulness to his generation, and we bear in grateful remembrance his unique spirit of devotion which allowed no consideration of personal interests. " Therefore, be it resolved that we hereby extend to his parents in their bereavement our heartfelt sympathy, with the assurance that to those who knew him best the example of his devoted life will be a never ceasing inspiration. " Be it further resolved that a copy of the foregoing be sent to the parents of our departed brother, and that a copy be sent to the Yale Divinity Quarterly for publication in its next issue. " Signed on behalf of the class, " THEODORE B. LATHROP, " WALTER L. FERRIS, " ROBERT BELL, Secretary." HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 141 From the Codex* published by the Class of 1909, of Beloit College. DEDICATION. To the Memory of a Loyal Alumnus Who Brought Honor to Hit College, Who Linked Hit Endeavors With the Class of 1909, in the Establishment of a Greater Beloit, and Who Gave up His Life While Striving for His Alma Mater, HENRY DICKINSON SMITH, This Book Is Reverently Dedicated. There are some lives, true and useful ones, which move in tranquil ways, with measured heart-beats, to their natural and foreseen conclusion. They are like long, serene summer days. There are other lives that are eager, tumultuous, rushing, throbbing with high purpose, accomplishing arduous tasks in unexpected, even catastrophic ways. They are like rivers sweeping in torrents and haunted with the sound of cataracts. There is no question as to which of these two types of life has the more fascinating interest and draws us with deeper sympathy to generous emulation. It is eagerness that makes us eager. Profound impulses stir *The Codex is a college record book published by every alternate Junior class. The volume of 1909 was in part a me- morial to Henry Smith. The students of the college purpose to offer more enduring testimony to the worth of Henry Smith's character and influence and to their loving interest in his memory by raising a monument over his grave. 142 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH our hearts. And there is no doubt which of these two represents the life of Henry Dickinson Smith. Preceding him was a long line of ancestors of fine intellectual and spiritual qualities reaching back to the great brain and heart of Jonathan Edwards. Henry's father, Dr. Arthur H. Smith, one of the ablest of Be- loit's graduates, stands easily in the front rank of emi- nent missionary leaders who are profoundly affecting the destinies of the Chinese Empire. His books are al- ready classical authorities on Chinese character and life, and his conversation scintillates with brilliant expres- sion of insight and observation. At the great Cente- nary Conference at Shanghai this year, the two pre- siding officers being chosen to represent respectively Europe and America, it was fitting that Dr. Smith should be the one to represent our continent. Mrs. Smith, too, has remarkable power of concentrated pur- pose and graceful and graphic expression, beneath which is the mystic soul with unfathomable depths of self-devotion. Intensity has characterized their son's life through- out. In infancy, in a land where the children are pat- terns of tranquillity, he was a little dynamo. A story is told, current in one of the missionary families of Pang Chuang, which suggests in the child the qualities we admired in the young man. The mules kept in the mission compound for the purposes of evangelizing tours, sometimes broke loose and stampeded through the premises, causing much temporary confusion. After one of these experiences, little Henry said very earnestly to a grown-up friend, " The next time a mule does that, HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 143 I'll get a big stick and hit him a * 'mendous whack.' How largely his life was made up of emergencies in the midst of which he stood, valiant and aflame, dealing blows with all his might at antagonists within his own soul or grappling with situations or competitors in generous but tremendous struggle! For one so intense as he was, his power of sinking himself and his own interest in some larger interest and aim was little less than marvellous, and made him both honored and beloved. When a mere lad employed as an elevator boy, someone in the basement carelessly sent the elevator, loaded with fragile merchandise, spinning up to the top of a high building at a perilous speed. Henry clung to the ropes regardless of the imminent danger to himself, was carried to the topmost level, and descended safely with the freight unbroken. In the autumn of his senior year, when the football season seemed darkening to disaster, it was he who organized the second eleven, and so held them together, and so flung them upon the college team that the latter gained from the encounters a reinvigoration which carried them to victory. The winning team was greeted with well-deserved plaudits; it was enough for Henry that his exertion, which gained him no distinction, had given the team the means of triumphing, and so had brought honor to Old Beloit. Disciplined by defeat in debates of preceding years, his senior inter-collegiate debate was characterized by a resistless leadership which won the decision and lifted the college to a high pitch of enthusiasm. He just missed his " magna cum laude " by his devotion to these 144 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH interests of the college; but he made the sacrifice with a heart single to the wider interest he was serving, re- gardless of the cost. Next came two years on the faculty in a little college in the far West, where a handful of students became the winners in contest after contest in oratory and debate under the inspiring guidance of their young instructor. Then he was called to the service at Beloit along the lines of self-denying labor, at the same time that he was urged to enter upon business openings at the West, giving fine promise of larger pecuniary returns. It was the day of ultimate decisions. He turned his back upon prospective wealth to give himself to the college, and eventually to the work for the great and needy Em- pire of China, whose call to him grew more distinct and imperative witih the passing years. During the year at Beloit, he delighted on returning at night from a day devoted to college business, to give himself until the morning to studying with the prospective debaters the question chosen for their contest; and no team which he coached failed to win the decision of the judges. It was during this year that the idea of a Greater Beloit took possession of him. How he inspired stu- dents and Alumni with his project, how he wrought day and night throughout the summer for the realization of it, and how the entering class that fall registered an increase of fifty per cent, over the usual Freshman num- bers, all that is a part of Beloit history. But it is not generally known that he went to Yale Divinity School with health seriously impaired by the physical expenditures of his summer's campaign, so that he was HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 145 gravely warned by his physician of the peril of such lavish giving of himself even in such a cause. It is most fitting that the class which entered Beloit that year, the class of 1909, should cherish the memory of Henry Smith with peculiar affection, regarding it as in a special sense their own possession. May it not be theirs to take up and complete the wide life work which was in the horizon of his thought and purpose. At Yale he had hardly recovered his health when he was chosen as one of the contestants in the Yale-Har- vard debate. Again his whole being was thrown into the effort; an embarrassing illness set in; but on the very day of debate he regained his voice, went into the struggle with every power keyed to the highest point, was believed by Yale to have won the debate, but lost the verdict. That night he had a long debate with an old friend upon the meaning of defeat. It was no easy task for him to give up anything on which he had set his soul. He felt that he had been chosen, not merely to do his best, but to win, and that without the verdict on his side the ideal was not attained. Through what hard struggles he obtained self mastery ! at what a price he gained freedom! So with unconquerable energy he came back once more to Beloit, cherishing a vision of a yet greater Beloit. He pressed impetuously through the first stage of the campaign, and went to Lake Geneva to snatch a few days rest before it was time for the second stage. There, at the sight of a young life in peril, he flung himself into the lake, and in the supreme effort to save was himself overborne. In spite of all the resources of 146 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH devotion and skill lavished upon him in days and nights of agonized effort, he passed beyond the reach of eager hands and the sight of loving eyes, in his delirium dic- tating letters and yet more letters about the college, of which he had spoken in his last letter to his parents as the dearest place in all America to him. Could a young life fulfill more completely the high aspirations which the poet has imagined for us: " In some good cause, not in mine own, To perish, wept for, honored, known, And like a warrior overthrown." But not to perish. Such a life as that of Henry Dick- inson Smith transcends the measure of the local and the transitory. It requires the background of the universe to render it explicable, and eternity for its field of ac- tion. Springing from a far-reaching and widely influ- ential past, it beckons toward a life worthy of its hopes, its struggles, its equipment for service. Into what ampler opportunities, what larger ministry, what higher leadership our friend has been called we do not know, but the thought of him challenges us to look forward, to strive, to expect. LETTERS LETTERS OF HENRY'S PARENTS FROM DR. SMITH It is such an unexpected mercy that I was called home as I was and that I was able to be with him for longer or shorter periods at ten different times, and get to know him. He was indeed a dynamo of energy and gave promise of the largest usefulness. It must have been some other and very important work to which the Lord merely transferred him, and we can not think that he is not as energetic and as fully occupied there as here. The college will doubtless know how to conserve his influence in wise ways, and his name will be asso- ciated with a phrase which he originated and the work which he instituted. It was a great mercy that Mr. Merritt could be present at the first service and also at the later one. Professor Stevens, of the Yale faculty, and Henry will have opportunity to meet so much sooner there than here than either of them expected. There is his dear sister and his Grandma Dickinson and so many others, more there than here. It will not be very long either before we shall be united. His mother is strong and brave as she always is, and we face the future without fear. We have been speaking about the advisability of a memorial volume about Henry. The idea would be a sketch of his life work and numerous extracts from the letters we have received, such as to illustrate that 149 150 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH work. We do not want any flattery, any disguises of the devious ways by which he came into bright light, or the fact that he used up more of his nervous force than he could spare, leaving far too little reserve. We have received thus far in this month one hundred and twenty-two letters, and there must be many more to come. They are full of the most beautiful thoughts in the most beautiful language a moral and spiritual comfort, a marvel of inspired expression meaning the impartation of consolation and strength. I should like to have you understand how we feel about this sorrow, or at least to get our point of view. Many hundreds, probably many thousands, had been praying for us, long before we knew there was any special emergency. The Lord sent me to America when I was averse to go. The Lord brought Emma here when it seemed as if she could not come. The work that Henry was doing, was going to do, we knew, everybody could com- prehend; why it was suddenly stopped, nobody could comprehend. We were being conscious of being carried over the swamps of doubt and darkness on the wings of angels, as we should be if we crossed the Tai Hang mountains into Shansi in a balloon, instead of bumping over the stones of the Ku Kuan pass. We were greatly surprised, we were disappointed, but we were not stunned or for a moment overwhelmed. Why should we be? If the Lord who took him from China to America, from Oakland to Beloit, from Beloit to Forest Grove and back again, then to Yale, then pro tern to Beloit, and then into the vastly new and larger sphere of action instead of to Yale by the steps we thought of, what is there HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 151 about the last that should disturb the balance or poise of our lives, of our trust, our certainty, that this is the best thing for him now, for us, for the North China Mission, for everybody. Instead of finding or feeling that this is strange, it seems strange not to feel so. His work is finished the last touch to what is now the com- pleted picture. It can never be undone or diminished, it is ours forever. We rejoice that the Lord gave us two such children that He thought them worthy to be used earlier than we had thought and longer. We have no " grief " whatever, at most only A feeling of sadness and longing That is not akin to pain; And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles rain." This hill has been to us a mountain of blessing and of the presence of the Lord. Wherever we are the Lord is leading, will lead us. The first Sunday after the news, in the Ku Ling church, they sang that familiar hymn of Faber's, and some of the verses come back to us home to us, as never before: " He always wins who fights for God, To him there's nothing lost; His will is sweetest to him when It triumphs at his cost." A full setting of this experience cannot be told. We are sure it will mean so much to the college, to the classes whom he was the means of gathering, and as E. P. Sal- mon, says, " to fresh generations of students, among 152 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH whom he will always be a living tradition, and so it will go on forever and forever." FROM DR. AND MRS. SMITH RULING, September 26, 1906. BELOVED FRIENDS : We have measured your love by the wonderful an- swers to prayer in our hearts these days on this moun- tain-top with God, and with new-born sorrow. We want you all to know of God's wonderful good- ness to us. Let us go back and trace the steps. On October 19, 1905, Mr. Smith left P'ang Chuang for his travels over the Celestial Empire to see missions for him- self, while Mrs. Smith broke up the home and went to work in the new parish of Lin Ch'ing. A few weeks later came the request to go to America and help in the million-dollar campaign. He shrank exceedingly from this, and felt sure he was not the man, and longed in- stead to go on with his work in China. He yielded to the pressure and went. He was hurried past his life-long missionary friend, Dr. Porter, whom he sorely longed to see, to New England, where the leisure between his various engagements permitted him ten brief visits with dear Henry. He had not seen his boy for almost eleven years. He had left him a small, unformed laddie. He found him a man full-grown, a student in the Yale Divinity School at New Haven. We had thought of a vacation after the Missionary Con- ference of 1907. We did not see Henry graduate from college, but perhaps we might from his theological course. How good our Father was ! How much those HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 153 visits meant at the time! How beyond all price their memory now! There were years of arrears to be made up. As Henry wrote back gayly to his mother : " Papa talks 250 words a minute, and so do I, and that makes 500, but there aren't minutes enough ! " He also said, with boyish exaggeration, meant only for a mother's eye, that at one place where Papa was especially rapid, Henry enjoyed seeing people leaning over the galleries lest they lose one word. The record of Henry's work and the kind words said of him made his father's eyes shine. Seven times he made his son short visits in New Haven, thus coming into touch with his theological friends and professors. Again the boy wrote : " I was mighty proud to have all my friends meet Papa." Twice, in New York and Brooklyn, delightful new circles of friends welcomed father and son, and added to their joys, while Henry's dear, beloved friend, ex-President Eaton, brought about a delightful reunion, by having Henry go with his father to the missionary meeting at Dr. Eaton's church at St. Johnsbury, Vt. Twelve years ago, realizing sharply that our little man had many temptations to meet, and that we had not been all we should be as guides, we knelt and gave him to God, agreeing to keep our hands off and remember whose boy he was henceforth. The Father took us at our word. When we wished Henry to keep pace with a friend and enter college very young, his heart turned instead to business. It was God's choice and vindicated itself at once, by better appetite, better sleep, and fine physical development. Into that business he went with all his might. It was a 154 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH humble occupation and a child's might, but even there he was faithful. He was the elevator-boy, and when one day a careless hand in the basement sent an elevator load of fragile things spinning up, at a speed which threatened to smash them all, Henry hung on to the ropes with all his strength, and was carried up to the lofty ceiling and came down safely with nothing broken ! His mother was easy about him at noon, as the em- ployees all had lunch in the store. Fancy her sensa- tions when he told her one day, in his frank way, that he had become very tired of the meals there, and had been around sampling all the nearest city restaurants, drinks and all, and did not like them at all! Always he was kept. More than once his head was in the elevator shaft at a very dangerous moment. Once, trying a friend's bicycle before he had learned to ride, he could not guide or stop it, and ran directly in front of an electric car! A few minutes later a very white boy came back pushing a very wrecked bicycle. When high-school days were over, and the big showy universities beckoned with siren finger, God led HIS BOY to the small Christian college with its blessed Christian atmosphere, and to the dear town, where people were so kind to him, for Grandma's sake, and Uncle Henry Dickinson's, and Papa's. From college one looks ahead. One day he had a view down a Golden Lane. It looked very inviting indeed to the boy, to whom money meant power to do many large and fine things. He thought it over gravely, and for weeks was allured almost to his undoing, but his good angel never left him, and he turned his back on this HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 155 most tempting business offer, and decided for a theo- logical course at Yale. One of his parents shrank exceedingly from having him play football, but he was not our boy and we left him free. He played, and won his little laurels there, and came out with all his bones whole, and a physique which made us praise God for overruling our fears. We coveted him for mission work, but we held our peace. And he was sure he was " not fit." One of his parents said one day, " Dear Lord, if Thou should'st call Thy boy to work in the darkest corner of Africa and we never see his face more Thy will be done." Slowly, gently, gradually it came, but the decision was final. He must help China. He did not see the mighty under-tow that brought him into that harbor. Years before the women of our Chinese church had set their hearts on it and had taken " no rest " and given God "no rest" about it. The mission heard with joy, and at the last meeting held out loving arms of welcome to him and to Lucius Porter, his life-long friend. We fondly thought there might be another David and Jonathan in the North China Mission, " two hearts that beat as one," but " my thoughts are not your thoughts." His heart had come to be right loyal and loving to Yale. He longed exceedingly to win one little laurel wreath for his theological friends. He went into the debate between Yale and Harvard in " Municipal Own- ership." He fought his way heroically through moun- tains of extra hard work, and through a harassing ill- ness of two weeks, which kept him in his room and made 156 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH Mm miss many recitations. Specialists pulled him through, he recovered his voice the very day of the debate, went into it with all his soul and lost it! Chastening after chastening had come so. He seemed to himself to win everything he ever gained as a foot- hold through ghastly defeats. But the next time found him dauntless as ever, and just as intense. Beloved child! As a baby in arms he was a little dynamo. The other baby born in the same house at the same time kicked leisurely and methodically, one foot, then the other. Henry always kicked as hard as he could, and with both feet at once. Dear Heart of Fire ! His lamp could not be turned down, and his en- gine was built without brakes, and so, for sweet Ruth Macumber, and for his beloved Beloit, the dearest place in all America, as his last letter had said, that lamp has burned its last drop of oil! The Great Livingstone died on his knees, praying for Africa. Our boy, our " Honey Bee," from the humble little far-away village home in China, passed over the dark river, dictating more letters and ever more, to win more boys to his beloved Alma Mater. And so our Darling has skipped the missionary grade where we thought his education would be still finer, and has received his promotion. And what of us? His mother after a year of espe- cially strenuous missionary work was with great diffi- culty persuaded to come down to Central China for a two months' vacation, as it seemed likely we might not meet again for many months, and we had already been parted a year. She left the Shantung church, praying HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 157 for a great blessing on their meeting; a mighty new infilling with the Holy Spirit! On the 14th of September, after a hard journey, dur- ing which in a collision her steamer was stove in aft, and they might so easily have all been drowned, she reached Kiukiang, and set eyes once more on Henry's father. What a joy it was to talk over the visits with the boy. How we read and re-read his last bright earnest letters, full of his stenographers and his new pamphlets, and his grief over Professor Stevens, and his plans for China. Next day we climbed the magni- ficent heights of Kuling, where we were to rest together an ideal plan, with such scenery, quiet, cool and se- cluded. Upon Mr. Smith's table lay a telegram from Peking : " Love, Sympathy, Prayers. Porters, Shef- fields." The swift thought flashed through my mind and came to my lips, " Henry has been drowned ! " I put it aside. Three people had just been drowned here in China, and I thought that suggested it. We stood and looked into each other's eyes, and Henry's Father said: " Whatever this news is we are not afraid are we, dear? " and Henry's mother thought of what was sung at Marie's funeral, and said: " I cannot fear Thee, blessed Will, Thine empire is so sweet." On Tuesday, the 18th, a whole sheaf of letters from four different States brought us the news ; to the Father first. He broke it to the Mother when she came in from her nap. The human Mother was stunned for a 158 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH moment and slowly faltered, " But he was all we had left." For one second it was impossible, in- credible. " No," corrected a gentle voice, " we have each other." In an instant she remembered God, and her constant motto came at once to her lips. " It's all right. Praise God any way." Beloved, your prayers have not been in vain. God has held us on that table-land ever since, not asking " Why? " not crushed, not even " dumb, because Thou did'st it," but praising Him, with each fresh pang, as we bury hope after hope. He pours the balm in, and we are comforted again at once and are strong, and the praise wells up anew. If the secretaries had cabled us the mother would have received it alone in the midst of intense heat and hard work, and feeling more weary than for years. God guided the kind hearts to withhold it. We thank Him and them. We thank God for royal love and hospitality from the Y. M. C. A. here. The few friends left up here have been lovely in their sympathy; the majestic beauty around keeps us close to God. The long walks invigorate. Every hour together is so sweet, so precious. Last night's mail brought twenty letters, from the Secretaries, the Presi- dent of Beloit College, his Professors, his friends and ours. We were humbled and almost astounded as we read them. Was it our child of whom they spoke such wonderful words? Oh, thank God that we had any- thing so precious to give Him! " Who are we that we should be so honored ! HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 159 And now for our " new China," that so sorely needs alert, devoted, self -sacrificing lives! O beginnings of the Greater Beloit! Precious, dearly-bought classes of 1909 and 1910, we look to you. Who will step into that vacant place, close up the ranks, and march with us? By the pain, by the costly sacrifice, by the long years we must wait to hear again his dear voice say : " Father," " Mother," we charge you, PRAY FOR CHINA ALWAYS. Mrs. Browning wrote: "Dead! Both my boys!' One of them shot in East by the sea, And one of them shot by the sea in the West! If you want a great song for your Italy free, Let none look to me!" On the suimy slope of beautiful " Mountain-view," in Oakland, Cal., lies the daughter whose every heart- beat was for China, who lived in America only to get through her studies and hasten back to her dear adopted home; asleep by the sea in the west. In the city of his love, our dear Beloit, lies the boy who was to have moulded lives perchance in the T'ung Chou college ; asleep in the east by the lake. And yet our song is ready. A few more beautiful days together and we two must part again. The precious books that are to help China must be written. That means for their author a city and libraries. Two hungry, needy parishes are already pulling on heart strings. (How their tears will be flowing for us at this moment!) 160 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH Their prayers will soon woo one of us back to work, while the other goes on his way alone. We thought of all that this morning, as we climbed the hill, and then we looked at each other and said "Hallelujah!" Give God all the glory, and for the unstinted and exhausting kindness of Dr. and Mrs. Collie through those three days, for her heroic fight to save the pre- cious life, for the Y. M. C. A. workers who toiled all day by her side, for the college chapel full of sympa- thizing friends, for the kind words said then of our Beloved, for the lovely decorations and the beautiful music by the Treble-clef Club, and for kind Miss Bro- der's cemetery guest-room for our Dead, until he find his last home, we thank God and bless you. We thank a kind Heaven that sent to stand by that casket one ownest own, the far-away dear " Uncle Will." (Rev. W. C. Merritt, who married Marie Dick- inson.) As the letters pour in by the score, how we praise God for them. Surely never before had mourners such wise, taught-of-God Comforters ! Ever yours, for Christ, For China and Beloit, EMMA DICKINSON SMITH, ARTHUR H. SMITH. HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 161 " Bless the Lord Who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies." RULING, KIANGSI, October, 1906. MY DEAR FRIEND: Thank you so much for your very kind letter. Our sorrow has opened a Golconda mine of friends, such wise, sweet, comforting letters! So many beautiful souls, who have come out of God only knows what Geth- semanes themselves, and have dwelt thereafter " in the secret place of the Most High." They know how to comfort. Praise God for them ! The long printed let- ter will tell you general details. There has been no re- action. We are still steady, and brave, and triumph- ant. We hope some time to have a memorial volume of Henry's life. But just now would you like to share with us some of the btlm God has poured into sore hearts, making them praise Him even in the fires? Ex-President Eaton said: " Dear Henry, he is, and always will be, very dear to us. So noble a heart, so knightly a spirit. Such dauntless courage upspringing invincibly in the face of temporary defeat. Such almost resistless energy ; and a capacity for enthusiasm for the best things that was the very soul of leadership. His loyalty and affection are among my life's most sacred treasures." " I thought any missionary board was to be congratulated upon the opportunity to secure such a recruit, and now God has taken him through the gateway of a last supreme self- devotion. God grant that many another young son of Beloit may be truer and more heroic because of the in- spiration Henry has imparted in his swift and eager life of service." 162 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH Dr. N. B. Hillis, pastor of Plymouth Church, wrote : " No event for years has so overwhelmed me. Some time ago I became acquainted with the work that Henry was doing among the college students. His enterprise was new to me, and as I looked into it I found hope for the future and now comes the end of all hope for his continued work here. He was one from whom his father and mother could never have expected too much. The early death of a gifted boy is one of life's darkest problems. Had I known of his death and funeral, I would at any cost have made a long j ourney , a pilgrim- age, to stand by his bier and represent Plymouth Church and the multitude of friends you have made in this country, and by this simple act to have testified at least to the profound sympathy and sorrow that I have for his father and mother." Professor Robert Chapin of Beloit College wrote : " I have rejoiced greatly in his intellectual brilliancy; his wonderful energy, his ability in leadership, would have won for him distinction in whatever channel they were directed. I think that no one ever handed in to me so complete a note-book on American history as his. I thought that he was making a splendid gift to China." Mr. E. P. Salmon, one of the trustees, said : " ' If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.' By his very death Christ's Spirit actually passed into the disciples. It's something so in the death of our loved ones. Our immortality stretches both ways, on into the future, and back into the present, until the present becomes the past. Henry has actually entered HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 163 into the life of Beloit College in this way, and is one of our Immortals. You can hardly realize what he has been to Beloit College, and now the impression is grow- ing stronger and stronger. We shall have a special memorial service for him. I doubt not his spirit will take possession of us all as never before." Rev. Robert C. Bedford of the class of '72, Beloit, says: " His creation of the ' Greater Beloit ' will become a familiar story, and will pass into the splendid traditions of the College to the end of time, and so he will live in his works though we call him dead." Dr. Josiah Strong writes : " My heart is broken for you and your wife. Such a death seems so needless and such a waste. I am told your son was the most brilliant and the most promising young man that had been in Yale Seminary for many years. Surely his service will be rendered when it is most needed. I love to think, therefore, that perhaps he will do more for the world now than had he remained in the flesh. " And this we are sure of, that a heroic, self-sacrific- ing death like his must have a profound influence for good on others. It may have been precisely the one thing needed to change the character and life of some who knew him. I do not want my dearest friends to explain to me ; I like to give proof of absolute confidence by declining an explanation. Perhaps we shall not care to claim the fulfillment of the promise, * Thou shalt know hereafter,' because our confidence in God has been perfected." 164 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH Rev. Cephas Clapp of Forest Grove, Ore., whose children were Henry's pupils in elocution, wrote: " Sometimes I think that the early death of Bishop Hannington and McKay accomplished more than a long life could have done. Who can say but that a score or more of earnest young people may be stimulated to take up the work. My children thought him to have a willingness to work and sacrifice himself for his pupils with an abandon that knew no bounds. He gave them not only good measure, pressed down and running over, but he gave them everything that was in him. He seemed to teach each pupil as if there was something in them worth bringing out, and he was determined to bring it out, cost what it might to him. He spared no pains, counted no cost to his time and strength, made each pupil a separate study. He criticised with care- fulness and yet with consideration. He showed them their faults in style and finish, but they were not dis- couraged. They will have reason to be grateful to him all their lives. The Master does not do all His work with mortals. May the Master give you Himself. You gave Him a beautiful accomplished daughter, one who will be a bright and shining star in the galaxy of Heaven; and now you have given Him all that you had left your only son there remains nothing more to sacrifice. You have laid it all on the altar. But do not for a moment think that you have placed the Lord under obligations from which He cannot free Him- self. Trust Him for that. He will not leave you His debtor. Sometime, somewhere, here or up yonder, He HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 165 will compel you to break forth into thanksgiving and praise, and hallelujah. " Uganda, in Central Africa, is being won for Christ by men who have volunteered because others had fallen. Your beloved China may be enriched by many soldiers because your boy was taken. At any rate, you have your two treasures laid up in Heaven. Your hearts are already there, and when your work here is com- pleted you will join them in a still more glorious work." He did! He has! How can we ever thank Him enough for the tidal wave of prayer that has buoyed us up, floated us on our rocky grief, and now bears us back strong and willing to our widely separated work. God is so good. Here more than 4000 feet above the sea, and 400 above nearly all neighbors, we have had Him and each other. We have never had such a rest and visit in nine years ! Our beloved Chinese parish have wept and loved and fasted over us so tenderly. The evangelist wrote to us in his quaint Chinese way : " The young teacher Ming (Henry) was one day sporting in the water, joyfully. Just then, all of a sudden, the Lord Jesus came and stood by the lake and noted how well they were doing it. His heart went to them with great love. Although it was doing them so much good to be there, as He thought of it, after all, that was not as good as for them to go to his Peace- Joy-Garden (Heaven) and disport themselves. They would enjoy themselves better than ever there. So it came about that the loving, loving Jesus led them away. 166 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH " When the young teacher saw Jesus, his whole heart went out to Him in love, and he was delighted to go with Him. As they passed the lake, a mournful hymn, like a dirge, floated back to them. It was his young brothers of the Y. M. C. A. But ahead they soon saw a great multitude of angels who had come out to meet him, and they sang a new song, and these were the words, ' Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. They rest from their labors and their works do follow them.' The joy that those two have (Henry and Ruth) every day and always with the Lord Jesus is past all telling. We people on this side the water though, detained for a while, cannot refrain from scattering our tears but after all we are going to them and we too shall have that unspeakable joy." A Beloit College friend, Mr. Lewis, wrote to a friend of his and ours as follows : " It seems so impossible. Almost anyone ought to have been taken in preference to Henry. He was so full of energy and ambition, so willing to give himself for others. Beloit College has lost one of her noblest sons, and one who was doing more for her than almost any- one else could do. As President Eaton expressed it, ' the earth has suffered a loss.' I had learned to think a great deal of him and have been strengthened in every way by knowing him. I am glad to have known him and I feel that his death was fully typical of his whole life, the giving of himself for others. I want to bear your sorrow with you, and to rejoice with you in the memory of his life and his character." Mrs. Professor Frank C. Porter of New Haven said : HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 167 " We were very proud of his success as a debater. He did the whole work for the team and was altogether the most brilliant debater on either side. The Seminary felt a great pride in him. Then he did so much for his class. In the spring he did that fine piece of work for us in the little pamphlet, ' Why Choose Yale Divinity School ? ' His loss is a great one to the Seminary alone. He would have been of inestimable help in the next two years. New Year's night at the Seminary he perfectly convulsed everybody by his wit and flow of language. " But his prospective loss to the service of the world is a still greater one, for he had immense possibilities of usefulness before him. It is a comfort to think how he had given all his splendid talents to the service of God." Professor Frank C. Porter's estimate is below: " He impressed us as a man not only of very bril- liant intellectual capacities, but as one who had a rare ability to concentrate himself upon the task in hand, and work at it with eagerness and energy; and also a still more rare unselfishness of devotion to the cause or the person that claimed his service. He never spared himself, and seemed not to let the thought of himself have a place in his plans and efforts. He had con- tributed a great deal to the life of the Divinity School during his year with us. Such a life has done a great service on earth, and is fitted for the greater service in the realms of God's great Kingdom." From Henry's Uncle, Rev. Wm. C. Merritt: " The one word that best describes Henry's character to myself is intense, and he was so in a large and fruit- 168 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH f ul way. As President and Mrs. Collie said : ' Many men at seventy have not accomplished what Henry has at twenty-five ! ' We had a wonderfully illuminating sermon this A. M. on the life, training, and work of Moses. It closed with * when you are ready for it your bush will burn, if not here in this world, yet in God's world. 9 So it is, and Henry will yet do his work for God where God wants him." From Mrs. E. R. Wagner, San Jose, Cal. : " Henry made us a precious visit three years ago, and won the love of every one of our children. They are deeply touched by this experience; we have loved no other young man as we loved him. That was a time of great perplexity, anxiety, and temptation to him the temptation to a business career. He talked it over so freely with us, and I felt then that one of the most beautiful things God had ever given me to do was that chance to help Henry. How wonderfully he was led out of that hard place ! " He wrote soon after : " I think God will not let me make a mistake." These are his exact words : " I am willing now, as I have not been before, to follow wher- ever God seems to lead the way for me, and I don't be- lieve He will let me make a failure of life." (July 2, 1904.) Thank God for such friends as ours, and for such letters. Ask Him that we may give nobler service for- ever for all His mercies at Kuling. God bless you all and comfort you all as you have comforted us. MRS. ARTHUR H. SMITH. HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 169 LETTER FROM PROF. R. W. RAYMOND BROOKLYN, N. Y., January 14, 1907. During the recent visit of Dr. Arthur Smith to the United States, it was our privilege to entertain him repeatedly, for considerable periods, as a guest in our Brooklyn home, where he became an admired and be- loved member of our family circle. And we love to re- member that in our house he enjoyed, after years of separation, his first reunion with his dear and only son. We prepared for their accommodation separate guest chambers ; but they begged the privilege of room- ing together; and often, in passing the door of their room, I heard the low tones of reading, conversation, or prayer. That room, already made sacred to us by reason of many memories of love, joy, sorrow, and death, is now also, and forever, associated in our minds with a grateful recollection of the close and precious intercourse between such a father and such a son, under circumstances so far transcending the ordinary expe- riences of human relationship. As you know, the son was just deciding, or had but recently decided, to devote himself to the work in which his father and mother were engaged. He made this decision, under the guidance of the Divine Spirit, with- out the least pressure from his missionary parents. A venerable clergyman once said to me, " I have been consulted by many young men who were thinking of entering upon the Christian ministry ; and I have never let one of them go in, if I could possibly keep him out ! For I hold that, if a man be not so called of God as to 170 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH disregard human dissuasion, he is not called of God at all!" Without going to this extreme, Dr. and Mrs. Smith, as I personally know, had conscientiously left their be- loved son to higher guidance, and held themselves ready to accept his choice of any profession in which a Chris- tian man could usefully and honorably serve his genera- tion. All the deeper, therefore, was their joy in his final, free decision ; and I cannot but feel that the hours of new and exalted fellowship spent by Dr. Smith in my house with his son, who had thus become also his brother and comrade, prepared them both for an in- separable companionship, whether in the visible or in the invisible world. After such a mutual consecration to the service of the Kingdom which embraces both worlds, the accident of death can be no more than any other accident of physical separation. These two enjoyed a reunion and a new union, which defied the trivial obstacles presented by oceans and continents. Why should it not now defy an outward separation, possibly even less worthy to be considered between souls thus fused into the Life Eter- nal which now is, as well as shall be? It is for this reason that we congratulate our dear friend Arthur Smith upon the precious intercourse which he was permitted to enjoy with a son so soon to enter, by a hero's death, into the beckoning glory of the world invisible, while we thank God for the privilege granted to us, of providing an upper room for such a meeting. HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 171 LETTER FROM PRESIDENT W. N. FERRIN OF PACIFIC UNIVERSITY, FOREST GROVE, OREGON My acquaintance with Henry D. Smith began with his engagement as instructor of Public Speaking in Pacific University. During the two years in which he served in that capacity, I came to know him well, and the acquaintance thus formed was maintained by occa- sional correspondence during the years following until his death. Mr. Smith came to Pacific fresh from college. He was strongly recommended for the position which he came to fill, and his work in it showed that the endorse- ments were fully justified. He was inexperienced and impulsive, and had some things to learn. I was glad to advise him occasionally, as need required, and found him always ready to re- ceive suggestions pleasantly, and to act upon them promptly and cordially. His relations with his fellow teachers were uniformly pleasant. His natural impul- siveness led to occasional mistakes, but these were of the head and not of the heart. In his dealings with students, both in the class-room and out of it, he made himself rather a fellow-worker with them than a master over them. When he trained students for oratorical and debating contests he entered into the work with all the zest and eagerness that his intense nature was capable of. In preparing for the contest he spared neither the student nor himself. There are traditions about the Campus that upon more than one occasion he kept the young men at work in the 172 HENRY DICKINSON SMITH reference library until the small hours of the night, when it was necessary in order to complete, within a required time, the investigation of some topic connected with the question to be debated. All of Mr. Smith's work as an instructor was charac- terized by enthusiasm and indefatigable energy. He took an active part in the religious life of the college. As the youngest of the instructors, and only one year out of college, he entered easily and heartily into the work of the Student Christian Association, and was made welcome in it. It is doubtful if any instructor ever at Pacific Uni- versity for so short a time received in so large a measure as he did the respect and esteem of the students. Only a few days before his death I received a long letter describing somewhat in detail the work which he was doing in advertising his beloved Alma Mater to the young people of the adjoining region, and giving me the benefits of his experience in the work. I had written a letter in acknowledgment when the press dispatches brought the news of his tragic death. The gallant act which cost him his life in the effort to save the life of another was characterized by the same generous, impulsive thoughtfulness for others which marked all that he did, and showed him in high- est degree to be a true Christian gentleman. THE ESTIMATE OF FRIENDSHIP LUCIUS C. PORTER Henry was always ambitious, he was always develop- ing every power he possessed. He wanted to become his most effective self. But the controlling ambition for self -development was not selfish; it was guided at all times by the altruism of service. Effective service for his class, for his college, for China was his conscious purpose in every plan and effort for advance in per- sonal power. We often talked together of these things : of a man's duty to himself and of the claims of service. This was our conclusion: The most completely and successfully developed man is the most useful. From his Sophomore year, the question was settled for Henry. The intense application to every task that called for larger effort, the eager struggle for victory in each contest, were expressions of this loyalty to service. This incident, not known to many, illustrates his point of view. In the Sophomore year he entered the preliminary contests for the Knox debate. Other con- testants were upper-class men. He was still a Sopho- more. But in the preliminary contest in the Society he was chosen as the third man of the three to enter the final contest, winning over a Junior who was regarded as a strong speaker. Henry had made a fine record. But at this point he felt that the best service for the 173 174 HfeNRY DICKINSON SMITH College would be from the older speaker. He had won the place, but he voluntarily resigned in favor of the other man. He felt that his own service would be stronger the next year. The other man took the posi- tion, and those three Cliosophic men were the three chosen to meet Knox. They lost that year's debate. Henry had done what he felt was best for the College, he had shown how fully he made the best service his ideal. Henry's eagerness for victory was a part of his ideal of complete service. He could never feel satisfied with honest effort alone, because he could not feel that he had done his best unless that best was better than his opponents. It was this that brought the dismal reaction in cases of defeat. Others may not agree with this ideal of victorious achievement of the ac- claimed victor. But they must understand that it was a part, not of selfishness, but of his service. He and I have many times discussed the question of the relations of struggle and contest to the proclaimed victory. Fre- quently it was after some experience of defeat. We did not agree. But I always admired Henry's belief: " The team," he would say, " is sent in to defeat the enemy. If it does not win, it has not accomplished its great purpose, it has not performed its best service." Conscientious effort, a strong fight against odds, he could not view as any excuse for failure to win; even the evident superiority of the opposition did not modify his conviction that the defeated team had not fulfilled its purpose, had not come up to the full meas- ure of its service. HENRY DICKINSON SMITH 175 The Henry of intense application, of furious work, of highest lambition, was such because he wanted to be the Henry of completest service. " Ich dien " was the ' motto blazoned on his banner. He fulfilled it to the unmost measure. POSTCRIPT My Darling Boy, so early snatched away From arms still seeking thee in empty air, That thou shouldst come to me I do not pray, Lest by thy coming Heaven should be less fair. Stay, rather, in perennial flower of youth, Such as the Master, looking on, must love, And send to me the spirit of the truth, To teach me of the wisdom from above. Beckon to guide my thoughts, as stumblingly They seek the kingdom of the undented, And meet me at its gateway with the key The unstained spirit of a little child. F. G. PEABODY. MRS. EDWIN LONDON SEATTLE, WASH ill III il ill! I l ij ! If fnhi! itif li