of whims and fancies; but the more closely we study their little foibles of one sort and another in the inner life which we see, the more surely is the conviction borne in upon us of the likeness of their weaknesses to our own. The similarity would be intolerable, if a happy egotism did not often render us forgetful of it. Hence the need of an infinite patience and of an ever-tender charity toward these fellowcreatures; have they not to exercise the same toward us? A distressing feature in the life which you are about to enter, a feature which will press hardly upon the finer spirits among you and ruffle their equanimity, is the uncertainty which pertains not alone to our science and art, but to the very hopes and fears which make us men. In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable, and must be content with finding broken portions. You remember in the Egyptian story, how Typhon with his conspirators dealt with good Osiris; how they took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds; and, as Milton says, "from that time ever since, the sad friends of truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all," 1 but each one of us may pick up a fragment, perhaps two, and in moments when mortality weighs less heavily upon the spirit, we can, as in a vision, see the form divine, just as a great Naturalist, an Owen or a Leidy, can reconstruct an ideal creature from a fossil fragment. 1 1 Areopagitica. It has been said that in prosperity our equanimity is chiefly exercised in enabling us to bear with composure the misfortunes of our neighbours. Now, while nothing disturbs our mental placidity more sadly than straightened means, and the lack of those things after which the Gentiles seek, I would warn you against the trials of the day soon to come to some of you-the day of large and successful practice. Engrossed late and soon in professional cares, getting and spending, you may so lay waste your powers that you may find, too late, with hearts given away, that there is no place in your habit-stricken souls for those gentler influences which make life worth living. ( It is sad to think that, for some of you, there is in store disappointment, perhaps failure. You cannot hope, of course, to escape from the cares and anxieties incident to professional life. Stand up bravely, even against the worst. Your very hopes may have passed on out of sight, as did all that was near and dear to the Patriarch at the Jabbok ford, and, like him, you may be left to struggle in the night alone. Well for you, if you wrestle on, for in persistency lies victory, and with the morning may come the wished-for blessing. But not always; there is a struggle with defeat which some of you will have to bear, and it will be well for you in that day to have cultivated a cheerful equanimity. Remember, too, that sometimes "from our desolation only does the better life begin." Even with disaster ahead and ruin imminent, it is better to face them with a smile, and with the head erect, than to crouch at their approach. And, if the fight is for principle and justice, even when failure seems certain, where many have failed before, cling to your ideal, and, like Childe Roland before the dark tower, set the slug-horn to your lips, blow the challenge, and calmly await the conflict. It has been said that "in patience ye shall win your souls," and what is this patience but an equanimity which enables you to rise superior to the trials of life? Sowing as you shall do beside all waters, I can but wish that you may reap the promised blessing of quietness and of assurance forever, until Within this life, Though lifted o'er its strife, you may, in the growing winters, glean a little of that wisdom which is pure, peaceable, gentle, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. The past is always with us, never to be escaped; it alone is enduring; but, amidst the changes and chances which succeed one another so rapidly in this life, we are apt to live too much for the present and too much in the future. On such an occasion as the present, when the Alma Mater is in festal array, when we joy in her growing prosperity, it is good to hark back to the olden days and gratefully to recall the men whose labours in the past have made the present possible. The great possession of any University is its great names. It is not the "pride, pomp and circumstance" of an institution which bring honour, not its wealth, nor the number of its schools, not the students who throng its halls, but the men who have trodden in its service the thorny road through toil, even through hate, to the serene abode of Fame, climbing "like stars to their appointed height.” These bring glory, and it should thrill the heart of every alumnus of this school, of every teacher in its faculty, as it does mine this day, reverently and thankfully to recall such names amongst its founders as Morgan, Shippen, and Rush, and such men amongst their successors as Wistar, Physick, Barton, and Wood. Gentlemen of the Faculty-Noblesse oblige: And the sad reality of the past teaches us to-day in the freshness of sorrow at the loss of friends and colleagues, "hid in death's dateless night." We miss from our midst one of your best known instructors, by whose lessons you have profited, and whose example has stimulated many. An earnest teacher, a faithful worker, a loyal son of this University, a good and kindly friend, Edward Bruen has left behind him, amid regrets at a career untimely closed, the memory of a well-spent life. We mourn to-day, also, with our sister college, the grievous loss which she has sustained in the death of one of her most distinguished teachers, a man who bore with honour an honoured name, and who added lustre to the profession of this city. Such men as Samuel W. Gross can ill be spared. Let us be thankful for the example of a courage which could fight and win; and let us emulate the zeal, energy, and industry which characterized his career. Personally I mourn the loss of a preceptor, dear to me as a father, the man from whom more than any other I received inspiration, and to whose example and precept I owe the position which enables me to address you today. There are those present who will feel it no exaggeration when I say that to have known Palmer Howard was, in the deepest and truest sense of the phrase, a liberal education Whatever way my days decline, While preaching to you a doctrine of equanimity, I am, myself, a castaway. Recking not my own rede, I illustrate the inconsistency which so readily besets us. One might have thought that in the premier school of America, in this Civitas Hippocratica, with associations so dear to a lover of his profession, with colleagues so distinguished, and with students so considerate, one might have thought, I say, that the Hercules Pillars of a man's ambition had here been reached. But it has not been so ordained, and to-day I sever my connexion with this University. More than once, gentlemen, in a life rich in the priceless blessings of friends, I have been placed in positions in which no words could express the feelings of my heart, and so it is with me now. The keenest sentiments of gratitude well up from my innermost being at the thought of the kindliness and goodness which have followed me at every step during the past five years. A stranger-I cannot say an alien-among you, I have been made to feel at homemore you could not have done. Could I say more? Whatever the future may have in store of success or of trials, nothing can blot the memory of the happy days I have spent in this city, and nothing can quench the pride I shall always feel at having been associated, even for a time, with a Faculty so notable in the past, so distinguished in the present, as that from which I now part. Gentlemen,-Farewell, and take with you into the struggle the watchword of the good old Roman-Aequanimitas. |