A Williams Anthology Part 28

he is ugly!"

The jester nodded his head mockingly. "Thou art right. They have made him too foul for thee ever to love, have they not?"

"Love? G.o.d! I could not love a beast like that."

"Nor couldst thou even pity him--is he not too foul even for pity?"

"Nay, I'd never dare to pity such a thing. He is too horrible, too loathsome. I would swoon if he touched me."

"What, lady, neither love nor pity? Yet this may merely be a pa.s.sing sickness of the humours. To-morrow thou mayest love him better than before."

"Love?" She was fast growing hysterical. "I could never bear the sight of such a mangled dwarf." Thrusting her hand inside her dress, she drew out a gleaming bodkin, and flung it at the fool's feet. "Kill him," she screamed, "kill him!" Then she rose unsteadily and staggered out the iron door.

"Kill him!" the jester echoed. "Merciful Mary, I thank thee!" and, concealing the bodkin in his blouse, he descended the ladder, to help the captain and the torturers in their work.

An hour later, the squire's corpse was thrown over the castle walls.

"'Tis a shame," growled the captain; "he would have made so fine a mute. One of the torturers' knives must ha' slipped, whilst they were cutting out his tongue. For I noticed that the spinal cord was severed at the base of the mouth--and that is a sure death, you know."

"So? I had not known that," said the jester softly, and he smiled to himself.

The old dead mute was placed back on his bier and the trap-door shut down. "So now I must hunt for another page or squire," growled the captain, and he clanked wrathfully out of the donjon.

The jester stayed a little while, to pray for the mute's soul and for the squire's soul and for his own. Then he too rose and, swinging the iron door behind him, left the corpse alone. The moonlight shone dimly and more dimly through the grating, and soon had disappeared. It left the donjon keep in total darkness, and in a stillness broken only by the dripping of water from the mouldy ceiling.

_Literary Monthly_, 1910.

NINE WILLIAMS ALUMNI[1]

[Footnote 1: A series which ran through Vol. XXV. of the _Lit_., 1909-1910.]

I. JOHN BASCOM

JOHN ADAMS LOWE '06

Already long past the threescore years and ten allotted man, Dr.

Bascom exerted a vital influence on the college when we first met him.

On the shadowy side of the valley, and even then silvery haired, he moved beneath these cla.s.sic shades like a patriarch, "the grand old doctor."

The facts of his life and of his achievements require volumes for the telling. They speak of his genius-like career at Williams, of his keen philosophical insight, and of how, after being graduated in 1849, he tried the law and theology before accepting a tutors.h.i.+p in his alma mater. A score of years from 1855 to 1874, he served the college as professor of rhetoric, although his desire was to give his attention to philosophy. The times were filled with conflict and struggle, and Dr. Bascom accepted the presidency of the University of Wisconsin, where he made a glorious record covering fourteen years. In 1887 he returned to Williamstown with unimpaired powers, and became lecturer in sociology and later professor of political economy, a position which he filled till 1903. They speak of his degrees of honor: Wisconsin, Amherst, and Williams conferred the LL.D., Iowa College the D.D.

It is in the evening of his life that it has been our good fortune to know him. As when, the day's work done and the worries of its earlier hours laid aside, we look forward to the rest that awaits us and live over in thought the events of the day that is gone, the conflicts lose their bitterness. Here is a man whose limitless energy built up a great university; whose straightforward counsel for many years shaped the policies of one of the political parties of the Commonwealth; whose earnest teaching pointed out to many a man his civic duty; and whose personal life is an incentive to high intellectual morality. By a score of books covering the various fields of rhetoric, aesthetics, political economy, philosophy, and religion, he has moulded public opinion in his generation. The same undaunted ambition keeps his eye bright now as then; the same keen brain grapples with vital problems; the same magnetic personality commands respect and love.

II. HENRY MILLS ALDEN

LEVERETT W. SPRING '62

Henry M. Alden has been the editor of _Harper's Monthly_ since 1869, and is still in active service. He was transferred to this position from _Harper's Weekly_, of which he was the editor for the five years preceding. For this long and distinguished service he seems to have had little or no preliminary training. The first six years of his life--he was born in 1836--were spent in Mount Tabor, a Vermont hamlet with the rude life of a remote country town three quarters of a century ago. From Mount Tabor he removed in 1842 to Hoosick Falls, New York. Here, after some service as an operative in a cotton mill and other tentative vocations, he prepared for college, and, in the autumn of 1853, entered Williams, where he supported himself by teaching during the long winter vacations and by such miscellaneous work as fell in his way. "I remember among other things," said the late President Henry Hopkins to the writer, "that he took care of my father's horse."

In Mr. Alden's day the opportunities at Williams in the way of preparation for an editorial career were very slender. The only student publication was a quarterly magazine of less than a hundred pages, and by some oversight his cla.s.s-mates failed to elect him as one of the five editors. At Andover Theological Seminary, where he was a student from 1857 to 1860, the opportunities for 'prentice work as an editor were wholly wanting. Hence the preparation which the college and seminary afforded for his life-work was of a very general and indirect sort. Yet his success has been one of the notable landmarks in the history of modern periodicals. In the conduct of _Harper's Monthly_ with its wide range of attractive material, he has done the world a service, high and fine. For the first thirty years of this service Mr. Alden seems to have devoted himself to the task of securing and organizing the material to be printed. In 1900 he added to the departments of the magazine an "Editor's Study," and begged "an audience speaking in his own name." Here he discusses from month to month such topics as the s.h.i.+ftings of popular taste, the story with a purpose, the volunteer contributor, rejected ma.n.u.scripts, the "dullards of the college world for whom a Jowett or a Mark Hopkins is superfluous," and the present outlook of literature.

That such a career was possible for Mr. Alden--the career of an indefatigable editor, keenly alive to the various needs of the reading public, with an office in a great New York business establishment, bethumped without by the roar of elevated trains and confused within by the noise of incessant printing presses--no one who knew him in Williamstown from 1853 to 1857 had the slightest conception. Then and there he was a dreamer, and showed relatively little interest in this present material, workaday world. Dr. Gladden says in his _Recollections_ that he could never find out how he got down from cloudland to Franklin Square. But as a matter of fact, in whatever hostile regions he may have sojourned, he never quite lost his residence in the supersensual world. Somehow he succeeded in reaching Franklin Square and becoming an editor without ceasing to be a mystic.

The literary history of Mr. Alden the mystic, as distinguished from the editor, seems to have begun with the appearance of an essay on "The Philosophy of Art" in the _Williams Quarterly_ for December, 1856. Then, three or four years later, came "The Eleusinia," two articles printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_. These papers led to the delivery in 1864 of a course of lectures before the Lowell Inst.i.tute on "The Structure of Paganism." Some thirty years afterward two books appeared--_G.o.d in His World_ in 1893 and _The Study of Death_ in 1895--which may be regarded as the culmination of the mental and spiritual characteristics revealed in the _Williams Quarterly_ essay and in the _Atlantic_ papers. Both of these books abound in rhythmic, melodious pages of prose poetry like the rhapsody on "The Coming of the Bridegroom" or on "The Lesson of the Sea." Mr. Alden's prose is perhaps more poetic than his verse. Of the latter, scanty in amount, the best is his "Ancient Lady of Sorrows," before whom pa.s.s

"All shapes that come, or soon or late, Of this world's misery."

In general, the books may be described as an interpretation of the great problems of life by the mystic intuitions as distinguished from abstract intellectualism, which finds that many of these problems are hopelessly beyond its reach. If one cares for the philosophy of nature and history, of Christianity and other religions, brilliantly expounded by an idealizing, poetic optimist and seer, we commend him to "G.o.d in His World" and "The Study of Death."

III. WAs.h.i.+NGTON GLADDEN

STEPHEN T. LIVINGSTON '87

Was.h.i.+ngton Gladden, whose very name irradiates the n.o.bility and wholesomeness of the man himself, has for years been a foremost interpreter of the perplexing problems of our time. His appeal is to honest intelligence in whatever concerns human welfare. He has done much to humanize theology and stimulate popular interest in modern scholars.h.i.+p. Moreover, in the region of industrial, social, and civic reform he stands out conspicuously as a bold champion of the Golden Rule in its application to every-day activities; and though sometimes charged with being a dreamer, he shows that the sky (to use his own figure) is less remote than is commonly supposed, and in fact adjoins the surface of the earth where human feet daily walk.

Dr. Gladden, who is now a little more than seventy, was born in Pennsylvania. He prepared for college in Owego, New York, and was graduated from Williams in 1859. After preaching in New York state for a few years, he came to Ma.s.sachusetts, where he was settled first in North Adams, and then in Springfield. Since 1882 he has been minister of the First Congregational Church in Columbus, Ohio. As preacher, author, and lecturer he is famous throughout the English-speaking world, and all his recent books (the latest being his _Recollections_) are published simultaneously in England and the United States. The honorary degrees conferred on him are D.D. and LL.D.

The instructive and practical elements in Dr. Gladden's writings, the wide influence he exerts in the cause of aggressive righteousness, and his interesting personality, do not, however, measure the full extent of his gifts. One has only to read his well-known hymns to realize anew that here is lyric quality of the first order. Then, too, the Williams alumnus, whether he sings hymns or not, has the warmest place in his heart for "The Mountains," and when he comes back to the college with white hair will continue to thank Was.h.i.+ngton Gladden for that song. While serving as one of the trustees of Williams, Dr.

Gladden was a familiar figure at commencement. His personal presence indicates the character of his thought, and the spirit which challenged him to high daring in the early days is still unflinching.

During the present disintegration of old beliefs, this servant of the truth has always been eager to reconstruct the new with the clear and definite purpose of meeting the highest requirements of life.

IV. FRANKLIN CARTER

HENRY D. WILD '88

It was largely owing to her location that Williams College gained the son who was to become her sixth president. Born at Waterbury, Connecticut, and thus well within the centripetal sweep of Yale, Franklin Carter left New Haven at the close of his soph.o.m.ore year for reasons of health, and later sought the more favorable climate of the Berks.h.i.+re Hills. Thus, once a member of the cla.s.s of 1859 at Yale, he was graduated from Williams in the cla.s.s of 1862. There came a blending of these affiliations throughout his career. Williams was the first to claim him, as professor of French and Latin till 1868 and then as Ma.s.sachusetts Professor of Latin until 1872, when Yale drew him to a professors.h.i.+p of German, to relinquish him in 1881 when he succeeded Dr. Chadbourne as president of Williams. For twenty years, the third longest administration in the history of the college, he stood at the head of her interests.

The history of education can show fewer periods more critical or more rapid in change than the last quarter of the nineteenth century in this country. Williams was in her own crisis when Dr. Carter came as president. How he met it, and how he guided the college in a steady movement toward larger things, a mere comparison of the catalogues marking the limits of his administration can tell the younger men of to-day, who enjoy the fruits without knowing the process. Such a comparison would show an increase of sixty per cent. in the number of students and over one hundred per cent. in the number of instructors.

This period also saw an increase in real estate, buildings, and improvements of $600,000, and, in addition to this, of $900,000 in invested funds.

But educational realities go deeper than outward prosperity. A college reflects her president's personality in things of mind and of spirit.

To business capacity Dr. Carter added distinguished scholars.h.i.+p and the genius of a teacher born. All this was made living effective by single-hearted loyalty to the best interests of the college as he saw them and by devotion to the highest moral and intellectual good of the students. He did not swerve from duty as he understood it to follow an easy popularity. The burdens that he bore and the labors that he accomplished, at personal cost in more ways than one, rested in the last a.n.a.lysis on this substratum of self-denying service.

His work has extended far beyond the college. His grace of expression in both speech and print, the keenness of his wit, his administrative power, and his command of educational resources have been recognized and made available beyond the limits of his presidency and apart from the demands of Williams alone. Honored in many spheres, he has thus brought added honor to the college. The solidarity of his achievements for Williams is revealed more clearly as time proceeds. More and more the alumni are coming to appreciate this as both historical fact and academic heritage. This shall be his reward as he continues, and may it be for long, to live close to the college and to the town that he has served and loved.