Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 195]

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187 through the crowd. Amos Barton, Master of Arts, is a person to be tested and proven according to the stamp he bears. No matter how the nation treats its dollars, the people reading the image and superscription which you bear will test you, it may be, with acids or ringing blows to see if you are good metal, and with scales to try if you are full wreight. Your Alma Mater adorns you with her emblems, and expects you to bear them forth with knightly consecration, to defend them with knightly fortitude. She entrusts them to you with the confidence of a mother whose dearest affections cling to her sons and daughters, and she charges you to suffer no stain or evil to befall them. Render to the University the things that are hers—honor, homage and fidelity. I wish, in closing, that I could put into fitting and enduring language the affectionate thoughts and wishes that turn towards you this day, my young friends of the graduating class, from all who know you—citizens, college-mates and instructors. I wish I €ould show to you how our hearts will go out with you, sharing in your aspirations, rejoicing in your joys, sorrowing in your misfortunes, if misfortunes come, and glorying in your successes. You will be most heartily welcomed in the great and growing brotherhood of the alumni of this University. For myself, this occasion has a peculiar, almost a solemn interest. Now for the fortieth time, in humbler or in larger ways, I come with a company of young men and maidens, with whom I have enjoyed extended, kindly and intimate relations as teacher and pupils, to the threshold over which they must pass out into active and earnest life, while I remain to serve them who shall follow. The numbers of this long procession I cannot count. I find them scattered in every city, I might almost say in every hamlet in. the land, and their cordial greetings are most welcome to my heart. Many of them lie buried on New England hills or on western prairies, and some in the furrows where war plowed and scarred the southern soil. They are to be found in places of honor and of responsibility ; in all stations and all ranks of useful life; but if any has ever come to serious disgrace it has been fortunately kept from my knowledge. Will you accept my personal and heartfelt welcome to the ranks of this army of my pride and affection. And now may the grace, and mercy, and peace of God, beyond what mortal tongue can speak or mind conceive, be and remain on each one of you in the life that now is and in the everlasting life that is to come, through the intercession of Jesus Christ, our Savior and our Redeemer.