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Caption: Dedication - Engineering Hall (1894) (and Inauguration of President Draper)
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EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:
INAUGURATION OK PRESIDENT DRAPER. 31 renew their youth and repeat the gladsome story of the bygone years, as well as to give cheer and e n c o u r a g e m e n t to those w h o come after them. T h e words of the faculty are particularly grateful to me, and, moreover, they are only the expression of courtesy and generosity which have been manifested in such large measure and in so many directions that I well know there is no room for d o u b t as to their truthfulness and sincerity. T h e y tell us t h a t from the time when it became necessary to consider the subject at all, for nearly three years,—long before the advisability of the step could be discerned by me, the faculty urged t h e union which is now effected. I have wondered more t h a n once if they realized the hazard that was involved. I can only say that I will do what in me lies to save them from humiliation and to show that they did not blunder. It is no wonder their honored representative refers to the past. It h a s been a severe struggle, and they h a v e waged it with courage; it is an honorable record which has been m a d e , and they have had large share in m a k i n g it. T r u s t e e s and students come and go, but instructors are here continuously, and some of them h a v e been here from the beginning. The University becomes their h o m e . T h e i r heart-life, their mindlife, give it the character it h a s and t h e power it exerts. Surely they h a v e t h e right to be jealous of the past. They would be u n w o r t h y if they were not. B u t they need not be solicitous: the past is secure. If t h e r e is any doubt, it relates to the future. N o matter what expansion and development may wait upon endeavor, no m a t t e r what new fields of usefulness may be entered by the University, or what new laurels may crown her brow, the time will never come when all the world will not r e m e m b e r that the men to whom the institution owes the most are those; who laid its foundations in truth and gave strength and character to its first years. There a r few nobler heroisms on < irth than those which transpire in the early life of great educational u n d e r t a k i n g s , and of
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