Maryville College Bulletin, October 1928

Marjville College Bulletin

Vol. XXVII

OCTOBER, 1928

No. 5

Samuel Tyndale Wilson, D. D., LL.D., President, in 1928

Entered May 24, 1904, at Maryvllle, Tennessee, as second-class mail matter. Acceptance for mailing at
special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized February 10, 1919

ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT SAMUEL TYNDALE WILSON

DELIVERED BEFORE THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

ON WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6, 1928

Note: The Executive Commi+tee of the Alumni Association feels that so important a historical docu-
ment as Pr?sident Wilson's address should be published in permanent form. Baccalaureate sermons
printed in 1923 and 1925 brought many expressions of appreciation; and we are grateful to President
Wilson for permitting us now to preserve and ciiculate his semi-centennial address.

Copies of this address will be mailed to all Alumni and also to former students and other friends upon
application to Mrs. Estelle S. Proffitt, Secretary of the Alumni Association, College Station>
Maryville, Tennessee.

Antiquity of the Speaker. The Executive Committee of our Alumni
Association have appointed me as the speaker of the evening on account
of my antiquity. They told me so. There are a lot of people connected
with Mar3^ville College who are confident that the speaker could, if he
only would, accurately describe the interior of Noah's Ark; "For," say
they, "it is not reasonable that he should have been so long passing the
ark from day to day, without stopping occasionally to look in a window
to study the internal architecture of the vessel." But I insist that these
are erroneous notions. I cannot even boast of having attended even one
meeting of the alumni before the Civil war, though there was such a meet-
ing as early as 1857, at which Rev. Gideon Stebbins White delivered a
valuable historic address which we preserve among our treasures. However
I failed to arrive, even in Syria, until the next year — 1858. But Dr. Alex-
ander Brabson Tadlock, a Maryville alumnus who died only twenty
months ago at the age of ninety years, did attend such an alumni meeting
as early and as late as 1859.

Beginnings of the Alumni Association. All that I can boast in
my juniority is with regard to my connection with the post-bellum Alumni
Association. That Association was organized on May 27, 1875, by a half-
dozen graduates of the College, of whom Professor Lamar alone belonged
to the ante-bellum alumni. However, I can boast of attending, while still
a Sophomore, the Alumni meeting held the next year, 1876, the Centennial
year. This was the first Alumni meeting with a program. Professor Craw-
ford, the president of the Association, the grandfather of John and George
Crawford, delivered a very valuable historical address. This address
John Silsby and I printed a little later in our amateur printing office in
Memorial hall. The Association was small in those days of beginnings.
The roll-call revealed six alumni present. They were: Professors Lamar
and Crawford, who made up thirty-three and one-third per cent, of the
enrollment, William Blackburn Brown, G. S. W. McCampbell, who grad-
uated that day, William Francis Rogers, and Charles Erskine Tedford.

The only member of this sextette still living is William Blackburn Brown,
a brother of Hon. Thomas Nelson Brown. His home is in Colorado Springs,
Colorado. In the first ten years (1866-1876) of the reorganized College,
there were only thirty -three men and women all told who graduated from
the institution. On May 30, 1878, two years later, and fifty years ago, I
became an alumnus of the College. In 1881 I took part in the Association
for the first time. I subscribed $100.00 toward Professor Lamar's Endow-
ment Fund of $100,000.00. That was a daring adventure in those days, for
dollars were few and far between. But I got the subscription paid off with
interest in a few years, and felt better when I realized the proud fact that
I now had stock in the beloved old college! There were nineteen alumni at
the meeting, and they subscribed the very respectable sum of $1,350.00,
an average of $70.00 a member.

Development of the Association. In this period of fifty years, I was
the Secretary of the Association for twenty-eight years, or until I had to
give the position up on account of the pressure of other work. I have
attended almost all of these fifty meetings of the Association; and I have
seen the organization grow from an attendance of six to one of hundreds,
and of membership of more than a thousand. In view of these facts, I
make no apology for the ego of this address. In using the first person
pronoun, I am simply complying with your orders. I am informed that
the Committee have appointed me as speaker to-night with the expectation
and wish that I should "reminisce," if you will allow me the word.

Emphasis Where? On Changes? The natural mode of procedure in
comparing the old days with the new days is to tell, as I have just done, of
the stupendous and amazing changes that have taken place; to describe,
condescendingly perhaps, the simplicity of the old life and the superior
complexity and glory of the newest brand and most recently arrived style
of life. This is the most obvious plan to follow. To do so rather suggests
to the awe-stricken listeners that in some way these presumably great
improvements may in some measure be credited to our own influence or
approval or prowess; and, of course, in belittling and disparaging the past
and in magnifying and adulating and panegyrizing the present, we shall
escape all suspicion of being personally behind the times or mossbacky!

No. On Identities and Homogeneities. But my vote is on the other
side to night. I am inclined to take the opposite point of view. I feel like
emphasizing the identities and similarities and homogeneities of the dif-
ferent periods and phases of Maryville's history rather than their dift'erences
and contrasts.

What is Enduring Interests Us Most. I am more attracted by the

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permanent and perennially distinctive vital qualities of Maryville than
by the shifting modifications of the transient and relatively unimportant
exterior appearance of Maryville and of Maryville's men and of Maryville's
methods. Rip Van Winkle was an interesting old customer with his twenty
years of changes; but, after all, I am more interested in the unchanging
Catskill mountains, the ever-tumbling Kaaterskill falls, and the lordly
Hudson river, on the one side; and, on the other hand, in the manifesta-
tions in both the old and the new human nature of Rip's days, of similari-
ties and not of dissimilarities, of identities and not of contradictions,
than I am in Rip himself. What we are concerned with is the ever-spark-
ling diamonds and not the cheap and varicolored foils that set them off.
Is not this your creed, too — that the best things abide, while apparent
changes are taking place; that God is in his cloud-swept heaven; that the
gaily painted clouds are ever-changing, while the unseen God abides forever:
that the superficial things are, indeed, modified, while the everlasting
things abide unaltered; that little things are changeable while big things
are enduring; that nature lives on forever the same, while the seasons mark
only comparatively trivial modifications upon her lace? Usually the things
that change are the adventitious circumstances, the garb, the outward
appearances, and the costumes of nature and men; while the real nature
and the real man endure to the end.

Then let us give attention to-night, as alumni, to the identities, the
enduring things, at Maryville College, and not so much to the changes
that have taken place during the history of the institution.

I. Let Us Note, First, the Identities or Enduring Things in the
Physical Maryville.

The Same in Spite of Changes. Surely the village or town of Maryville
has changed, has it not? Yes, it has changed somewhat in population,
houses, streets, property interests, tax assessments, conveniences, public
utilities, and the like; but, after all, the best physical things about Mary-
ville itself were here a hall century ago and even a century ago. If you
don't believe it, put your thinking cap on for a few moments, and you will
learn to believe it.

The Same Earth Beneath. Surely Maryville's geological foundation
has been the same throughout the century. It would certainly be an un-
dertaking to attempt to improve on what the Great Builder has done for
Maryville's building site! He hollowed out the valley of East Tennessee in
the Lower Silurian and Cambrian strata, and made this sheltered home
of ours a refuge, bomb-proof, as it were, from earthquake and tornado,
and flood-proof from cloudburst and swollen river. Between the parallel

mountain walls of the Unakas and the Cumberlands we repose in our
tranquillity and safety, right in the heart of the valley of Bast Tennessee,
and even at the heart of the entire region of the Southern Appalachians.

The Same Heavens Above. And surely the firmament above this
geologic Knox dolomite on which we live here in Maryville is the same in
its general features that it was five or ten decades ago. The heavens above
us at Maryville are the same skies that overarched successively Isaac
Anderson, the founder, and Thomas Jefferson Lamar, the refounder of
Maryville College, long years ago. The North Temperate zone affords
nowhere a more benignant or brilliant sunshine than that which ever
bathes our Maryville and its College and even its mountain hike day,
except when it is raining or plotting a rain! And as to the bewitching
character of Maryville' s moonlight, just ask any Maryville student what
he thinks of our moonshine privileges, and you will be surprised at the
eloquent enthusiasm of the response that you will elicit. And if you want
to know somewhat of the abiding glory of the starry host that bestuds the
mighty dome that overspans the town of Maryville, just ask our far-
visioned Dr. Knapp about the matter, and then listen to his star-talk, and
then peer through his telescopes, and be convinced as to the enduring
glory of

"The spacious firmament on high.

With all the blue ethereal sky.

And spangled heavens, a shining frame."

No wonder that the successive generations of Maryville students have
been star-gazers, and on frosty December nights have been sure that they
have seen the very auroral lights of heaven shining through the floors of
the celestial palaces above.

The Same Hills Around. And surely the physical geography of our old
College hill and its setting amid these Maryvillian hills has not changed
much since Dr. Anderson gathered his five young students at his fireside
in his weather-browned house on Main street in 1819. Those five boys,
when they went out for a stroll, found themselves meandering along the
verdant valley that Pistol creek had long followed; and they visited spring
after spring in their peregrinations, for there are more than fifty flowing
springs within a radius of two miles from the Blount county court-house. And
as they followed Main street southwestward, they were traveling the road
that in Indian days was the great war-trail extending from Virginia down
through this Cherokee country into the battle-fields of the Creek nation
and of the Alabama country; a war-trail that the Federal government had
followed when they cleared out "the Federal road" that led from Washington

6

to New Orleans. Yes, the contour of their environing hills and valleys was
just about the contour that we witness whenever we take a walk or an
automobile ride or an aeroplane spin about the town of Maryville. Oh,
yes! man's part of the town is changed somewhat; but God's hills and
valleys and creeks and springs and directions and distances are just what
God contributed to Maryville people and to Maryville College long ago
for the making of their home. Viewed from the top of Chilhowee, Blount
county and Maryville look very much the same as they did when the
Maryville College boys of 1875 and of even 1825 hiked to the top of Chil-
howee or Bald or Thunderhead, or along the road that Dr. Anderson built
over the Smoky mountains into Carolina. The landscape has more clear-
ings in it, but otherwise our physical environment is very much the same
as it was in the youthful days of Maryville College.

The Same Old Weather. And Maryville's climatology and Mary-
ville's meteorological peculiarities are not changed very much; they are
very much as eccentric as they were one, two, three, or four generations
ago; or as similar conditions are yet the land over. Otherwise what a
wealth of verbal comment and what a thesaurus of growlings would be
eliminated from our conversation and from our daily happiness! Dr.
Anderson and his boys nearly froze stiff in a Maryville winter only a day
or so after a south wind was blowing gently; and they got the spring fever
about the present season of the year; and then they had their beans — those
the rabbits did not get — nipped by a late trost; and then they perspired
profusely n the happy summer season; and in the autumn they enjoyed
Indian summer so keenly that they were heartsore that it could not abide
forever. Yes, the diaries of a half-century ago were as full of caustic re-
marks about the unseasonableness and unreasonableness of the weather as
are the diaries of to-day. But persisting throughout the generations are
the frequent glorious sunsets, which compensate greatly for the small in-
conveniences that I have just mentioned. As Thomas A. R. Nelson said of
these sunsets, in his poem entitled "East Tennessee," so we may say:

"Thy gorgeous sunsets well may vie

In splendor with Italian sky;

And pillowed in thy rosy air

The seraphs well might gather there

And in thy rainbow-tinted west

Be lulled by their own songs to rest."

And the botany, the dendrology, and the ornithology of Maryville are
the same as they were fifty years ago and as they were a hundred years
ago and, perhaps, as they were a millennium ago.

The Same Flowers of the Field. Fifty years ago we did not patronize
Mr. Clark or Mr. Coulter orMr.Baum or any other Mister for our flowers;
but we sought out Madame Nature and Company and secured
our posies without money and without price, at first hand and
largely in their wild estate. "Say it with wild flowers," was our program.
Jim Rogers and I used to visit the college woods between five and six a.m.,
"soon in the morning," and gather wild flowers and make "bokays" as we
called them, and pass them on to others. Mine, all of them, in some mys-
terious way, found their destination in Baldwin hall. Florists' baskets and
ribbons were unknown then; but the flowers were just as beautiful as God
makes now-a-days. The college campus and woods boasted fifty years ago
and boast today, in spite of the devastation wrought by the Botany classes,
such flowers as golden rod, flags, lilies, wild roses, daisies, honeysuckle.
Jack in the pulpit, spring beauties, peas, phlox, sweetwilliams. May apples,
pinks, irises, butterfly weed, life everlasting, bluebells, black-eyed Susans,
violets, blue and white, and a lot of other flowers; and for trimming we
had dogwood, hemlock, and long grasses.

The Same Trees of the Forest. Maryville's dendrology, too, has
changed not at all in these passing decades. Fifty years ago, I saw this
hilltop crowded with cedars, evergreen appearing. They were the same
cedars as these that we have to-day, but I could then jump over the top
of some of them, and I did so! And we then had in our modest natural
science museum eighty samples of polished woods, all taken from the col-
lege forest. And all those fourscore varieties of trees, evergreen and de-
ciduous, are still represented in our big campus of 275 acres. We live in
the hardwood belt, and at the edge of the Smoky Mountain National park,
the park that best represents the forestry wealth of North America.

The Same Birds of The Air. And, thank God! the ornithology of
Maryville still thrills our hearts with its unchanged liquid melodies. Dr.
Knapp has a glorious bede-roll of birds whose presence or whose songs or
whose beauty have, doubtless, for ages past filled these forests and en-
raptured hills with joy and delight. For fifty-five years I have heard the
College hill mocking-bird and catbird fill the summer night and even
noonday

"With sonorous notes

Of every tone, mixed in confusion sweet."

The whip-poor-will has tenanted the solitudes of the night. The blue-jay
still bullies his way across the campus with the polemic scream that re-
fuses peace on any basis. And blackbirds and bluebirds and cardinals
diversify the color scheme. Bobolinks and bob-whites and robin redbreasts
and larks and doves and wrens and thrushes and all manner of sparrows

S

and swallows were here when Dr. Andeison began his work, have been
here for a happy carefree century of God-praising life, and are here now
in our college bird-sanctuary ; and long may they continue to be our cheery
neighbors and our chanting choristers of tree and sky!

II. Let Us Note Now the Identities of the Maryville Men.

True, Their Garb is Unlike. Oh, yes! certainly the garb of the men
of Maryville College has changed greatly. I well remember that the boys
of the Seventies, most of them, wore suits of home-made jeans. If they
were aristocrats, the jeans, woven by their mothers and sisters in those
early after- war days, were colored Quaker brown with walnut hulls; if
they were commoners or democrats, their jeans were colored a violent blue
by the help of indigo, I believe it was. I remember counting the number of
store-clothes suits among the boys at chapel one morning; they were so
few that they were hardly worth counting. If there were any custom-made
shirts in those days, I do not recall who wore them. Our mothers were
our tailors, clothiers, linen-drapers, and hosiers. Talk about "Mothers'
Day"! My father told me, with awe in his tones, of his grandmother's
nocturnal industry. Often, he said, she would take the measure of a son
at bedtime; and when the boy awoke in the morning, he would find a fin-
ished pair of trousers hanging over the back of a chair, awaiting his use.
True, she forgot to crease the trousers in accordance with the enlightened
taste of her descendants; but they were, which was more to the point,
both strong and warm. Sometimes she apocopated the trousers to econo-
mize the material which she had to weave; or, perhaps, to keep the legs
out of the mud. Do you feel inclined to smile at these mothers of men?
That smile is not justified until you can accomplish about one-tenth of the
tasks that those wonderful mothers accomplished for their loved ones in
those days of toil and struggle and devotion.

Blue Jeans and Calico. In 1873 the Directors of the College adopted
a resolution recommend'ng that young women students should wear "no-
thing more stylish than calico." But underneath blue jeans and calico
there were the same kind of Maryville people that we have now. In the
Romer palace in Frankfort-on-the-Main, in the Kaiser's Saal, a great por-
trait gallery, there are paintings of all the emperors of the Holy Roman
Empire. The fashions of the clothing of the successive rulers varied greatly;
but, clad in whatever fantastic garb, every one of the men represented was
an emperor. And so of our Maryville men and women, of whatever period
they have been, it may be said with confidence that they were of a royal
lineage. The clothing "is but the guinea stamp; the man's the gowd for a'
that."

But the Same Scotch-Irish and American Stock. Of Maryville

9

people it has been true for all the decades of the college history that the
predominant stock represented in the roster of students has been Scotch-
Irish. And, indeed, all the people have been principally of the old Protestant
immigrations of two hundred years ago. Only the Indians on this South-
western frontier could truthfully claim to be earlier Americans in this
region, or more aboriginal, than were they. Over fifty per cent, of our stu-
dent body are of Scotch-Irish lineage, and almost all are of the old American
stock that came originally from the British Isles, and from the French Hu-
guenots, and from Germany of long ago.

The Same Family Names. It is interesting to note, too, that the ros-
ter of a half -century ago contains many names that are now represented in
our College by descendants. There have been some cases of four generations
being represented, as, for example, the Minnises of New Market and the
Browns of Maryville and Philadelphia, Tennessee. A year or so ago a
photograph was made of students then in College whose families had been
represented by two or more generations. The number who appeared in
this photograph amounted to between eighty and ninety. Among the names
familiar through the many years were these: Anderson (related to Dr.
Anderson), Brown, Caldwell, Campbell, Crawford, Creswell, Davis, Ed-
mondson, Ellis, Foster, Frankhn, Frow, Gamble, Griffes, Henry, Howard,
McCulloch, McTeer, Magill, Marston, Miles, Murray, Newman, Post,
Toole, Walker, Wilkinson, and Welsh.

The Same Human Nature. The stock and the type and, to a consider-
able degree, the families represented in our student body, are very much
the same as they were a half-century ago. And no one would have the
hardihood to suggest that the human nature of our Maryville men and
women has changed to any marked degree in the passing of the 3''ears!
The weaknesses and the strength of human nature are very much the same
as they were when I was a boy. These qualities have to be dominated by
the grace of God in order to be ornaments to those who exemplify them,

Indeed, the Same Maryville Men. Yes, we may well agree that the
men of Maryville of to-day are to all intents and purposes very much the
same as were the men of a cycle ago. For one, I feel very much at home
with the Maryville men or women either of 1878 or of 1928. They have the
Maryville spirit in their words, thoughts, and deeds. And sometimes, when
I have witnessed some especially noble action of theirs, I declare to myself
that they are as

"Constant as the northern star.

Of whose true fix'd and resting quality

There is no fellow in the firmament." "^

10

III. Let Us Note Also the Identities of the Entity that We Call
Maryville College, Throughout the Changing Years.

Yes, a Very Different Plant. This, of course, does not mean the
identities of the physical plant of the college. There have been
monumental transformations in the size and character of the material
make-up and equipment of the institution. All that the College could
boast in 1861 was an endowment of about $16,000; and real estate con-
sisting of two half -acre lots with three buildings — one wooden (the boarding
house), one small brick (the original "Seminary"), and a large unfinished
brick building; together with a library of six thousand volumes.

And Vastly Greater Property. In 1928 the Directors report a total
property valued at $2,250,000, which is at least seventy-five times the
amount held in 1861, sixty -seven years ago. There has, manifestly, been a
vast advance in the property holdings of the College.

I am not, then, speaking of the identities of the physical plant of Mary-
ville College. What I assert is the identities of the spiritual self of the Col-
lege.

But the Same Altruism. The College has not changed in its altruistic
service to its field and to its students. The struggle that Dr. Anderson and
his colleagues made to enable moneyless but ambitious young people to
secure college training for usefulness was passed on to his successors of all
these college generations. While a host of colleges have changed their
policy in this regard, Maryville has still set its teeth in a grim determination
to help worthy but needy students to secure a college education, in spite of
the handicap of flat pocketbooks and the lack of all capital except ambition.

Maryville's Mighty Financial Aid to Students. The Board of
Christian Education has published a circular entitled, "Is a College Educa-
tion a Special Privilege?" A list of the Presbyterian colleges — more than
fifty in number — is given with the charges they make, respectively, for
tuition, for room rent, and for board. Maryville College is the institu-
tion that provides these principal bills of college expenses at the
lowest relative rate. While the average amount charged by these other
schools lor tuition is $151.37, Maryville's charge is only $40.00. While the
general average for room rent is $90.71, that of Maryville is only irom $36
to $50. While the average board bill is $208.92, that of Maryville is only
$129. While the average total expenses at Presbyterian colleges is $441.90,
the average cost at Maryville is $260. These are great achievements indeed,
and do not merely happen by chance. They are the result of stern sacrifices
and resolute efforts to help others. When I was a student, the necessary
expenses of the nine months' college year amounted to only $150; and even

11

now they amount to considerably less than $300, though it is far easier to
secure $300 now than it was then to secure $150. In fact, Maryville's
charges are relatively lower now than they were fifty years ago, when I
graduated from the College. Maryville is still transacting this eminently
philanthropic business at its old stand. The traditions of Maryville are
loaded down with helpfulness a,nd kindliness of the most generous kind.
The official history of the College is appropriately entitled, "A Century of
Maryville College — 1819-1919 — A Story of Altruism." Maryville has not
changed its cordial, hospitable, and helpful spirit at any time during its
long history. A great many institutions have quadrupled or quintupled
their former tuition charges, but Maryville remains true to its original pur-
pose to help those secure a college education who could not secure it at
other institutions. While Maryville saves $180 or more to every student by
keeping its charges at the low minimum it maintains, it also provides the
great majority of its students with opportunities of self-help work or direct
aid in loans and the like to the annual total amount of $35,000, or an
average to the 475 who worked, of $74 each. So such students have re-
ceived indirect and direct help that has amounted to a total average of
$254. That the College has preserved this spirit of altruism so wonderfully
is an extraordinary achievement, indeed, in the history of education.

Maryville's Enduring Patriotism. Moreover the College has pre-
served its patriotism to a remarkable degree throughout the years. As
early as the Thirties, Maryville College had a strong temperance organiza-
tion, and it continues its practically unanimous antagonism to those traitors
to our country — drink, bootlegging, and law nullification. When the World
war arose, the College sent 668 of its sons to the task that our country
demanded of it, and twenty-one of the number surrendered their lives
for the cause. Maryville also sends out hosts of Christian patriots into the
unending service of our homeland. Our old College loves its country.

Maryville's Abiding Religious Spirit. Again we cannot but be deeply
impressed with the permanence and identity of the religion of the College.
This is not to be wondered at, since the glory of God was the motive of the
founding of the ifistitution, and since eagerly loyal Maryville men and
women have kept that ideal of the chief end of man and the chief end of a
Christian college ever before them. Our Christian religion is founded
principally upon a Book and upon a divine Man. And Maryville College
holds the same loyal and royal allegiance to both the Book and the Man
now-a-days that it did as long ago as when Thomas Lamar was a lad.

The Same Old Book Obeyed. Our institution was founded as a theo-
logical seminary, and its early curriculum was centered around the study
of the Book, the Sacred Scriptures. We have among our treasures three

12

copies of Dr. Anderson's text-book on his system of theology, which manual
of 112 pages was printed in Maryville in 1833. In this simple but dignified
and scholarly volume we feel pulsating the same faith and reverence that
the instructors of the present day manifest in their classrooms. Heaven and
■earth may pass away, but Christ s word, in Maryville's belief, does not
pass away. And now, one hundred and nine years after the founding of the
institution, the largest department of the College is the Bible and Religious
Education department, with its faculty of four men — almost as large a
faculty as Princeton Seminary had at the end of its first half century of
history. This department is one of the first four departments of Bible and
Religious Education established in the Presbyterian church; and all the
regular students of the College are enrolled in it.

The Same Lord of The Book Loved. But even more abiding, if pos-
sible, than its loyalty to the Book is Maryville's loyalty to the Lord of
the Book. Each succeeding generation of teachers has devoted, with ab-
solute conviction and enthusiasm, its love and its fidelity to the Son of God
who came as the Son of Man to rescue us from sin to holiness before God
and to service in behalf of man. This was the daily mission of the faculty
of six under whose tutelage those of us who entered college in 1873 found
•ourselves, namely. President Bartlett, Professor Lamar, and Professor
Bartlett, and Graduate Tutor Thomas Theron Alexander, and Under-
graduate Tutors Edgar Alonzo Elmore and James Monroe Goddard. These
six men believed in the Son of God and the Man of Galilee, and they were
true disciples of his. In him they found their supreme happiness and the
supreme motive of life, the Christian life. And so have the men and women
that since the days of the Seventies have made up the successive faculties
of Maryville College, found their Life-Leader; for said they: "To whom
else shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."

The Same Evangelism Employed. And Maryville teachers and di-
rectors, believing implicitly in the Book and the Lord of the Book, have
always logically and consistently endeavored to enlist all their students in
the faith and service of Jesus Christ and his kingdom. Dr. Anderson and
his few but zealous colleagues; and the Bartletts and Lamar and their
fellow-toilers in those hard days of privation; and the workers of these
later days, have all deemed the happiest victories of the years, those
glorious conquests made in human hearts by the Gospel and by the Spirit
•of Power and by the love of the Savior of men. The daily lives they have
themselves tried to live in order to commend the gospel they profess; the
atmosphere of the classroom and the direct worship of the chapel and other
religious exercises; and the splendid support given by the individual stu-
dents and by student organizations, have all been prayerfully directed
towards the making and mobilizing of an army to fight for their Lord. In

13

Dr. Anderson's famous old annual campground meetings; in more than
fifty February Meetings guided by such noble men as Drs. Bachman,
Trimble, McDonald, Elmore, Bartlett, Broady, and Marston, and by our
worthy last recruit, Mr. Lloyd, and in thousands of perennial interviews,
men and women have found their Lord, and have begun their Christian
life. This splendid history has changed not at all in its continuity and ear-
nestness throughout the generations of this old College; and Maryville is
justly famous on earth for this fact; and, we humbly believe, its fame in
heaven n this worthy regard will never fade away, even in the aeons of
eternity.

The Same Life-Service Sought. And the old College has had the
exquisite happiness of seeing its sons and daughters go out into full-time
life-service, at home and abroad, by the hundreds — 341 into the ministry,
and 105 in fifty years into the foreign field — while thousands of others
have taken with them into all the worthy professions and lines of human
activity, and into all parts of our own land and of other lands the principles
of the Christian life; and they have shown by their character and service
that they were endeavoring with all their God-given powers to love God
with all their hearts, and their neighbor as themselves. The vision of the
"Spirit of St. Louis" in the air is a nobly inspiring one; but the "Spirit
of Maryville College" as shown, for example, in the subscription of $1,000
the other day, at the end of the year's resources, made to the Maryville
hero, Fred Hope, the missionary to Africa, is an even infinitely nobler
and more inspiring vision. And such a spirit has dominated Maryville
throughout all its Christian history.

IV. And Now, Finally, Let Us Note the Identities in the Maryville
Type of Student Throughout the Cycles. Maryville Men and Wo-
men Have Had Identical Riches Throughout Their Generations.

Equally Rich in Youth. To begin with, they have been endowed, all
of them, with the priceless riches of youth. And youth in 1825 or 1875
was just as precious and inestim.able as it was in 1925. Says Longfellow:

"How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams
With its illusions, aspirations, dreams!
Book of Beginnings, Story without End,
Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!"

The audience that gathers at our chapel every morning is made up of
youth and only of youth, except for now and then a member of the teaching
force, who, willy-nilly, much against his wishes, has found that

"His face was furrowed o'er with years.
And hoary was his hair."

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Are you seeking the choicest of riches? Here in the youth of our students
you will surely find the greatest affluence and the most abounding opulence.
"To be young," says Hazlitt, "is to be as one of the Immortals." I was
fifteen years young when I entered the Senior Preparatory Class at Mary-
ville; and I was twenty when I received my diploma from college; and o^''er
those five rare college years I write the five letters Y-0-U-T-H; and then,
presto, my memory transports me to a fairy-land which I can never visit
again except in memory and imagination — the land of youth!

"Life went a-Maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy

When I was young!
When I was young? Ah, woful when!"

Yes, our Maryville students are, every quadrennium of them, vastly rich,
even multimillionaires, in youth; and this has been true of all of them.

Equally Rich in Worthy Ambitions. Again, Maryville students of
all generations have brought with them or had developed here in them
worthy ambitions or aspirations to excel. And these ambitions are
great riches. Quarto volumes could be written about the determined
fight continued for years that many Maryville College students have had
to wage in order to equip themselves for leadership in life. Often these
heroisms are unreported and unheralded, but they are then even so much
the more noble, magnanimous, and sublime, on account of their modesty
and unobtrusiveness. A mighty captain is this Ambition. It wins debates.
It excels in scholarship and makes quality credits by the quantity, until
Cum Laude's and Magna Cum Laude's emerge. It trains until athletic honors
are won. It achieves a self-conquest until the imperial will dominates a
man, and it plans the campaigns of his victorious life. That is what Am-
bition does! There have always been aspiring souls among the students of
Maryville. I knew them here when I was a boy, and I have proudly traced
their useful lives since those days. I know many of such worthies among
the students that are now enrolled.

Equally Rich in Happiness. Again, Maryville students throughout
all generations have been rich in happiness. So far as pleasure is concerned,
their college days have been the happiest of their lives. While I was in
my college days, I frequently said that I thought that they would prove to
be the happiest of my life; and many times since those days, I have thought
that I was right in my sentiments and prophecies regarding my college
years at Maryville.

"How dear to this heart are the scenes of my boyhood.
When fond recollection presents them to view."

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In Spite of What Was Lacking. In those boyhood days we had no
football, basketball, tennis, track, or intercollegiate sports; but we were
nevertheless very happy. We had no big lyceums, no Expression depart-
ment with its fascinating work, no regular Monday afternoon moonshine,
no big audiences to reward our oratorical efforts with applause, no college
yells, no college songs, no college colors, only 130 students all told — only
twenty-five of whom were of college rank; and yet I assure you that we
were happy youngsters. We played baseball the year around, and I
think we played it pretty well, to have so little practice; and we played snap
and were just as happy as kings and queens when we played it. Dr. Bart-
lett used to call for volunteers to move the chapel seats in Anderson hall
back against the wall to make room for the snappers ; and the response was
always most gratifying. However, I fear that he got almost no help when
the social closed at ten o'clock p.m. in returning the seats to their proper
places. We were so tired with three hours of running that, of course, we
should hardly have been expected to be drafted into hard work at so late
an hour. Some people tell me that human nature still works in the same
way, and the rumor runs that it is easier to get help to decorate the chapel
for a special exercise than it is to clear it up after the exercises! But I fear
that we were happy, whatever were Dr. Bartlett's honest sentiments about
the success of the evening's entertainment; for had we not had three hours
of innocent mirth and genuine satisfaction?

The Ambrosia of the Seventies. We had no banquets in those days,
but we treated ourselves sometimes at Blackburn Ross's store, to a nickel's
worth (a pint tin cup full) of chestnuts, or of "goobers" (though they were
not so popular, for that was before the days of roasted peanuts) ; and, when
our ships had come in, we used to buy a cake at John Oliver's bakery.
John Oliver was a colored man, but his cakes were white. Among other
good things I can say about him is this, that he advertised in The Mary-
ville College Student, a monthly magazine published by John A. Silsby
and myself. Just a month ago to-day I preached at Dr. Eakin's church at
Knoxville; and as I came down out of the pulpit an old whiteheaded man,
a college-mate ot mine, came up to speak to me. I got ready to tell him
modestly that I was glad of it, for I supposed he would make the standard
remark that he enjoyed my sermon. But he took a different tack ! He brushed
aside such minor considerations as sermons, and asked me: "Sam, do vou
remember our going over to John Oliver's one night to get that cake?"
What happiness Luther Rankin must have got out of "that cake" to re-
member it for over fifty years! I confess that I had forgotten that special
cake, but I remember several others. We had no Home Economics de-
partment in those days; indeed we could not have parsed those words for
lack of understanding of them; but we remembered a colored man's cake

16

for more than fifty years! I must report, however, a sad failure on my part
in deaHng with another article manufactured by John Oliver. Oliver al-
ways kept on hand an immense and intricate culinary composition, which
he called "A Washington Pie." I liked its name, for I was patriotic; it
looked good, very good; and its price fitted my exchequer, for John gave a
huge piece of it for a nickel. But do what I could, I could not adapt myself
to it. It bore a satisfying name, but it was a disappointing pie! I just
could not stomach it. But that was about the only flaw in my happiness
of those college days; and that was, after all, a somewhat comparatively
small matter, and so I did not allow my mind to dwell too much upon it.

Happy. Happy Days ! The students of the present day seem reasonably
happy, and they have many helps to happiness that we of an older day
did not have; but I am glad to assure you and them that we antiques,
when as young as they, were every whit as happy as they are now.

Equally Rich in Friendship. Once more, Maryville students from
generation to generation have been rich in friendship. Time has not changed
the glory or the worth of college friendships. A friend is a gracious gift of
God in old age or at any age; but a friend in youth and in the peculiarly
favorable environment of college days is the best of all known friends. I
call the roll of students contained in those old catalogs that were published
while I was a student, and my heart thrills with a friendly response as
one after another of my schoolmates passes in imagination before me. I
think of the first baseball team — we called it "The Reckless Baseball Team"
— and eight good friends of mine answer to the call of the roll. And,
very strange to say, the nine members that were longest with the team
are still living. I wish our present baseball team — undefeated by any
college team this season — a similar longevity, so that fifty years from to-
night they may say a similar thing of them — that all the team are living.
We had a four-year yearlong diet of baseball, and it saved our lives. As I
call the roll you may hear the answer, here or elsewhere, "Present or ac-
counted for." Will Parham, Roll Hanna, George Moore, Frank Moore,
John Silsby (our "First John"), John Brown (our "Second John"), John
Goddard (our "Third John"), Newt Ault, and S. T. Wilson. And Tom
Brown was an honorary member of our team. George Stewart and John
Hart played with the team a while, but both of them are dead. The proud-
est day I ever had, except, of course, my seventieth birthday, was a Sep-
tember day in 1876, when I returned to Maryville after vacation, and found
the ball team at the Maryville station waiting to greet me. And when you
talk about friends, just summon up in your memories some such group as
I have told you of, and you will agree with me that nothing could be better
than that friendship which they represent. We Reckless ball-players were
toughs — that is we were toughened to the hardest ball — for we never were

17

guilty of the use of such efifeminate softnesses as gloves or mitts in playing
baseball; though, if truth must be told, we did sometimes get the mitten
in our social relations. But that was another matter and entirely beyond
our control!

Equally Rich in Disciplined Powers. Maryville alumni have also
always been men and women of disciplined powers. Of course, there is no
question as to this fact in its relations to the present-day students. All
these improvements of modern years in curriculum and pedagogy have con-
tributed liberally to equip our present-day graduates to hold their own
with the graduates of other similar institutions of learning. This fact is
obvious, for Maryville is a strong and well-equipped college, and is fully
accredited by the regional standardizing agency.

Thorough Work Required and Rendered. But let me bear testimony
as an alumnus of long ago to the fact that even when the College had
far less of modern methods and equipment, exact and thorough work
was demanded of its students. Self-mastery was wrought out with the aid of
Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and some other departments, to a degree that
the students became able to concentrate upon whatever was under con-
sideration, and to be, to a fair degree, masters of their minds.

A Tribute to My Classmates of '78. Allow me to pay hearty tribute
to the little class of 1878, with which I was connected . When I joined the
class at fifteen years of age, I found students in it who looked upon it as
being a disgrace to be unable to recite upon an assigned lesson. There
were only four of us in the class. Will Taylor and Jim Rogers were grown
men, and were magnificent students. Nellie Bartlett, now Mrs. Cort, and
I were five years younger. When I attended my first recitation with my
class, I saw a great light. I had had little trouble in my former school work
in keeping up with the procession. But this was different, very different. I
decided that I should have to go to work; and in the course of time I was
tugging away as hard as I could. One night I attended an extra social,
and the next day I reported to Professor Alexander the doleful and shame-
ful confession that I was "not prepared." The rest of the class recited as if
there had never been a social in the history of colleges. I was so mortified
that I made some drastic vows, which I afterward tried to carry out. It
was a kind providence of God that I was put into a class with students who
never flunked. Such work as that class did was a-: disciplinary as the work
that is done now-a-days; and, after all, discipline of mind is the greatest
element in education. And throughout its one hundred and nine years,
Maryville College has done thorough work in disciplining the powers of
mind of its students, until they were equipped for the struggles of life.
Could we call back from the shades representatives of all the decades of

Maryville, we should find all honest students among them to be, to a
worthy degree, cultured and disciplined, and manifesting the mighty edu-
cational influence of the old College.

Also Rich in Varied Opportunities. Maryville students have al-
ways been rich in varied opportunities. That the students of the present
day are thus rich in opportunity needs no demonstration, for it is self-
evident. Cultural influences of many kinds are freely at work on every
side, in our student life of to-day. The intellectual training in the scholastic
side of our work, and the moral and religious impressions that are made by
the cooperating and accumulated efforts of teachers, fellow-students, vis-
itors, organizations, and college traditions, are riches of vast value indeed,
and are increasing in volume and importance every year; and they are
reinforced greatly by the influences of music and expression and art and
physical culture, and the social amenities of the various groups and of the
total body of the students. But it was also true that the students of fifty
years ago were also rich in varied opportunities. It is only a little matter of
degree or kind — the difference between now and then. Students now-a-
days are thrilled by such concerts as our Music department gave last month
at the Tuesday Morning Musical Club at Knoxville; but did we not have
our peerless Mrs. Bartlett at our commencement occasions in the Seventies?
We think that our Expression people are better than most of the profes-
sional artists that appear on our Lyceum platform; but what of that? Did
we not have the germ of the Expression department on the hill in the old
days when on every other Friday afternoon we had our rhetorical class in
volcanic eruption? We did not "give readings" but we declaimed "pieces"
untilthetortured welkin was blue. I myself on certain Fridays declaimed the
Declaration of Independence, Poe's Raven, Gray's Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard, and

"My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills.
My father feeds his flock; a frugal swain!"

Great Debates. We are justly proud of our debaters, and they nobly
magnify their office and opportunities ; but did we not debate every Friday
night in the Literary societies, in the old days, and on certain great annual
occasions? Why, I debated one hundred and eighty times in the five years
I was at college! We did not have the faculty of the Expression de-
partment or the teachers of the department of Systematic Discourse to
rehearse our commencement debates and orations before, but we re-
hearsed them before breakfast — in the literary society halls or in the
old New Providence church by the cemetery, where we were said by our
schoolmates to "wake the dead"; or down in the cavernous sinkhole that
gaped in those days just below where the railroad track now crosses Court

19

street by Mrs. May's house; or out in the woods where the college cemetery
now is; cr out on the hill overlooking Joe Mcllvaine's farm, for Joe was
sympathetic and cordial and believed in oratory, though then only a lad.

Great Books. And there is the Maryville College library of to-day — the
realization of many wishes and prayers. "What an opportunity!" I think,
as I see the students swarming by day and by night into this noble hall
where it is housed! And yet we had some books in those olden days, and
we read them! Frank Moore made my private bookcase. It is now stored
away in the garret at my residence ; but it used to harbor over one hundred
volumes. And among the happiest periods of my life were the hours that
Jim Porter, or George Moore, or John Silsby and I used to spend in reading
Scott's romances or poetry, Shakespeare's plays, Bobbie Burns, Lord Byron,
and Gibbon. If heaven has anything more cozy for creature comfort than
what the holidays of 1876-77 had, when the snow on College hill was seven-
teen inches deep, and the thermometer was kissing the full-orbed zero and
below-zeros, and we, with our feet planted against a full woodbox, sat by
our comfortable little old-fashioned wood stove, and read The Lay of the
Last Minstrel and The Lord of the Isles, then all I can say is that heaven has
some surpassingly great things in store for us! And every week I ransacked
the encyclopedia called "The Library of Universal Knowledge" for debate
material. And my father showed his self-denial in lending me his L^n-
abridged Diet onary for five years. Another set of books in my case had a
history. My parents sent me the money to pay railroad fare to Athens,
Tennessee, our home, for a visit. I was then studying German under Prof-
essor Sharp, who was himself a German, and who still lives at 92. I thought
I was going to spend the rest of my life reading German, and I coveted a
complete set of Schiller's works. So I walked the forty miles from Maryville
to Athens and saved my money; and when I got back to the hill Professor
Sharp had the Schiller's ready for me.

The College Library. When I returned in 1884 to the College as a
teacher, my first of many extra jobs was to classify and catalog the books
in the library,. The library had not been in use at all that year. Classified
and on its new shelves in what is now the art room, there were over 2,000
volumes drawn out the next year. One of the boys that used to draw books
from the library was Reuben Louis Gates, who forty years later, among
other benefactions, left his very valuable law library for the use of
future generations of Maryville students. I was for thirteen years librarian,
in addition to being full professor, dean, in charge of all public exercises,
proctor of the boys' hall, manager of the Loan Library, besides being
responsible for various other little jobs of work.

Equally Rich in Romance. Maryville College students are like col-

20

lege students in general in finding a great deal of very thrilling romance
interwoven with the simple memories of their college days. Nature has a
beautiful habit of throwing into oblivion any unhappy memories, and of
storing up in our hearts the happy recollections freed from what was un-
pleasant at the time. I have found it so in regard to my vacation trips.
I forget the punctures, the breakdowns, the floods, the mean human nature
we met, the uncomfortable camp-sites, and the like ; and I think only of the
glorious sunrises and sunsets, the glamour of historic scenes, the kindly
chance acquaintances, the picturesque and beautiful camp-sites, and the
God-made scenery. It must be that a similar arrangement of nature is at
work in our memories of college days. We must have had our troubles
then; but our happinesses seem to have swept away these unfriendly
memories.

My Old Memorial Room and I. For example, I find my old room in
Memorial hall all enwreathed in halos of happiness and roseate crowns of
comfort. True the carpet was a rag carpet, and the curtains were of calico,
but thay were glorified rags and calico! Two pictures on the wall probably
did not cost together a silver dollar, but they were of precious sentiment
and principle. One of them represented Longfellow's Maidenhood, or
Purity, a sweet-faced girl,

"Standing with reluctant feet
Where the brook and river meet.
Womanhood and childhood fleet."

The other was The Huguenot Lover. In it the girl was trying to get her
Huguenot lover to allow her to fasten the Catholic colors on his arm to save
his life from a St. Bartholomew's massacre or a bloody dragonnade. But
he was refusing! Purity and Heroism are truest romance. And there were
the boxes of flowers in the two windows, for mine was a corner room. And
the flowers show the influence of my sister. And there is romance about
mignonettes and geraniums and foliage plants, when one is young. And
there was my nickel-plated student lamp with its comfortable green shade —
even electricity is not much better than that! And my father's old trunk
was in the corner. Surely there is no romance in an old Civil wartime trunk!
Ah, yes, there is, for my mother packed it, and into it she put the garments
her loving fingers had fashioned, and into it she put her anxious love,
and, chief of all, my Bible, with a mother's injunction to read it and to
obey it. And back of the trunk stood my baseball bat, which all honest
men and women had to confess, I maintained, was by far the best bat
in Maryville. And my split -bottom chair — why, it had a cushion on it
that my mother made. And my mother gave me the red tablecloth that
was on my table. A plain room? Yes, but it was my college home, and the

21

sun of warmth and romance that had smiled on the successive generations
of Maryville youth was shining in the window upon me!

Fragrance of Pressed Flowers. And there is romance even in some
pressed button-hole bouquets that have come down to me from those days
of ancient history. They remind me of the pounding that was taking place
in my cardiac region while a fair-faced maiden was pinning one of them on
my coat lapel. For the girls of Maryville College were then, as they are now,
in Milton's words,

"Fairest of creation,

Last and best of all God's works."

And those girls were innocently the cause of heart diseases which none but
themselves could cure — that disease that has had such a remarkable in-
fluence in pairing Maryville boys and girls for life, for better and not for
worse, for time and for eternity.

Maryville's Supreme Contribution. But that is another story, and
it can not be entered upon at this late hour. All that I can say is that the
greatest of Maryville's contributions to the happiness of its sons and
daughters has been the magic influence that has established Maryville
homes in all sections of the United States and in all quarters of the globe.
And let all the denizens of these happy homes say. Amen!

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The College in 1878

The College in 1928