Bbwarfc IRortb A Memorial Address By Herrick Johnson, D. D. - - -• ; ' ■ ' .: " -:-■- '■--.• :■■ «¥ 4^va )£6war& IWortb A MEMORIAL ADDRESS By HERRICK JOHNSON, D.D HAMILTON COLLEGE CHAPEL November ig, igoj CLINTON, NEW YORK 1903 *>- 4 j '-' je&warb Bortb Born in Berlin, Conn., March 9, 1820. United with the Second Congregational Church at Berlin, December 4, 183 1. Graduated from Hamilton College in 1841. Principal of the Clinton Grammar School in 1842. Elected Dexter Professor of Greek and Latin in Hamilton College in 1843. Received the Degree of A. M. from Brown University IN I844. Married July 31, 1844, Mary Frances Dexter of Whitesboro, N. Y., who died May 27, 1869. Elected Necrologist of the Hamilton College Alumni in 1855. Elected Professor of the Greek Language and Literature in Hamilton College in 1862. President of the New York State Teachers' Association IN I865. Elected Elder in the Presbyterian Church at Clinton in 1865. Received the Degree of L.H.D. from the Regents of the University of the State of New York in 1869. Elected Commissioner of Auburn Theological Seminary in 1870. Elected Commissioner of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church from the Presbytery of Utica, in 1870, and 1876. Elected Secretary of the Epsilon Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in 1870. Chairman of the Executive Committee of the University Convocation in 1874-5. Elected Trustee of Houghton Seminary in 188 1. Elected Trustee of Hamilton College in 188 i. Received the Degree of LL.D. from Madison University in 1887. Appointed Acting President of Hamilton College, April 20, 1891. Died on College Hill, September 13, 1903. Buried in Hamilton College Cemetery, September 16, 1903, At eighty years, what is life's dearest prize ? Not landscapes' shifting wealth of light and gloom, Not trees that whisper hints of Paradise, Not tender flowers that breathe delights" perfume, Not music's medicine for slander's gall, Not Attic lore with ageless wisdom fraught, Not travel's panoramic festival, Not letters sweet from far-off homesteads brought, Not history's crowded scenes of war and gore, Not drama's resurrected life and show; But hopes to meet dear lost ones gone before, With faith that Christ's own arm will strength bestow When earthly scenes fade from the mortal view And hopes of sinless, endless joys come true. — Edward North. JEbwarb IRortb SOMETHING fine, unique and matchless dropped out of the life of Hamilton College, when Edward North dropped out of it. We are here at this memorial ser- vice to pay tribute to his memory. With what balances shall we weigh him, so that by comparison or contrast we may reach a just estimate of his worth? Weighed over against mere material endowment, as stone and mortar, or dollars and cents, sixty years of such a gift of God to the College as Edward North was, makes the biggest endowment Hamilton ever had seem " a trifle light as air." Weighed over against vast executive force, as in the mas- terly handling of affairs, the scales of a just balance soon tell that mere power of administration is no match whatever for the God-trusting spirit that let loose such intellectual and moral forces here on the Hill, and for more than half a cen- tury spent itself in the moulding and mastery of men. Drummond said some while ago that " love is the greatest thing in the world." But what is love without a lover? How can an attribute of personality be greater than the per- sonality. With "Old Greek" in the scales "love" would be outweighed by "love" plus a rare, unique, mystic person- ality, in which love was born, and out from which love was ever going on errands of beneficence. It was this power of personality that made Hamilton's Greek chair famous for half a century. And this is both the inspiration and the theme for this Memorial service. Power of personality may be somewhat difficult to define. But we all recognize it ; and when we come into the presence of it, we instinctively pay it homage. It was this in Mark Hopkins that Garfield glorified in his famous saying; " Presi- 5 dent Hopkins and a log to sit on, would be college enough for me." Personality cannot be copied — it must be developed. It cannot be manufactured — it must be grown. It is a composite — not any one quality, but a combination of qualities. There is both a perceptive and receptive element in personality. One needs to be open-eyed and minded, and must not only be able to see things, but be ready to take things in. Humboldt is reported as having said of a somewhat noted tourist that "he had traveled more and seen less, than any man he ever knew." This is the blunt way science has of telling the matter. Mrs. Browning says : "Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush a-fire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes, The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries." This is the poet's way of telling the matter. Alas, how many of us are before the bush, reading no sign of God there, content to go on plucking blackberries ! But this seer, whose memory we here honor — this man of visions, saw God in each burning bush, and off came his shoes ; for the place whereon he stood was holy ground. But not only must one see things and be ready to take them in, he must know them as they enter. Knowledge gives the intellectual element of personality. No personality worth speaking of is possible, where there is mental vacuity. And one needs to feel things — which is the emotional ele- ment of personality. And to do things — which is the voli- tional element. And to put conscience into things — which is the ethical element. This is the composite vital to high personality and the pro- portions in which these various elements get mixed will de- termine the charm, the glory, the power and the victories of this mystic thing which is so real, and which nevertheless baffles dissection and eludes all analysis. It is just because of this possibility of power in personality that the living teacher cannot be superceded. Books will not do the business. A living man before living men will forever- more be mightier than white paper and black ink. Hence it is that speech is the great instrument of power with man. Hence the Biblical statement: " Death and life are in the power of the tongue." Carlyle flamed out against this. He disparaged the tongue and lauded the press ; decried speech and glorified literature. His idea is, " Laws are not made by Parliament, but by the pen." The true university, he says, is a collection of books. But the world's great seats of learning go on establishing their lectureships, and chairs of instruction, and they com- pass the earth for living personalities with which to fill them, Carlyle to the contrary notwithstanding. A library has some unquestionable elements of inspiration. But the mind of an author is more than his works. The genius of a writer is greater than his writings. The nameless and potent charm of intense personality cannot all go down into a written word or a dead book. Soldiers, worth any- thing, will obey a written order of their chief, as it may be read along the lines ; but to see his face and hear his voice will lock their jaws with a firmer clench of duty and put into their fighting invincibleness ! Peter the Hermit, by his flaming speech fired all Europe with crusadic ardor. Luther's words, with Luther behind them, were thunderbolts. It was Gladstone's speeches permeated with Gladstone, that made him, for so long, primate of all England, and a world power. Truth is mighty. But Truth in personality is well-nigh al- mighty. How shall I set before you the rare personality that made such impress on the student life of Hamilton for sixty years, and left the track of its operation so ineffaceably and benefi- cently on upwards of two thousand of her alumni? Shall I do it by the briefest of biographies? Edward North was born in Berlin, Conn., March 9, 1820. He died at his house' on College Hill, Sept. 13, 1903. There it is — two dates and a life between. But of that life this brief record tells us absolutely nothing save that it was just so long. And this does not touch the hem of the garment of Personality. Let us then multiply the data. He united with the church in 183 1, when he was eleven years old. He began his preparation for college in his native town and finished it at the Grammar School in Clinton, in 1837. He was graduated at Hamilton with the rank of val- edictorian in 1 84 1. In 1843, when he was less than 24 years of age, and only two years out of college, he was elected Dexter professor of Greek and Latin in Hamilton College. In 1862 his chair was divided and he was elected Professor of the Greek Lan- guage and Literature, which he held for the balance of his life. In 1844 he received the degree of A.M., from Brown University. In 1869 the honorary degree of Doctor of Liter- ature was conferred upon him by the University of the State of New York, and in 1887 the degree of Doctor of Laws was given him by Madison (now Colgate) University. Since 1852 until his death, Professor North was one of the Trustees of the Clinton Grammar school; since 1855, a trustee of the Clinton Cemetery Association and Necrologist of the Society of Hamilton Alumni. He had charge of the department of Alumniana in the Hamilton Literary Magazine from its foundation in 1866. In 1865 he was president of the New York State Teachers' Association. He was a member of the New York Historical Society, the Albany Institute, the Oneida Historical Society, the American Philological Associa- tion, the American Philosophical Society, the Hellenic Philo- logical Sullogou, of Constantinople, and other similar associa- tions. He was known as the author of contributions to dif- ferent Reviews and Magazines, and of published addresses be- fore various societies, thus giving him an established reputa- tion as an accomplished essayist and critic. But with all this, and more that might be named, we are not let into the secret of this quiet but mighty life. These are mere biographical data, honorable indeed, and betoken- ing public confidence, varied activities, and trusts well dis- charged. But his mystic personality is not in these. They do not tell us one word of the weird witchery and strange spell by which he captured and charmed both the scholarly and the dull, proving a creative and uplifting force that lured 8 or inspired to higher things almost every student ever under his care. We must go deeper than dates and degrees, deeper than the calendar and the catalogue, to find the real man. We shall find something of Edward North's unique power of personality in his style of expression. Buffon goes so far as to say, "the style is the man." Cer- tainly language is more than the dress of thought. It is the living and organic body of which thought is the possessing and vivifying spirit. Just as no eye flashes and no face glows, so no words burn, where there is no fire within. In this sense North's style was North's soul. The rare quaint- ness of the spirit got expression in rich and sparkling quaint- ness of speech. The poetic soul found poetic utterance. This imparted the flavor of the original to his translations, and gave him the exquisite poetical and musical English in which he so deftly and smoothly rendered the musical Greek. This furnished him the happy choice and collocation, and sometimes coinage, of words that lent most felicitous expres- sion to his thought. Two years ago hundreds of his old students joined in send- ing him a bushel of letters as a Christmas greeting. It has since been my privilege to look over some of these letters of love and congratulation. And this is the way they speak of his style: One of the boys calls him "the most consummate master of the English language." Another embodies his thought of him in a quotation from the Iliad : " Experienced Nestor, in persuasion skilled; Words sweet as honey from his lips distilled." Another speaks of " the beautiful rhythmical flow of those wonderful lectures we delighted so much to hear." Here is his own happy, prophetic and poetic characterizing of Commencement week as he stood fifty years ago, and prophesied what it would be a century thence: "Commence- ment week," he said, "will be a sumptuous carnival of schol- ars, rivaling the brilliant Panathenaea of the Greeks, at which wit, beauty, science, eloquence and song shall jewel the feet of the Hours, as they trip smilingly by." 9 And here is his apt and epigramatic way of contrasting two friends, to each of whom has been sent a basket of flowers. The one he describes born "with the poet's vision, and facul- ty divine;" the other "with the gifts of a lexicographer." The one deals with flowers tenderly, and " inhales their sweet- ness with sobs of delight." The other spreads them out as if on a dissecting table for scientific study ; or " proceeds to inspect them as a provost marshal might inspect a squad of raw re- cruits." "Both are passionately fond of flowers. Both are heartily grateful for the kindness that brings them. Yet they are decidedly unlike each other — almost as unlike as a black-bird and a black-board — or a bobolink and a bob-sled." This happy knack of nicking things — this quaint originality of style, surely lets us see something of the quaint original. His mystic power of personality also shows itself in his youthfulness of spirit. He kept it to the last. Age did not stiffen his soul or fix him in changeless ruts of procedure. He was as genial, willowy, and responsive to approach at eighty as at forty. He early became a child of God, and through all his subsequent manly and mature years, he took God by the hand as a little child, and trustfully walked with him all the way home. This childlike spirit that he carried up into old age, accounts, in large part at least, for the many classes of lovers he had. Not only the alumni loved him ; not only the boys in the College, but every one who served the household, loved him. Even the women who came oc- casionally to clean and wash, treasure the cute little speeches he made to them on occasions, showing appreciation of their work, and lightening their toil. The people he met at sum- mer resorts got tied to him — even children and the babies. The babies would always go to him and he would walk with them up and down the long hall of " Halfwayup," as if he were brooding over them in a kind of loving paternity. Here is what some of the Hamilton boys said of him in that rare budget of letters they sent him two Christmases ago. One of the boys of '85 writes: " I know the eternal youth of your heart." And one of the class of '68 says : " I remem- ber how you played with my first-born child, long since gone 10 to her eternal home." There he is, how easily we can picture him, on a chance visit in a Hamilton graduate's home, at his old tricks, playing the boy again in the dear caress and ten- derness of a spirit that could never grow old. A '75 enthus- iast puts it this way : "Old with wisdom in your youth; Young with lovers in your age; Always old and always young; •Old Greek ' to all since '41." And a member of the class of '71 pays touching tribute to this same sweet grace in these words: "You showed me that an accomplished scholar may be as simple, trusting and ap- proachable as a child." Approachableness ! Childlikeness ! Carrying this up into manhood, and on to old age, has been defined as genius. It marks certain great natures — pre-eminently, the Man of Nazareth ; never hedged about with dignities ; never behind locked doors; never in private quarters, with "no admit- tance " glaring at you over the entrance way. Greatly like him, reverently be it said, was the beloved Abraham Lincoln. It was this that so endeared the martyred hero to the popular heart. And Edward North's personality had one of its sweetest phases in this, the approachableness it invited and furnished. Closely allied to this trait was another — his rare gentle- ness. It made him great. It made others great who came under the spell of it. Morley, in his just-published life of Gladstone, quotes an English sage as saying, " He is a won- derful man that can thread a needle when he is at cudgels in a crowd ; and yet this is as easy as to find Truth in the hurry of disputation." Even Gladstone was not always ready to admit this. But it had no difficulty of acceptance with our quiet and studious lover of books and men. He got no truth by warring words. Disputation was alien to him. Taking up the cudgels of controversy was never a joy. No one had more tenacious hold of principle. He would die for it. But a fight he abhorred. He fled the arena of hot discussion and acrid debate. And yet, while he never domineered men, he dominated them. He won his throne ; he did not force it. Nay, he never seemed to make any effort even to win affec- tion. He simply was himself, and the throne came to him. He was an iconoclast ; but not of the rude, fierce sort, that smash our idols to our faces. We all remember the college days, when the college spirit and the college ambitions and rivalries and predilections, led to the setting up of idols. The sophomores were quite prone to personify the class, and to glorify the personification. A junior here and there would build an altar to logic. In my own day several of us, (and I was among them,) set up the idol Metaphysic, and paid it a good deal of homage. We muddled our brains with it, and set our tongues going, the result being what Spurgeon charac- terizes as " unbounded nothing in big words." Then along would come the dear old tender iconoclast, the Greek profes- sor, and like Emerson as described by Oliver Wendell Holmes, he would "take our idols down from their pedestals so gently that it seemed like an act of worship." But they came down ; and they were never set up again. Here is the way some of his old students wrote of his gen- tleness as they crowned him on that Christmas coronation day a little while before he went home to God, to be crowned by the King of Kings : "One of the sweet inspirations of my life," says a member of the class of '86, " is the memory of a gentle, gracious, grand old man, whose kindly word at an op- portune time co-operated with other influences in leading me into the blessed ministry of Jesus Christ." "Your gentleness," writes another, of the class of '75, "your gentleness and kindliness and evident faith that there was something good in me, kept me from going straight to the devil. If I knew where upon this earth I could find a like influence for my boy, I should feel that he would be safe." What a crown to go to heaven with! Imagine the dear " Old Greek " going up to his Lord with that tribute shining in letters of light from his brow. We all know he would be ignorant of the shining, and would rather be saying, "Not worthy, Lord, to gather up the crumbs that from thy table fall." 12 Another characteristic of this rare personality was a ca- pacity for details. It is almost never associated with a poetic temperament. But this strange marriage took place in Edward North's nature, and the nuptials had God's own seal. He could sing and soar; but he could go on foot. He could sweep the heavens, yet harness his will to the minutest tasks. He was both telescopic and microscopic. Witness his Alumniana. Many of the old graduates found in these per- sonal details their chief joy, as they turned the pages of the Hamilton Literary Magazine. How this dear alumni lover kept on the track of the boys! Nothing seemed to es- cape his sight and search. He knew them as no other man on the Hill knew them. He could talk about them as no other man on the Hill could talk about them. When he met them he surprised them with his memory of details. And when they died, who could sum up the life record as he, making him the incomparable Necrologist, who has kept the annals of Hamil- ton's stelligerent host for well nigh half a century ! The old English poet, John Donne, (perhaps as striking an original as our Edward North), once likened a married couple to a pair of compasses, or dividers, after this unique fashion : "The one doth in the center sit, And when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect as it comes home." By a slight change or two in this quaint quatrain we have a happy picture of our beloved professor, and the way he used to keep in touch with the graduates of Hamilton: " Old Greek ' did in the center sit, And when his boys afar would roam, He leaned and hearkened after them, And grew erect as they came home. Is it any wonder that he knew the little details and incidents and happenings of so many of us, and that he had them handy when he met us by the way ! But it was not simply in his handling of the goings and doings of the alumni that he manifested his capacity for, and mastery of, details ; the minutest of the College interests were 13 in his mind and often on his heart. And other interests of every sort had his thought and care. I have been permitted to look into the record of a year of his life — a brief diary kept by his own hand. It is tracked with just those multi- plied minutiae of practical affairs that one would not have dreamed of, in this man of visions and this dreamer of dreams. Here is one day's record, copied at random from this com- monplace yet bewitching little book: " Greek at 9. Facul- ty meeting at 10. Greek with juniors at 11. In the ceme- tery with Mr. Hastings and Prof. Root at 12. Rev. James Dean and Dr. Beckwith at 1. Dr. Goertner at 2. In con- sultation with Dr. Brown at 3. Another appointment at 6. To Utica at 6:30. In Herald office until 9:30. Home at 10:30. But ' no tired Nature's sweet restorer,' not a wink." That day's record, to the last droll word, is but a sample of the minuteness and variety and endless detail of his daily toil, and a sample also of how he could pull himself out of a state of utter weariness into a bit of characteristic pleasantry. We who knew how frail he was and how soon he tired, will not wonder, but will be touched to tears, at the silent confession wrung from him for his mute diary, but known only to himself and to God. Here are a few of these revealing records: "O the work that makes me another Sisyphus. The dogs of hurry and worry give me no rest, day nor night." " Hard day's work after sleepless night. Wrote no end of letters for stu- dents who want places for the summer. " And again : ' ' No good sleep last night to mend ' the raveled sleeve of care ' " ; " Day unto day bringeth weariness, and night unto night asketh, ' How long, Lord?' ' Yet out from such weariness and sleept lessness he would come into open day with God and men as blithe and songful as a bird, with never a murmur on his lips or in his heart. In the inner circle that loved him most, " he would allow himself some periods of quietness and silence ; but of impatience, or fault-finding, or any unloveliness, there is not one memory ! " And this I have from the inner circle's very lips. And now I must not forbear a brief word as to the de- licious humor that blended with other things in the make-up of this unique personality. 14 It was not of the violent sort. It did not burst upon you as if all the flood-gates had been opened. It was moist, but genial and gentle, the play of fancy, the imagination in sport — delighting in the incongruous — and yielding a facetious, though subdued and almost etherial turn of thought. In- deed, nothing with him was with a roar. Even his laughter made no noise. It was quiet, but intense. It began in the merry twinkle of his eye, or in the smile that went chasing its way back to the ears, until the incongruous thing that caused it got such hold of him, that it fairly doubled him up, and shook him through and through. This was when the shaft of wit or splash of humor came from others. When it was his own, the effect only betrayed itself in the twinkle of his eye, or in that inexpressible, that inimitable smile with which he stood and looked you in the face His humor stole in on you in such a quiet way that you were scarcely aware how rich it was, until the moisture oozed and oozed from every pore of the droll, quaint speech. In the earlier days of Wellesley College, when it was a part of the duty of the students to do the housework, one of the girls was reprimanded for her carelessness in failing to dust the back legs of a table. Her sister, then at " Halfwayup," old Professor North about it. It s o amused him that he straightway sat down and wrote this note: " 'Halfwayup,' Nov. 4, 1879. My dear . When Phidias was asked why the figures on his pedimental sculptures were so carefully finished, even in parts wholly removed from the sight of visit- ors, he made that memorable reply, ' The gods see every- where.' Have they a stray goddess at Wellesley, who is equally hind-sighted?" When our class came to Greek recitation one day, we found upon the blackboard, and drawn by our class artist, Tinker, a remarkably striking and suggestive likeness of his never-to- be-forgotten face, done of course more or less in caricature. We waited breathlessly to see what would follow the chair's recognition of the fac-simile. He took his seat, looked at it over his spectacles, and said in his inimitable way, to the nearest student, "Will you please rub that out. One's *5 enough!" And down came the class with a roar that shook the ceiling. Ah! well, one would have been enough, if we could always have kept it — the dear old, quaint original, the picturesque, classical, and homely, yet forever beautiful face, that beamed with kindliness and grew dearer and dearer to every student on the Hill who had the high privilege of look- ing into it any while. One more specimen of his humor must suffice. It is fur- nished by Hubbard, of the class of '50. The last of November, 1848, it was announced in class that a stranger had arrived at " Halfwayup," in an alarming state of destitution. He was at once elected to class membership ; and an outfit of clothing, a copy of Agamemnon and a baby jumper were sent by the class to greet the new arrival. "Old Greek" found no class that morning, but went home with his bundle. The next morning at the class recitation, Professor North said, "I have been made the bearer of a communication to the junior class, which I leave upon the desk." The business committee faced the class, opened the letter and prepared to read. He turned pale, and exclaimed, "Bring the dictionary." Simon Newton Dexter North, the son of his father, and not then a week old, wrote Greek on that first day of December, 1848. The little tot expressed his thanks for the honor of an election to the class, but deeply regretted that the class so soon in his career should deem him worthy of — suspension ! Years later, when the young prodigy in Greek had failed to ake the coveted Greek prize, the father excused it to the com- mittee by saying, " Greek was forced upon him too early!" But I must not fail to mention at least one other character- istic through which Edward North's unique power of person- ality found expression — his contagious enthusiasm. He was an enthusiast, by the very law of his being and the very structure of his mind. He was buoyant, expectant, hopeful, and these are the boughs upon which enthusiasm grows. He had his moods of silence and sadness; the chariot wheels dragged heavily some days. There lurked somewhere in his nature a latent element of sternness. He had in him some of the stuff of which Puritans were made. But prevail- 16 ingly, his mind was on the splendid possibilities of tomorrow rather than on the tasks of yesterday. He knew it was "greatly wise to talk with our past hours;" but he made the talk a spur or awing; not a weight or an anchor. He cher- ished lofty ideals, and they led to lofty enthusiasms. He had a profound sense of the dignity and worth of things to which he put his hand, and they were so transformed under his magic touch, that the dumb idols— remaining dumb and answering nothing in other hands — were living oracles in his, and poured forth a doctrine, or a service, or a song, as sweet and beautiful as the dawn, " walking o'er the dew of a high eastern hill." Doubtless his chief enthusiasm was Greek. He was liter- ally iv $€o$, possessed by the God, as to the Greek language and literature. He himself said at the close of one of his lectures on the old Greek lexicon, that he "had lived so long on Greek, it would never be melted out of him or frozen out of him." No one who had not thumbed the old Greek lexicon over and over and through and through with the hand of his heart, could have fallen so dead in love with it. Hear this ardent lover tell of his passion in this high eulogy: "In com- ing years, when toil and disappointment and sorrow have fur- rowed the brow and pushed the golden bowl to the edge of its breaking, the old Greek lexicon will have its story to tell, when there is comfort in the telling, of youth's eager aspira- tions, sobered now by rough reality, of study's genial nurture and discipline, still adding something of sweetness and some- thing of beauty to the surroundings of life's monotonous drudgery. It will tell of castles in the Spain of a college day- dream, whose brilliant ruins have been framed into the solid structures of a workful, useful life. It will help to keep green the memory of unenvious rivalries that brought the re- wards of finish and enterprise to scholarship, of grace and nu- triment to thinking. It will help to perpetuate the rare blessing that lives in those hearty, breezy, unmercenary com- panionships of student days, with their tender backward glances and their eager onward Teachings, that search the soul as with June's quickening sunshine, for its hidden seeds of heroism, to bid them blossom into generous deeds." 17 And the enthusiasm that glowed and burned within him, that made out of an old Greek lexicon a memory, a poem, an heirloom, an inspiration and a castle builder — this same en- thusiasm he kindled in his students. He did not make them all linguistic experts, oleaginous Tenderers of Homer's verse, and consummate masters of the classic tongue ! No. Neither old Greek, nor young Greek, nor ancient Greek, nor modern Greek, nor even Greek god, could do that. But he did show to every man of them a beauty, a flavor, a richness, a glory in the old Greek poetry and tragedy and song, they had never dreamed of ; and in many of his students he lighted the very fires that burned in his own soul. One of the class of '63 sent this message in that mass of Christmas greetings the old students dumped into his lap at " Halfwayup " two years ago: "The glimpses you gave of the crowning glory of Greek architecture awakened in me a love for Greek literature, history and art, that has been a pleasure and a help all through life." And Hoyt of '75 blossomed into song on that same Christ- mas day, as he said to his old teacher : " Thou madest Greece a fair enchanted land, By simple virtue of thy scholar's wand." This poet student and his poet teacher have since joined in the hallelujahs of heaven ; and if our ears were strung to heavenly music, we might catch the notes of " the new song" they are singing. Another distinguished son of Hamilton, known to two con- tinents, testified in his Christmas greeting that not only his en- thusiasm for language and literature, but for a symmetrical and Christian life, were largely due to this beloved and schol- arly teacher of Greek. And another said, "It was Prof. North who retouched my ideals, taught me a new philosophy of the life of service, and cast a spell of stimulating and abiding influence over my life." Yet how unconscious this Great Heart seemed to be that those fires were lighted at his own altars. Listen to this un- affected child-like word I copy from the little diary, many a page of which is a window revealing the simplicity and mod- 18 esty of this cultured Christian scholar: " Lectured to fresh- men on the influence of Homer. Wonderful is the enthusi- asm of a new class." Wonderful it may have been to him. But wonderful to nobody else. With North as the lecturer and Homer as his theme, enthusiasm was as sure of birth as day is when the sun comes forth out of his chamber. Think of the glow and fervor of feeling that began with that first lecture to the freshmen, and grew and grew with both teacher and taught, until the last lecture to the juniors on " The Old Greek Lexicon," and you will realize what a world of pathos and tears this tenderly reminiscent and sympathetic soul crowded into these closing words of his last lecture to the class: " If it is the last straw that breaks the camel's back, it is the last lecture that breaks the teacher's heart." But he had other enthusiasms than Greek. The College — how he baptized it with his prayers and tears, how full he was with devices for its welfare, how jealous he was of its fair fame, how willing he was to spend and be spent in its behalf, though the more abundantly he loved it, the less he might be loved. I believe he could say to the innermost and to the uttermost : Sooner than forget thee, O Hamilton, my hand shall forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. Gardening was another of his enthusiasms. Nature, to him, had a heart. And he leaned tenderly to the soil, as if he would hear its great, silent throbbing. When he first took the side of the hill for his home, it was rough enough. He named it " Halfwayup." He put poetry into it. He flung his own sunshine all over it. He caressed it into pliant and gentle moods. He knew every flower and shrub and tree on the place, for his hand had planted every one of them. In tearing up a plant, one would think he felt he might hear a human protest from beneath, he did it so gently. Such, in part, was the composite of this rare, unique per- sonality which yet defies classification and flies analysis. You can't find a perfume in a botany book. Cataloguing virtues is not producing a man. But these enumerated characteristics may serve to help us see the nature, "whose gracious influence," says one of the class of '74, — "more than any 19 other single force, leavened the student body." "And who," says a graduate of '72, " impressed me so pro- foundly that every Hamilton graduate owed the world some unselfish work, for the betterment and uplifting of humanity." Thus we have seen how his personality found a voice. His verbal style marked a unique individuality. Even the splash- ing stroke of his pen was unlike any other that ever put a thought in words. We could tell it a rod away. His youth- fulness of spirit also gave his personality a voice. And so did his rare gentleness and his capacity for details, and his deli- cious humor, and his contagious enthusiasm. That he was rich and varied in his linguistic attainments and a consum- mate master of Greek, we all know. That he knew good company and how to keep it, his daily "walk with God" was a daily witness. He had the genius to be loved, the genius to be trusted, the genius to be listened to, — the blessed triad that must keep company in any life, to make it winsome, beautiful, commanding, and Christ-like. The basal thing in the genius to be loved is the heart element. The basal thing in the genius to be trusted is character. The basal thing in the genius to be listened to is brain. Each is a distinct advance upon the other, and a distinct addition to it. The heart ele- ment is at the core of things. Loveableness begets love. But there is something more than this in the genius to be trusted. The mother passionately loves her infant child. But the child must show character before the mother can put trust in the child. And it must grow both character and brain before it can win intellectual homage and command and keep admiration. The brain need not be of the cyclopean or of the myriad-minded order, with trip-hammer logic and unlimited power and sweep of thought. But it must be brain. The brainless surface-seer, whose voluble loquacity is never embarrassed by intellectual activity and who has a vast ca- pacity of saying nothing at great length, will not long get ears to listen to his talk. The beloved North got them and kept them. The genius to be loved and the genius to be trusted and the genius to be listened to, found their basal elements in his personality. And they so interpenetrated each other, so played into each other, and were so harmoniously blended, that he everywhere won both love and admiration. Some men command and get our heads, and harness us to endeavor by the mighty sway of their wills. But we never feel that we would like to pillow our heads on their bosoms. Some men command and get our hearts. But they never lift their heads like mountain peaks before our wide open, wondering and admiring eyes. Let a cultured classical scholar, an honored son of Hamil- ton, an authority in Biblical criticism, and who knows He- brew as our Edward North knew Greek, tell us how he looks at this matter. Here is the tribute he placed on the brow of the dear old octogenarian Professor, a little while before he dropped Greek for the language of heaven. It voices the feeling of a thousand alumni hearts: " Some men I admire whom I do not greatly love. Others I love, but do not greatly admire. But during the forty-seven years since I first had the good fortune to have you as my teacher, you have command- ed in a high degree both my love and my admiration." What a loveable original he was! And what an original loveable ! Twice already we have found him answering to accredited definitions of genius — "Genius is carrying the spirit of childhood up into manhood and old age." Edward North answered to that. " Genius is capacity for and mas- tery of details." Edward North answered to that, too. Now let us turn to another definition. Emerson tells us that a genius is ''a man whom God has sent into this world marked ' not transferable,' and 'good for this trip only.' " The old sage of Concord may have been looking in a mir- ror when he wrote that. Or, he may have been thinking of "Old Greek!' At all events, how it fits! The alumni as one man, say * ' We shall never see his like again. " It was writ- ten all over him, "Not transferable," and "Good for this trip only." " The boys come in and the men go forth, But there never will be but one Edward North, — "Old Greek!" 21 But though we shall never see his like again, we shall see him again, if we keep true, as he kept true, to truth, to con- science and to Christ. Early of a Sabbath morning, last September the thirteenth, the singing soul slipped the shell in which he had so long made music, and the shell was empty. No song sung through the vacant chambers. The singing soul had gone home to God. We call that day his dying day — the day of his death. But did he see death? Yes, but death transformed. No longer a skeleton with a flying dart', but an angel with a golden key. I know not how he went home — up what shin- ing way, or with what attending convoy of ministering spirits. But ever since I stood on the summit of Righi in Switzerland, amidst the splendors of an autumn sunset, and saw God fling a bridge of golden sheen from the horizon across intervening spaces and abysses to my very feet, I have loved to think, and there is nothing in Scripture to forbid the thinking, He might thus cast up a shining way of grace and glory for all his ran- somed children as he called them one by one to come up into His presence chamber. And if he ever did it for anyone, I think He did it for " Old Greek." I love also to think, and there is nothing in Scripture to forbid the thinking, that ministering spirits came out of heaven and down the shining way to meet the aged saint, already feeling the thrill and vigor of immortal youth as he neared the celestial city, and that in loving convoy they saw him through the gates. What if God let the Hamilton boys that had already died in the Lord, do that for Old Greek! Wouldn't it have been just like God ! And wouldn't the boys up there have been proud and glad ! Three days after that ascension day was the day of his burial ; September the sixteenth. Sadly, tenderly, lovingly, we took up the body and laid it away in the College cemetery to await with other precious dust of other beloved servants of God, the resurrection morning. Concerning this burial day we only need assure our hearts that in burying the body of our beloved North, he was not buried. No long unconscious sleep holds him in the tomb. When the emptied shell lay 23 L. 0/ l. there that Sabbath morning, he was already ' ' absent from the body " and ''at home with the Lord." But when the time shall come for the resurrection trump to sound, he shall have his body back again, changed by some mysterious al- chemy, from the old body of weakness and decrepitude to a body of glory and immortal youth. We have come now to another day — his coronation day ! Here we speak our loving memorial in honor of his worth and work. Here we lift invisible monolith, and carve upon it these coronation words. They come from the pen and the heart of one who for more than forty years has shared with me life's toils, and trials, and triumphs, and who from the very first has cherished for my old Greek teacher a high and warm regard : King Edward — first and only ; on these heights To-day we name him thus, our well-loved Greek. In other empires, kings may come and go In transient splendor, crown succeeding crown. This king, serene, benign, and laurel-wreathed With any Grecian hero of them all, Upon abiding throne in loving hearts Shall sit unfollowed and forever crowned ! Edward, our King. But another day is coming — -best day of all — God's great praising day. We shall all be there - — the stelligerent host of the sons of Hamilton that have loved and served their Lord. And then, when the Lord shall bring to light " the hidden things" that have been done in His name, and the heart's counsels that were full of loving devices for Christ's sake, and yet that got no trumpeting here — then shall each man have his praise from God ! What a great day that will be. What blessed surprises God will have for us. What deep abysmal joy we shall step into. And who among us all can have a possible doubt that "When the last great chapel rings, And all the College together brings, When the years and the centuries meet, Then shall we see in the very front seat, •Old Greek!'" 23