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 DELIVERED BY 
 
 JUDGE W. A. FALCONER 
 OF FORT SMITH 
 
 TO THE 
 
 GRADUATING CLASS of SUBIACO COLLEGE 
 SUBIACO, ARK. 
 
 JUNE FIFTEENTH, NINETEEN-NINETEEN 
 
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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2021 with funding from 
 University of Illinois Uroana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/baccalaureateaddOOfale | 
 
Baccalaureate Address 
 
 Delivered by Judge W. A. Falconer 
 of Fort Smith 
 
 Lecky in his “Map of Life” observes a 
 that while the Catholic Church has * 
 
 never adopted the extreme view of 
 the Quakers that all participation in 
 law courts is unchristian, yet that it 
 seems to have instinctively recognized 
 some incompatibility between the pro- 
 fession of a lawyer and the character 
 of a saint, and Renan notices the 
 significant fact that the only lawyer 
 who has found a place in Catholic 
 hagiology was St. Yves of Brittany 
 at whose festival the worshippers 
 were wont to sing: 
 
 “He was a lawyer and not a thief; 
 Wonderous thing—almost beyond 
 belief!’ 
 
 In view of these alleged facts it 
 might be difficult to account for the 
 presence here today of a lawyer—and 
 2 Protestant lawyer at that—to de- 
 liver the baccalaureate address to a 
 class of young men who are candi- 
 dates for the Catholic priesthood, and 
 graduates of a college conducted by 
 one of the oldest and most honored 
 orders of the Catholic Church. 
 
 “I hope you will pardon the sugges- 
 tion that even though no other lawyer 
 has been found worthy to bear St. Yves 
 company on the calendar of Saints, 
 yet the reputation of my profession 
 has so improved since his day as to 
 become almost (if not quite) respec- 
 table and it may be that even the en- 
 tire body of lawyers ig approaching 
 the saintly character in a sort of 
 parabolic curve, ever drawing nearer 
 to that point which it is never destnied 
 to attain. 
 
 Certain it is that my learned and 
 much respected friend, the Prior of 
 this Abbey, who is responsible for my 
 being here, must have persuaded him- 
 self that I, at least, am “advocatus et 
 “non latro” and I am also certain that 
 
 he did not think that my being the 
 one and not the other was “res miran- 
 da populo.” 
 
 The surprising thing to me, as it 
 doubtless is to you, is that, with an 
 unlimited latitude of choice, he has 
 passed by all the academic doctors and 
 prominent divines and chosen me for 
 a task which I feel myself so inad- 
 equately fitted to perform. But 
 whatever the cause which brings me 
 here, I am very grateful for the signal 
 honor of being permitted to speak on 
 the invitation of this splendid institu- 
 tion, to these young men who, having 
 completed their courses of study and 
 won the distinctions conferred for 
 persistent and successful application, 
 are now about to take upon them- 
 selves the duties, responsibilities and 
 larger opportunities of life. 
 
 This Abbey which has been the 
 scene of their labors,—in the dignity, 
 strength and permanence of its build- 
 ings, in the beauty of its surround- 
 ings, in the sweet calm, refining cul- 
 ture and deep spirituality which per- 
 vade it,—will, while memory lasts, 
 awaken inspiring thoughts and pleas- 
 ant emotions in all who, like these 
 young men, have lived for years with- 
 in its walls. Its very name carries us 
 back in fancy over the long and 
 
 winding tracks of history for nearly 
 1500 years, until we stand with the 
 
 benign founder of the Order of Bt. 
 Benedict on that lovely spot Sub La- 
 quum, (Beneath the Lake), where cen- 
 turies before Nero had a summer 
 villa and held his orgies of lust and 
 crime, where men paid divine honors 
 to their heathen gods and even to 
 living men,—whence it may be, Nero 
 issued the orders that hurried St. 
 Paul from the Mammertine prison 
 along the Ostian road to meet a 
 martyr’s death beyond the walls of 
 
 
 
Rome—there, where once _ vice 
 flourished and Jupiter and Nero were 
 worshipped, St. Benedict raised a tem- 
 ple to the “one God, the Father .Al- 
 mighty,’ and to “Jesus Christ Mis 
 only Son, Our Lord.” 
 
 All that Pythagoras in Sout/\ern 
 Italy was to the pagan world 500 
 years before Christ, St. Beneditt in 
 Northern Italy, was (and mor.) to 
 the Christian world 500 years after 
 Christ. 
 
 The former also had his monristery 
 and his brotherhood; taught his dis- 
 ciples temperance in meat and {rink; 
 enforced daily meditations and daily 
 exercise of mind and body; gave in- 
 structions in improved methods of 
 industry and led his votaries in the 
 ways of a virtuous life. But as time 
 went on his followers, led by the de- 
 sire of worldly gain, converted a reli- 
 gious order into a political club and 
 brought their brotherhood to an in- 
 glorious end. But St. Benedict, with 
 none but spiritual aims in view, built 
 his order upon the impregnable rock 
 of Christ, and his disciples, render- 
 ing to Caesar the things that are 
 Caesar’s and to God the things that 
 are God’s, have consistently kept their 
 faith and practices free from political 
 machinations, and so long as they 
 live by the rule of their founder will 
 endure as long as time endures. 
 
 From Subiaco, the birthplace of the 
 Order, we may go with St. Benedict 
 to Monte Cassino, where it reached 
 its full stature and development. 
 About 580 to 590, Monte Cassino was 
 sacked by the Lombards, the com- 
 munity went to Rome and was estab- 
 lished in a monastery attached to the 
 Lateran Basilica. It is now common- 
 ly recognized by scholars that, when 
 Gregory the Great became a monk, 
 
 and turned his palace on the Coelian’ 
 
 Hill into a monastery, the monastic 
 life there carried out was fundamen- 
 tally based on the Benedictine Rule 
 (Dudden’s Gregory the Great 1,608.) 
 From this monastery went forth St. 
 Augustine and his companions on 
 
 their mission to England in 596, car- 
 
 rying their monachism with them; 
 thus England was the first country 
 out of Italy in which Benedictine life 
 was established. ‘The tendency of 
 modern historical scholarship justifies 
 the maintenance of the tradition that 
 St. Augustine and his forty compan- 
 ions were the first great Benedictine 
 apostles and missionaries. After their 
 conversion of England it was Eng- 
 lish Benedictines who evangelized 
 Germany and founded and organized 
 the German Church. The conversion 
 of the Teutonic races may properly 
 be called the work of the Benedictines. 
 During the Eighth Century the Order 
 of St. Benedict became, (outside of 
 Ireland and purely Celtic lands), the 
 only rule and form of monastic life 
 throughout Western Europe and so 
 completely so that Charlemagne once 
 asked if there ever had been any other 
 monastic rule. 
 
 These monasteries became the cen- 
 ters of civilizing influences in edu- 
 cating the youth, in instructing whole 
 nations in agriculture, farming, in the 
 arts and trades and in a temperate, 
 well-ordered, Christian life. 
 
 In these and other monasteries 
 were the only places of security and 
 rest in Western Europe for many cen- 
 turies and the only places where let- 
 ters could in any measure be culti- 
 vated. Here the priceless MSS. of 
 Greek and Latin antiquity were pre- 
 served and the whole world of scholar- 
 ship, whether Jew, Protestant, or 
 Catholic, owes to them a debt of grati- 
 tude which I, as a Protestant, am glad 
 to publicly acknowledge. ' 
 
 I desire especially to declare my ad- 
 miration for the Order of: St. Bene- 
 dict. It appeals to me with its sanity, 
 its humanity, its unselfish service 
 for mankind, its freedom from ex- 
 treme asceticism and bodily abase- 
 ment. While its members are with- 
 drawn from the world and from any 
 commercial and worldly pursuits, and 
 have renounced all individual owner- 
 ship in the work of their own hands 
 and brain, yet they sympathize with 
 and direct others whose chief spur of 
 
effort is the acquisition of property 
 for their families and themselves. 
 The Benedictine seems to me to say, 
 with Terence, in his Heautontimoru- 
 menus “Homo sum: humani nihil a 
 me alienum puto.” (“I am a man and 
 nothing that pertains to man is indif- 
 ferent to me.’’) , 
 
 What mighty changes in human in- 
 stitutions this Order has seen while 
 it has gone on itself unchanged, en- 
 joying a perpetual youth. It saw 
 the birth of Mohammedanism and its 
 fanatic followers, carrying the Koran 
 in one hand and the sword in the 
 other, spread over the East, gain a 
 foothold in the West, then recede and 
 begin its inevitable and hoped-for fall. 
 It saw the Roman Empire break to 
 Pieces and form other empires, some 
 of which flourished for a time and 
 then perished. It saw the English 
 heptarchy united into one kingdom. 
 It was present when Charlemange as- 
 sumed his imperial crown and wit- 
 ‘messed the triumph of William the 
 Conqueror. 
 
 It was over 900 years old when Co- 
 lumbus discovered this continent and 
 planted the cross in a new world, 
 where wandering tribes of savage 
 men have given place in this country 
 to a compact and civilized republic 
 of one hundred million souls. It lived 
 through the Reformation and the 
 Thirty Years War. It saw the meteoric 
 rise and sudden collapse of Napoleonic 
 power. It looked on while the little 
 Duchy of Brandenburg expanded into 
 the kingdom of Prussia and then into 
 the German Empire, and emerged 
 from the World War conquered, and, 
 we hope, chastened, with depleted re- 
 sources and her borders contracted 
 and her colonies lost. 
 
 Through all these centuries of hu- 
 man chance and change the Order of 
 St. Benedict has persisted and 
 flourished, constant in its worship of 
 God and unselfish service to man- 
 kind. 
 
 Under the inspiring influence of 
 this Order you young men of this 
 graduating class have received your 
 
 moral and intellectual food; have 
 made of your. minds storehouses of 
 learning upon which you can draw 
 in every situation of life—storehouses 
 not only of daily bread for mind and 
 soul but also storehouses of seed from 
 which to plant other and larger crops 
 in every field of human _ thought. 
 Under its direction you have com- 
 pleted a thorough and well-rounded 
 collegiate course,—mastered the re- 
 quirements in languages, letters, in 
 sciences and arts, and received the 
 parchment evidences of your pro- 
 ficiency. You have learned to think 
 and to reason; you have acquired 
 habits of study and power of con- 
 centration. You have made your 
 minds subject to your wills and know 
 how to gather your wandering 
 thoughts and direct them upon a given 
 task. You have each embarked upon 
 the sea of knowledge, in a staunch 
 craft, well built and with sails set, 
 and have made one short and prosper- 
 ous voyage. You may roam that 
 boundless sea at will and touch at any 
 port, and find a rich cargo wherever 
 you may anchor. You have had great 
 opportunities and your responsibili- 
 ties are correspondingly great. You 
 have chosen a life of service—service 
 of God and service of your fellow 
 man, and this is a far higher pur- 
 pose than the mere quest of hap- 
 piness for one’s self. Moreover, as it 
 has been well said, happiness is most 
 likely to be attained when it is not 
 the direct object of pursuit. Aside 
 from any question of right or wrong a 
 prime requisite of a happy life is that 
 it should be a full and busy one, di- 
 rected to the attainment of aims out- 
 side ourselves. Nearly every man, 
 who adopts a profession or calling, 
 finds in his chosen work employment 
 for most of his time not given up to 
 eating and sleeping and recreation. 
 Eat we must and sleep we must and 
 recreation we should have—all in 
 moderation—if we are to keep our 
 spirits fresh and our bodies strong. 
 But it is that small residuum of time 
 left from the main business of life 
 
of which so much can be made and 
 from which so much profit and pleas- 
 ure can be derived. 
 
 The trouble with most of us is not 
 so much lack of time as waste of time 
 and there would be no wasted time if 
 we each would resolve upon and fol- 
 low some settled plan for the em- 
 ployment of the few moments daily 
 that otherwise would go in aimless 
 dreaming or dawdling or in unprofit- 
 able or harmful reading. 
 
 Now, as a learned French writer 
 (Tocqueville) has said: “La vie n’est 
 pas un plaisir ni une douleur, mais 
 une affaire grave dont nous sommes 
 charges, et qu’il faut conduire et 
 terminer a notre honneur.’”* Is ours 
 is to be a life of service—as every 
 life should in great measure be—then 
 time is the trust fund which we are to 
 use as we would a ward’s money—not 
 wasting or frittering it away, but 
 keeping the principal intact and earn- 
 ing a constant return. You are all 
 familiar with the rules which Cicero 
 lays down for old age and which are 
 equally applicable to youth as to old 
 age: 
 
 “Habenda ratio valetudinis; uten- 
 dum exercitationibus modicis; tantum 
 cibi et potionis adhibendum, ut re- 
 ficlantur vires, non opprimantur—Nec 
 vero corpori solum subveniendum est, 
 sed menti atque animo multo magis; 
 nam haec quoque, nisi tanquam lumini 
 oleum instilles, extinguuntur senec- 
 tute; et corpora quidem exercitat- 
 ionum defatigatione ingravescunt 
 animi autem exercendo levantur.”+ 
 
 The trouble with most men is that 
 they feel that their education is com- 
 pleted when they leave college, where- 
 as, in fact, it is only well begun. A 
 striking example of a man who not 
 only kept up his studies after leaving 
 
 college, but really extended his know- 
 ledge of them was Lord Macaulay, 
 After gaining a great name in Parlia- 
 ment as one of the best orators and 
 debaters of his day, and in the world 
 of letters, as one of its most brilliant 
 writers, he was sent to India, at the 
 age of 34, as a member of the Su- 
 preme Council. His duties there were 
 varied and exacting. Most men would 
 have had time for nothing else, but 
 Macaulay found time for something 
 outside the governing of an Empire. 
 
 Writing from Calcutta in February 
 1835 to his friend, Ellis, then in Lon- 
 don, also a lover of the classics and 
 an eminent lawyer, Macaulay says: 
 
 “Tl have gone back to Greek liter- 
 ature with a passion quite astonish- 
 ing to myself. I have never felt any- 
 thing like it. I was enraptured with 
 Italian the six months which I gave 
 up to it; and I was little less pleased 
 with Spanish. But when I went back 
 to Greek, I felt as if I had never 
 known before what intellectual enjoy- 
 ment was. 
 
 “I think myself very fortunate in 
 having been able to return to these 
 great masters while still in the full 
 vigor of life and when my taste and 
 judgment are mature. Most people 
 read all the Greek they ever read be- 
 fore they are five and twenty. They 
 never find time for such studies after- 
 wards until they are in the decline 
 of life, and then their knowledge of 
 the language is in a great measure 
 lost and cannot easily be recovered. 
 Accordingly almost all the ideas that 
 people have of Greek literature are 
 ideas formed while they are still very 
 young. A young man, whatever his 
 genius may be, is no judge of such a 
 writer as Thucydides. I had no high 
 opinion of him ten years ago. I have 
 
 ‘*“7 ife is not pleasure and not pain, but a serious business with which we must 
 
 conduct and finish to our honor.” 
 
 “We should adopt a regimen of health; employ moderate exercise and take just 
 enough of food and drink to restore our strength and not to burden it. Nor,. 
 indeed, are we to give our attention solely to the body; much greater care is 
 due the mind and soul; for they, too, like lamps, grow dim with time unless we 
 keep them supplied with oil. Moreover exercise causes the body to grow heavy 
 with fatigue, but intellectual activity gives buoyancy to the mind.” 
 
now been reading him with a mind 
 accustomed to historical researches 
 and to political affairs and I am as- 
 tonished at my own former blindness 
 and his greatness. I could not bear 
 Euripides at college. I now read my 
 recantation. He has faults undoubted- 
 ly. But what a poet! The “Medea,” 
 the “Alcestis,” the “Troades,” the 
 “Bacchae,” are alone sufficient to 
 place him in the first rank.” 
 
 Writing to this same congenial 
 spirit in December, 1835, (Trevelyan’s 
 Life of M., 1, 388) he says: 
 
 “During the last thirteen months I 
 have read Aeschylus twice; Sophocles 
 twice; Euripides once; Pindar twice; 
 Callimachus, Appollonius Rhodius, 
 Quintus Colaber, Theocritus twice; 
 Herodiotus, Thucydides, almost all 
 Xenophon’s works; also all Plato; 
 Aristotle’s ‘Politics,’ and a good deal 
 of his ‘Organon,’ besides diping else- 
 where in him; the whole of Plutarch’s 
 ‘Lives,’ about half of Lucian, two or 
 three books of Athenaeus; Plantus 
 twice; Terence twice; Lucretius twice; 
 Catullus Tibulus; Propertius; Lucan, 
 Statius, Silius Italicus; Livy; Veller- 
 ius Paterculus; Sallust; Caesar, and 
 lastly, Cicero.” 
 
 In another letter (page 392) he 
 says: 
 
 “My mornings from five to nine are 
 quite my own. I still give them to 
 - ancient literature. I got into a way 
 last year of reading a Greek play 
 every Sunday.” On November 26th, 
 1836, (page 397) in writing to Napier 
 of the “Edinburgh Review,” he speaks 
 of his intention of using the four 
 months voyage then required to go 
 from India to England “in mastering 
 the German language.” He thereupon 
 orders sent to him from England for 
 his purpose “the best grammar and 
 the best dictionary that can be pro- 
 cured; a German Bible, Schiller’s 
 Works, Goethe’s Works and Niebuhr’s 
 History, both in the original and in 
 translation. My way,” he says, “of 
 learning a language is always to be- 
 gin with the Bible which I can read 
 without a dictionary. After a few 
 
 days passed in this way, I am master 
 of all the common particles and the 
 common rules of syntax and a pretty 
 large vocabulary. Then I fall on some 
 good classical work. It was in this 
 way that I learned both Spanish and 
 Portuguese and I shall try the same 
 course with German.” 
 
 Macaulay, of course, was a genius, 
 
 with a prodidgious memory and few 
 can hope to rival him, but all may to 
 the extent of their opportunity and 
 ability profit by his example. To 
 show what value he placed on even a 
 few moments every day devoted to 
 one subjeet, he urged his busy lawyer 
 friend to translate Herodotus: “You 
 would do it excellently and a transla- 
 tion of Herodotus, well executed, 
 would rank with original composition. 
 A quarter of an hour a day would 
 finish the work in five years. The 
 notes might be made the most amus- 
 ing in the world” 
 In urging the wise employment of 
 time I would urge against making 
 self-culture the chief aim of life. It 
 would be a selfish thing to devote all 
 one’s spare time to one’s own pleas- 
 ure, whether intellectual or physical. 
 It is a generous thing to give some 
 portion of that leisure to other peo- 
 ple—in social intercourse, in acts of 
 courtesy and kindness—and this we 
 should all do for our own moral health 
 as well as for the good of other peo- 
 ple. 
 
 Cultivating a spirit of thoughtful- 
 ness for others is a splendid exercise 
 and like mercy— 
 
 “Tt droppeth as the gentle rain from 
 heaven 
 
 Upon the place beneath; it is twice 
 bless’d; 
 
 It blesseth him that gives, and him 
 that takes; 
 
 ’'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it 
 becomes 
 
 The throned monarch better than 
 his crown.” 
 
 Those who go into the Christian 
 ministry dedicate the bulk of their 
 time to the service of God and of man 
 
and have but a little remnant that 
 can be devoted to self. Those who 
 go into the business of money getting 
 have devoted their lives for the most 
 part to selfish ends and have, of ne- 
 cessity, only a fragment of time to 
 give to spiritual and _ intellectual 
 things, or to unselfish ends. 
 
 A man whether priest or merchant, 
 will devote, say, ninety per cent of his 
 time to his chosen calling, including 
 the direct and incidental labors it en- 
 tails, and including sleeping, eating, 
 recreation and the necessary exercise; 
 and will have, say ten per cent of his 
 time—it may be two hours, it may be 
 less, which he can spend as he chooses. 
 
 If priest or merchant uses his ten 
 
 per cent of disposable time as he did 
 
 the bulk of his ninety per cent he is a 
 mere drudge—life is a tread-mill and 
 his mind goes round and round the 
 same narrow circle. In the case of 
 the priest, his spirituality will lack 
 humanity, and in the case of the mer- 
 chant his humanity will lack spirit- 
 uality. After ninety per cent of the 
 day has been spent as it must be 
 spent without your having very much 
 choice as to how it must be spent—for 
 the demands of your particular calling 
 determine that—I do not mean that 
 the remaining ten per cent should be 
 devoted entirely to your own self- 
 culture—that might and _ probably 
 would be very selfish. A portion of 
 that little ten per cent may be claimed 
 by a visit to the sick, conversation 
 with a friend, or in the effort to help 
 a school boy across his “pons asino- 
 rum” or by some act of courtesy or 
 kindness. Let me illustrate with an 
 example: Mercator is on a street car 
 —the rain is coming down in tor- 
 rents— but he is inside and moreover 
 has his raincoat and umbrella. He is 
 going home from his office to devote 
 20 minutes before supper to an ode of 
 Horace. He looks across the car and 
 sees Ihis 75-year-old friend, Senex, 
 going home, but without coat or um- 
 brella. Each lives two blocks from the 
 street car and Mercator lives two 
 blocks further out than Senex. Senex 
 
 approaches his corner and rings the 
 bell. Mercator rises, too, though two 
 blocks short of his stop, precedes 
 Senex out of the car, raises his um- 
 brella, helps Senex down the steps 
 and conducts him, dry and grateful, 
 to his own door. 
 
 Now one half of the time set apart 
 for, Horace has been spent—or rather 
 invested—in pursuing another’s hap- 
 piness and comfort rather than his 
 own. Mercator has gained happiness 
 for himself and gained as much spirit- 
 ual uplift as if he had given to Horace 
 the ten minutes given to Senex. 
 
 By all means deduct from your ten 
 per cent of disposable time all the lit- 
 tle acts of kindness such as that men- 
 tioned and you will still have enough 
 left to keep all the Hebrew, Greek 
 and Latin you have, give you a 
 better understanding of what you 
 have already studied and carry you 
 far into new fields. 
 
 There is a wide-spread belief that 
 for a man in business or in the public 
 service, or in a profession, to divert 
 his mind with a study of the classics, - 
 the sciences, literature or the arts, 
 unfits him to discharge his main pur- 
 pose in life. It is thought, especially 
 in this country, that a knowledge of 
 the classics is evidence of a lack of 
 common sense, if not of weakness of 
 intellect. This is a baseless assump- 
 tion and is born of ignorance. If the 
 best way to secure a perfect body is 
 to exercise and develop every muscle, 
 why is it not equally good, if man 
 is to be more than a mere brute, to 
 exercise and develop every function 
 of the mind? Or is Milo’s strength of 
 body to be preferred to Pythagoras’ 
 strength of mind? Julius Caesar was . 
 deeply versed in letters and philoso- 
 phy and yet’ was the greatest ruler 
 and most brilliant warrior of his or | 
 of any other age. Gladstone was the 
 greatest statesman in England and 
 knew his Homer better than most of 
 his countrymen knew their Shakes- 
 
 ‘peare. Forsyth, an eminent lawyer, 
 
 wrote the best life of Cicero that 
 exists in the English tongue. Benja- 
 
min Franklin was a practical printer 
 —a self-educated man of wide cul- 
 ure,—one of the founders of this re- 
 public—and was the first man to es- 
 tablish the identity of lightning and 
 electricity. Von Moltke, though 
 versed in seven tongues, was one of 
 the greatest masters of the *art of 
 war. Hamilton, while engaged with 
 Madison and Jay in writing the 
 Federalist papers, the best treatise we 
 have on the Federal constitution, was 
 constantly reading his Euclid to im- 
 prove his powers of reasoning. And 
 today it is a scholar, a schoolmaster, 
 a writer of books and a dabbler in 
 philosophy, who is at the head of the 
 greatest republic in the world; and 
 history, I believe, will record that 
 America has never produced a greater 
 er wiser leader of men than this same 
 lover of books, Woodrow Wilson. 
 
 I protest against the tendency of 
 the age for young men to exclude 
 from their curriculum any study 
 which does not have some direct bear- 
 ing on the business of getting money. 
 There are riches in the classics which 
 are worth far more than gold. The 
 greatest of the four great fathers of 
 the Church acknowledged that by 
 reading Cicero’s “Hortensius” his 
 mind was prepared for the acceptance 
 of Christianity. Besides, we should 
 have some ends higher than the mere 
 quest of filthy lucre and take quite 
 as much pains in providing food for 
 our immortal souls as we do in put- 
 ting guineas in a purse for which 
 there will be no pockets in our 
 shrouds. 
 
 When I left college I was a poorer 
 
 scholar and less widely read than any 
 of the graduates here today. I recall 
 that as I said good bye to my old Latin 
 professor in the University of Vir- 
 ginia—who, by the way, had been a 
 colonel in the Conferedate army—he 
 said: “Keep up your Latin, Sir. Read 
 Plautus.” 
 
 I thanked him for his advice but 
 what I said to myself after I got out 
 of héaring was: “If I ever read any 
 
 more Latin, my dear professor, it will 
 be at the point of a gun.” I did re- 
 solve, however, to keep up my reading 
 of French and this resolve I have 
 faithfully kept. 
 
 A few years passed by and I was 
 innocent of any attempt to renew my 
 slight acquaintance with Latin, when 
 chance drove me to it. A young 
 friend of mine got into serious dif- 
 culties with Julius Caesar in Gaul and 
 called on me for help. In trying to 
 make him understand and to get an 
 interest I aroused my own interest. We 
 read and our interest grew. We got 
 Froude’s Life of Caesar and read that 
 and very soon he had moved up from 
 the foot of his class to the head. We 
 read two or three books and when I 
 had finished with him I began to rea- 
 lize what a wonderful work Caesar’s 
 Galic War was and I then read on by 
 myself until I had gone through the 
 entire seven books and the concluding 
 work by Hirtius. Later, I had another 
 young friend who was on bad terms 
 with Aeneas and Dido and _ other 
 worthies, and I read the Aeneid with 
 him at night. Meantime my days 
 were given up to a more or less preca- 
 rious quest of a livelihood at the bar. 
 Then I went into politics and became 
 county judge and determined to take 
 up Spanish. By eating my lunch in 
 my office, I was enabled to spend an 
 hour a day for some months with a 
 genial Mexican friend who was en- 
 gaged in the elevating pursuit of 
 vending hot tamales; and I acquired 
 vocabulary enough to read “El Nino 
 de Bola” and a few other books in 
 Spanish and to learn to say “Ca-bah- 
 yo” instead of the more correct “Ca- 
 bal-yo.” I even got so proficient in 
 Spanish that I ate chile con carne and 
 drank tobasco sauce! I regret to say 
 however that after learning enough to 
 read with considerable ease, I grad- 
 ually dropped my Spanish until I 
 fear most of it is gone, though ten 
 minutes a day would have kept it up. 
 My neglect, I trust none of you will 
 be guilty of. A little later while em- 
 ployed at least eight hours a day in 
 
exacting public labors, I took up 
 Italian with no other aid than a gram- 
 mar and a reader and an Italian Bi- 
 ble and I managed to get a fair vo- 
 cabulary, but I made no great pro- 
 gress and did not keep the little that 
 I learned. It was after I became 
 Chancellor that I returned to my 
 Latin and at the instance of a dear 
 old uncle, who in his last illness had 
 received much pleasure and inspira- 
 tion from Cicero’s argumen* on the 
 immortality of the soul, as set out in 
 the “Cato Maior de Senectute.” I be- 
 gan to write out a translation of it. 
 In traveling the circuit and visiting 
 eight county seats and during my 
 stays at home, I would read and 
 translate whenever a leisure moment 
 permitted and finally completed my 
 task. Then I set about annotating my 
 version. All this led me on to go 
 further into Cicero and as a result I 
 have written translations of his “De 
 Amicitia” and of his “Dream of 
 Scipio.” The long forgotten admoni- 
 tion to “read Plautus” came to mind, 
 in proof that good counsel is never 
 thrown away and I read several plays 
 of Plautus, of one of which I wrote 
 out a translation. I did the same with 
 a book of Ovid. I have also, under 
 the inspiring lead of Dr. Stocker, read 
 all of Horace. Besides this, in the 
 course of my Ciceronian studies, I 
 read in French, “Ciceron et Ses Amis” 
 and read partly in Latin and partly in 
 translation, all Cicero’s letters, his 
 “De Fato,” “De Republica,” “De Of- 
 ficiis,’ his orations and, in fact, all 
 his extant works except his “Acade- 
 mics,” “Tusculan Disputations,” and 
 his tretise on “Good and Evil.” 
 
 Now I mention all this in no boast- 
 ing way, for I have not read deeply 
 and in the way of a true scholar, and 
 I claim no title to take any rank 
 among scholars, but I speak of it for 
 the purpose of showing that a man, 
 however engrossed he may be in busi- 
 ness, may yet find time, if he will, to 
 get solace and pleasure of the purest 
 and most satisfying kind from the 
 master minds of ancient times. 
 
 I cannot express what a deep im- 
 press, Cicero and Horace in particu- 
 lar have left upon me; the first, for 
 his wonderful intellectual accomplish- 
 ments in old age, amid domestic sor- 
 rows and the most grevious disap- 
 pointments; the other, for the strong 
 appeal he makes for the simple life. 
 My one main purpose too, in drawing 
 examples from my own experience is 
 that, since I am no better equipped 
 with mental endowments than the 
 average man and since my life for 
 the past twenty years has been even 
 more than that of most men, crowded 
 with care and responsibilities—there- 
 fore, the little that I have done in the 
 way of extending my knowledge and 
 culture, can be equalled by almost 
 any one, who has the will to try, and 
 can be far surpassed by most of the 
 undergraduates who will I trust in 
 due time stand here to receive their 
 academic degrees. 
 
 This personal sketch may show you 
 how to avoid some of my faults—the 
 chief of which is that I have not had 
 a set scheme of study, with a regular, 
 though short, period every day to de- 
 vote to some particular work. If you 
 take my advice you will do what I 
 have done and more and in a far more 
 systematic way and if you do, you 
 will find, not that you have more 
 money, but that you have gained in- 
 tellectual delights which money can 
 not buy and which will enable you the 
 better to arrive at that state of mind, 
 spoken of by St. Paul, “I have learned 
 in whatsoever state I am, therewith 
 to be content.” 
 
 And now to the members of this 
 class I wish “bon voyage” as they em- 
 bark on their mission in life. 
 
 “Adieu, dear amiable youths! 
 
 Your hearts can ne’er be wanting! 
 May prudence, fortitude and truth, 
 Erect your brows, undaunting! 
 
 In ploughmen phrase ‘God send you 
 
 speed,’ 
 
 Daily to grow wiser! 
 
 And may ye better reck the rede, 
 Than ever did th‘ adviser.” 
 

 
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