HOBART COLLEGE BULLETINS Vol. VI OCTOBER, 1907 No. 1 iMmtroriai Srilmfr to Sxt\\n Published by Hobart College, Geneva, N. Y. Issued quarterly. Entered October 28, 1902, at Geneva, N. Y., as second-class matter, under Act of Congress of July 16, 1894. APPEAL FOR COPIES OF HOBART PUBLICATIONS In order properly to fill out its sets, the College is in need of the following issues of Hobart publications : Catalogue: — 1837-38, 1838-39, 1844-45, 1 ^ > 4^>~49> 1850-51, 1864-65, 1880-81. Echo: — Vols. I-XI (Classes of 1857-187 2) inclusive; Vols. XXI (Classes of 1882), XXXV (Class of 1897), XXXIX (Class of 1901), XL (Class of 1902), XLI (Class of 1903). Herald: — Vols. I-VI (1877-1885) inclusive, any num- bers; Vol. VII (1885-86), Nos. 3, 4, 5, 7; Vol. VIII (1886-87), Nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7; Vol. IX (1887-88), Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; Vol. X (1888-89), Nos. 3, 5, 8, 9; Vol. XI (1889-90), Nos. 5, 10; Vol. XVI (1894-95), Nos. 1, 6, 10; Vol. XVII (1895-96), No. 1; Vol. XVIII (1896-97)^0. 8; Vol. XXII (1900-01), No. 3. The deficiencies in Vols. I-VII (1877-86) and XVI (1894-95), are especially serious. It is earnestly desired that anyone who is in a position to do so will send the above mentioned issues (any numbers, however scattering, will be useful), to the Librarian of the College, Dr. Charles D. Vail. ADDRESS TO THE ALUMNI To the Alumni of Hob art College: Gentlemen : The college year of 1907-08 opens with bright prospects for Hobart. The walls of the William Smith Hall of Science are well above ground and the remodeling of Smith House, which is to be the first dormitory of Smith College, is progressing favorably. The plans for the new Gymnasium have been completed and accepted, the exca- vation is already well advanced, and it is our present intention to lay the corner stone on the fifteenth of November. After this the foundation walls will be properly protected for the winter but no further work will be attempted until spring. In addition to progress on the new buildings it gives me great pleasure to report that Hobart has received the magnificent bequest of the library of the late Mr. John Safford Fiske of Alassio, Italy. The books have already arrived in Geneva and have been placed upon the shelves. They number in all about four thousand. Not only is this collection rich in valuable works on art but it also provides us with a much needed installment of Italian literature. As Hobart is offering this year for the first time courses in Spanish and Italian Mr. Fiske's noble gift has arrived in the nick of time. A full account of this bequest from the pen of Prof. McDaniels is the outstanding feature of the present Bulletin. In closing this brief address to the Alumni I can but reiterate the statement which I made to them in my circular letter of last April. In that letter and after (3) 4 Hobart College pointing out the increase in the amount of the tuition fees and the general betterment of our financial condition I added, "Our improved showing has been due to two facts ; to wit : the generous contributions of the Alumni and the growth of the undergraduate body. Will you not, therefore, bear these facts in mind and earnestly seek opportunities to send us students and to continue and enlarge the Alumni fund?" Now we have had many encouragements since this letter was written. The Commencement of last June was admitted by all to have been the most enthusiastic as well as the most largely attended in the whole history of the College. The men who came back brought with them a fine spirit of loyalty and devotion which augured well for the future . The class of ' 8 2 , in particular , held its 25th anniversary in force and made a new departure in presenting a contribution of $600.00 to the Endowment Fund. During the summer, Mr. Powell Evans of the Class of '&& also sent us $1000.00 for the same fund. All these are hopeful symptoms of better things to come and helpful stimuli to their achievement. Nevertheless, although we gladly and gratefully ac- knowledge these welcome signs of loyalty among the Alumni, I cannot and ought not to hide from you the fact that the Alumni Fund, now in its fourth year, is steadily decreasing. Beginning with five thousand dollars ($5000.00) in 1905, it fell to four thousand, two hundred thirty dollars ($4230.00) in 1 907 , and this year, it will sink well below the $4000.00 mark. Now will not you gentlemen of the Alumni take these facts to heart? Will you not furthermore actively exert yourselves not merely to keep up and if possible increase your subscriptions but also to send us new students? The large increase in Address to the Alumni 5 the undergraduate body of Dartmouth College during the past ten years has been due, under President Tucker, to the hard work done by Dartmouth alumni all over the country. Even in the far West and on the Pacific Coast the Dartmouth men have flourishing associations and yearly send a goodly number of young fellows to the little town among the New Hampshire hills. The Hobart men are quite capable of doing a like work if they can but awake to its necessity and realize their own importance as factors in the welfare and development of their Alma Mater. We begin this year with a total registration of one hundred students. Of these sixty- five are old men and thirty-five are new. Four or five years ago thirty-five would have been regarded as a good class for Hobart but we have the right to expect better things for the future. It has been very difficult, so students tell me, to induce men to enter up at Hobart because we were without a gymnasium, but the corner stone of the Gymnasium, as I have already announced, will be laid in November and we expect to have it com- pleted in June. It has also been difficult to persuade students to come to a college where no courses were offered in Biology and Political Economy, but next year these courses will be open to all applicants and Hobart will then have a thoroughly modern and complete curriculum. To obtain students we must of course furnish them with the educational facilities they crave. Now I have stated these facts to the Alumni because I wish them to realize on the one hand that it has been passing hard to make bricks without straw and on the other that our equipment is now of such a character as to warrant any man in sending his sons to Hobart or in influencing his friends to do the like. We do not pre- 6 Hobart College tend to do university work but our college work, always good as far as it went, will next year meet all the im- portant and essential demands of collegiate education. Such being the condition of things here in Geneva and such being our prospects for the future, we of the faculty turn our faces to the students of former years and ask them to fill their vacant places with new men. The prospects for the class entering in '08, are exceptionally good and indeed there is no reason why this class should not number sixty men next September if the Alumni but give the matter their earnest attention and heartfelt effort. For myself I can say that I have never made any appeal to the Alumni which has been altogether in vain and I am therefore encouraged to hope that this last appeal of mine will meet with a ready and wide response. I am, gentlemen of the Alumni, Faithfully yours, Langdon C. Stewardson JOHN SAFFORD FISKE The valuable library which has lately come to Hobart College from Alassio, Italy, is one of the largest and most important collections which it has ever received by bequest. It is the library of a connoisseur in art, of a student of certain epochs of French history and of Italian literature, — the slow and painstaking growth and accumulation of many years of study and research. It fills, too, a great gap in the equipment of the college library, and curiously enough the giver of this timely and much-needed accession had partly in mind for many years the object of enriching our library, though he was unknown to our alumni and to the friends of the college. It does not seem right that our benefactor should remain totally unknown to us — a mere name to be inscribed on a tablet of brass. I am, therefore, frankly grateful for the opportunity of paying my tribute to the memory of an old friend and of introducing to the alumni of the college their secret benefactor — a personality interesting and captivating to an unusual degree. Mr. John Safford Fiske was born in Ohio, January 18, 1838, and was a graduate of Yale University in the class of 1863. On both sides his family has been American for over two hundred and fifty years. His father was of Suffolk (England) stock, ancient and honorable; his mother also of English stock had a great-great-grand- father in the English army. His great-grandfather served on the staff of Washington. After graduating Mr. Fiske spent some years as United States consul at Leith (Edinburgh) ; then a year in Diisseldorf where he occupied himself with painting and architecture. In (7) 8 Hobart College 1874, after some years in the United States, he returned to Europe where he lived in Diisseldorf, Pinneberg (Holstein), and Ecouen, near Paris, with a year at Constantinople (1876-77). In 1882 he settled at Alassio on the Riviera between Genoa and San Remo. His occupation during this time was partly literary, partly artistic. In 1873 he pub- lished a translation of Taine's ' 'Voyage aux Pyrenees;" he also wrote of current events to various newspapers from Sweden, Russia, Germany, Turkey, Greece and Italy. He furnished more recently a number of articles to the "Dictionary of Architecture and Building" edited by Russell Sturgis. In a report to the secretary of the class of 1863, he says, characteristically: "My literary baggage is so modest that I have diffidence in mentioning the degree of L.H.D. conferred upon me by Hobart College in 1897. # # # I may also mention that the same college invited me to give courses of lectures on architecture, an invitation which my resi- dence abroad compelled me regretfully to decline." I have lately glanced over some of the bulletins which Mr. Fiske used to send regularly to The Nation — his occasional summaries of the progress of Italian literature. They are distinguished at once from the ordinary per- functory notice, savoring of the advertising advance sheet, by the penetration, the discrimination, the ac- curacy of his characterization, the completeness with which he sketches and sums up an author's qualities in the brief space at his disposal. The better one knows the literature he tasted, the more perfect appear these brief sketches and cameos. What he has to say of authors so manifold and diverse, of the poets, Carducci and Gabriele d' Annunzio; of the novelists, Fogazzaro, John Safford Fiske 9 Calandra, Pirandello, Matilde Serao; of the essays of Dino Mantovani, of Belli's astonishing sonnets, is so apt, so hits the mark, is so touched with a happy humor that you constantly wish he had had more elbow room, and a permanent casket for the jewels he has flung liberally into the columns of a newspaper to be buried in the files of the library stackroom. You see that these apprecia- tions are the product of slow and careful reading, or re-reading con amore ; that they come from a mind tho- roughly stored, yet drawing lightly and easily from its stores, with a taste as nice, as delicate, as sure as that which he applied to art and architecture. He has, to quote his own words of Mantovani, "a light, graceful, persuasive form and the faculty of expressing the opinion that seems the fine fleur of cultivated refined common sense." I wish I might illustrate the urbanity of his humor, his keen and subtle observation. There is a letter from Constantinople, flung into the columns of The Telegraph, which one might read with pleasure after Gautier, or Loti, or De Amicis. There is one from Sardinia which includes a miniature of the scenery and the people. It is a shame that such things should vanish. You can read them over and over, for they are in reality small pieces of the gold of literature. They ought to have been expanded into a little book of essays. The numerous papers which he wrote on the Columb- ian Exposition at Chicago, on some Piedmontese Sanctu- aries at Varallo and the neighborhood, his review of Fritsch's great work on German architecture of the Renaissance, his penetrating and illuminating discussion of Palladio's architecture at Vicenza, illustrate the solidity and variety of his knowledge and training in matters of art, and of architecture especially. The io Hobart College range of his acquaintance with churches and monuments was very wide and accurate and it was a knowledge at first hand. He had seen and examined with his own eyes the most interesting edifices and remains from Constanti- nople to Spain, in the West from Sicily to Great Britain. The cathedrals he had studied with the eye of an archi- tect; in Northern Italy and the Ligurian coast he had traversed every step at leisure more than once, and he could describe to you the minutest peculiarities and the special places in architectural development of every little church in such spots as Noli, or Albenga, or Andorra. He had been the cicerone of Freeman in his travels in Sicily which laid the foundation of his great work on that island ; he had been the intimate companion of the scholar and diplomatist, Eugene Schuyler, in voyages through the Levant and the Aegean sea — a brace of comrades they made who between them possessed all the languages and most of the dialects which unlock the secrets of those polyglot coasts and islands. One can only regret, in perusing these scattered dissertations, that they have never been collected and expanded into a volume which would have allured by its style and in- structed by its matter. It is a pity that Mr. Fiske denied himself the making of a book, while so many flood the world with productions whose absence we could serenely tolerate. His contributions to Sturgis's Dictionary of Architecture gave him little satisfaction, as they were so frequently mutilated by the exigency of space. Various lectures which he read from time to time would have deserved a permanent form. They would have served as valuable parts of a college course on art and architecture. In such services Mr. Fiske's talent and equipment would have been admirably employed if his health had per- John S afford Fiske ii mitted him to spend his winters in this country. He would have allured and rejoiced his students by the grace and bonhommie of his teaching. It is a pity that those of us who are dessicated in the professorial business, and who are parts of the praiseworthy machine wherein students and instructors grind together, could not have our places filled at intervals by these fresh spirits who have worked con amove, without any distant thought of bread and butter and wife and child. Besides these literary gifts Mr. Fiske had a talent for acting which was something extraordinary and really worth mention. To say that he surpassed many pro- fessionals is a dubious compliment; for we know what some of the professionals are, even on our New York stage. I saw him take the part of Auld Robin Gray at the little theatre in Alassio, and though there was good acting and mellow English voices, he was by general acclaim, the star of the evening. Such finesse and delicacy, such subtility of tone and expression of feature, such reserve and completeness belong to the best of the profession; within the demands of the slender role to which he confined himself it is difficult to see how the best trained and most experienced actor could have excelled him. His letters to his friends, too, belonged to a generation when people had leisure. He could not be slipshod, or banal, or commonplace, or confine himself to mere matters of fact. He could not wear his dressing gown when he met you in this way. He gave you something of him- self, as he liked to give you his best wine at dinner. He let his fancy play, his expression was as neat and clear as his handwriting. His friends remember what that was to the end. 12 Hobart College Of course such a habit implies leisure, and Mr. Fiske enjoyed a great deal of what might be called elegant leisure — certainly, not idle leisure. He had for many years his time at his command; but he used it in wide and leisurely travel, or in constant reading or writing when he was at home. When he travelled he used the eye of a trained artist and observer, and above all he was the delight and source of a social life. No one who knew him during the last twenty years of his life could think of him apart from his villa ''Costa Lupara" and the be- witching garden which he opened hospitably and freely to his friends and to the refined society of the colony of Alassio. His garden was a small paradise in that sequestered spot once uncorrupted by the casual tourist, and even now in spite of modernizing processes and a brief invasion of coronets and crowns, a peculiarly attractive nook of the western Riviera, twenty-seven miles from San Remo. It is vain to attempt to convey an idea to those who battle with our grudging northern climate and its many pests, of the exuberant growths which the semi-tropical sun of the Riviera nurses into perennial splendour. The garden paths of Costa Lupara wound and climbed far up the terraces of a hill-side, luxuriant with the dark rich green of olive trees, so steep that its salita was trod- den only by the peasants and their mules mounting to the skyline, where two thousand feet above, a single gap looked toward the cloud-like ridges of dazzling snowy Alps. All fragrant flowers of the temperate zone blossomed there respondent to that happy climate — tuberoses, beds of iris, and pansies and forget-me-nots alternations of golden and crimson bugles glancing from the trellised vines that curtained with dark green the John Safford Fiske 13 graceful pillars and arches of the loggia, while strange fantastic cactuses burst suddenly into delicious sur- prises of pink bell-mouthed blossoms tipped with blue. Rare roses — the Fortune's Yellow — poured cataracts down the banks and spread in torrents over tall trees, with a profusion and perfection incredible to us who fight so hard for the lives of a few straggling bushes. All these harmonies of artistic arrangement, these silent sur- prises week after week, these varied hues and graceful caprices, were planned and designed by the owner him- self He knew the time and place of every tiniest flower ; he had assigned its part in that annual symphony of beauty and fragrance. As he sat beneath one of the enormous spreading palms, impervious to sun or rain, and wrote at his table, casting a glance now and then at the amethyst of the Mediterranean set against the noble headland of Capo Mele, he was indeed the Power, the Genius of the spot, watching over a garden, in sober truth, more beautiful and lavish and captivating than Shelley describes in his Sensitive Plant. All that the poet paints in his melodious verse was there — all and more too, made vocal day and night by the sound of nightingales, and at dusk by the faint cry of the hylas, or the sound of distant chimes from the ancient village church, or at dawn by the thin faint piercing cockcrow from fields where the early peasant toiled, — sole message from mankind to penetrate this enchanted seclusion. I have taken the liberty to suggest this intimate picture of " Costa Lupara" — the garden and house — because each was, in a sense, the expression of my friend, — in each he expressed his passion for ordered beauty and for art, just as his library expressed the direction of his research and investigation, his taste for literature and 14 Hobart College art. His house grew about him and fitted him as nicely as his shell fits a snail, or rather, as the chambered Nautilus builds his home. It was his own design, practically, the frescoes, the carved mantels, the elabor- ate and delicate harmonies of color, the arrangement of tapestries and the pictures which were mostly mementos of beloved artist friends. His house, one might say, was a small palace, without lavishness, without vulgarity. Its motto might have been that which Pericles ascribes to the Athenians : We pursue the Beautiful with refine- ment and economy. A life of this kind, serenely and moderately luxurious, nourished by art and literature, by the beauties of nature and the graces of social intercourse, has little or nothing to commend itself to the Puritanic conscience, which many of us cherish as a luxury or a necessity. It is a working model, on a reasonable scale, of Tennyson's "Palace of Art" — the life of the genuine Epicurean, not of the common herd, who works out the real rule and pre- cepts of Epicurus, in tranquil enjoyment of the most refined and enduring pleasure, material or intellectual. I may say, in passing, that it is by no means necessarily a self-centered life, as it is based upon human intercourse and the quiet rational study of the human documents. It offers, in fact, an ideal of leisurely refinement which may be urged especially on the attention of fatigued millionaires, or of any elderly professional worker whose time has come for retirement to the tranquil haven bounded by the twilight western shore. But such an ideal was very far from satisfying Mr. Fiske, or compassing the measure of his activities and interests. It was rather an outward semblance of egoism which belied him, forced upon him by circumstances John Safford Fiske 15 which might almost have excused him if he had sunk into the role of the valetudinarian, deliberately placing one foot in the grave. For many years he was afflicted with a disease, annoying and tiresome in the extreme, to which many men would have succumbed, retiring from society and pestering their family and intimate friends with endless Jeremiads. We all know how Carlyle took the world into his confidence, how his dyspepsia assumed an epic importance and his melodious lamentations be- came even a money-making asset. Mr. Fiske bore his burden so lightly, so gaily, so silently that few of his friends suspected it at all, and none of his acquaintances. He not merely kept his place in the social procession — he was, in his modest way, one of its leaders. When I said to him: "You have shown yourself heroic," he disclaimed, "Oh, no. I have merely used a little com- mon sense." A most uncommon sense certainly — an effacement, when we reflect on the fate of families where the invalid draws a pall over the whole household ; and at last when effacement meant peril, the effort made to keep an appointment which would cheer the solitary hours of an imprisoned friend, brought on the final attack that definitely sentenced him to death. As we parted in June, when the stupor of approaching doom was creeping on, he even apologized to me for spoiling the pleasures we had dreamed of together, the excursions he had planned as my cicerone through the enchanted sleep of old hill-towns — he apologized for his illness and for my disappointment. Invincible thoughtfulness and courtesy! I felt as if, poor man, he were apologiz- ing for his death — that last annoyance which we have the inalienable right to inflict upon our friends. *H|| This then was the background of a life which bore the 16 Hobart College superficial aspect of sybaritism. He might have buried himself in a sanatorium, he might have lived pining and puling, a torment to his friends; he preferred, like a man, to hide the thorn in his side, to give and take, to warm both hands before the fire of life, to be a light and flame to others, — to the Ligurian folks who were his neighbors and to the foreign colony of Alassio. When the great earthquake visited the Riviera in 1889, he described to me the horror and panic in which he had lived day after day for several months. "Why did you not run away?' I asked. "Oh,' he replied, "I could not run away and desert the good people of my household." He craved relations of mutual helpfulness and affec- tion. He had a profound respect for some of the remark- able qualities and virtues of the Italian peasantry. He was ready to make friends of them, nor did he insist that they should be his distant and humble friends. He remembered the names and careers of his peasant neighbors. One of his most devoted friends was the coachman who had driven him month after month in these out of the way regions where he had collected materials for his articles on Ligurian art and architecture — a man for his sober demeanor and intelligence fit to be the friend of any gentleman, and doubtless a better judge of pictures and church edifices than most gentlemen who cross the Atlantic with full pocket-books to chase after culture in their automobiles. Though fastidious in his tastes, Mr. Fiske was a genuine democrat in his practice; he carried out in his life the doctrine of the brotherhood of man. He remained an American citizen; but that fact had little to do with his attitude. He was more French than American in his genuine sentiment of egalite and fraternity, and in his practice of John Safford Fiske 17 that belief. By equality I do not of course mean equality of powers and talents — a condition which never exists, but equality in the fundamental attributes of humanity — in the appeal to human sympathy. Peasant or prince, contadina or marchesa, he understood all classes alike, he penetrated their hearts, and drew near to them by his penetration; he divined their sentiments, and drew them by his sympathy. He was simpatico, at once fastidious and democratic. He understood and prized the golden heart of the Ligurian maid-of -all- work just as well as he did the charming and titled ladies who were often drawn to Costa Lupara by the wit and fascinations of their host. His social gift was remarkable ; his response was as quick and sure as the stroke of a silver bell. It always had an unexpected turn of wit and good sense. He never said a foolish or inept thing. Wide and interesting as was his experience, with a hoard of sparkling anecdote, his improvised coinage was more precious and sparkling still. He could hobnob, if need be, with a brigand (with- out adopting his code) ; he was rather courted by grandes dames ; he was adored by the good people of his household and neighborhood. They paid him back in his own coin. I do not care to enquire if there never was a grain of self-interest in their devotion. Are we all free from it in our own social circles? " Gifts even with the Gods prevail." But the smiling, watchful, caressing service, the small courtesies, the morning and evening salutation, who can forget these that has experienced them in the perfect Italian household? Who will not lament that such ideals of service are passing, or deny that they may come again with a millennium when the stubborn assertion of rights shall become needless and the tempest 18 Hobart College of conflict between classes have subsided into calm. Mr. Fiske could not admire that armed neutrality, that perpetual declaration of independence which subsists between employer and employed in the United States and which, let us hope, marks only one ugly stage in the emancipation of the working man. He wanted to love and be loved. In the midst of a colony of delightful and clever people who in spite of their cleverness viewed the smallest trifles of life with microscopic eyes, whose horizon was too often bounded by the lovely headlands of Santa Croce and Capo Mele, he kept his wide outlook on life, he retained a true perspective in his judgments, and held on his way not perturbed by the tempests that are brewed over afternoon teacups. He played his proper part in that small delightful world, hemmed in by the olive- green promontories, which he dearly loved, though he looked far beyond it, cherishing the recollections of a life full of the most varied sympathies and friendships, broadened by literary studies and by a vital acquaintance with the personalities of many centuries ; for his favorite study was biography. Immersed, too, as he was in this charmed circle, he was curiously independent of its prejudices, most sturdy and masculine in abiding by his own decisions. He knew well who were his real friends, and was staunch in his devotion to them, so staunch that, at times, his firmness wore the air of obstinacy. It was a pardonable failing if this loyalty once or twice held out against what he believed to be purely the cackle of the gossips. It is better to be deceived once in a score of times than to lose one's faith in humankind, or to narrow one's social standards. In one of his later letters to The Nation, Mr. Fiske sum- John Safford Fiske 19 marizes and discusses with especial interest Fogazzaro' s powerful novel, II Santo. From that penetrating analysis by one who knew well the spirit of Italians and of the Papacy, I extract a few paragraphs which throw light on the critic himself, revealing his own temperament and his ideas on certain ultimate questions : "Benedetto, whom 'Saint Simeon Stylites might have mistaken for a brother' is more than a mere ascetic striving to atone for his sins. While his teachings thrill with the spirit of the sermon on the mount, he recognizes that the theory of evolution may explain the history of the human race, or that right living is more important than right belief. # # * He clings solely to what is essential and eternal in religion." "Is it possible for a Benedetto to prevail with the Vatican? Fogazzaro gives us little hope. He continually represents the higher clergy in any but favorable colors. We have them arrogant, worldly, intolerant, place-seekers, politicians, and not scrupulous ones either. Even the Pope — whose figure as drawn here reminds one of a beautiful statue illuminated from within — who strongly impresses us with his dignity, his gentleness, sweetness, and purity, reveals himself as much a states- man as a priest ; he cannot govern his church according to the ideas of the saints, who are few, when he must always have an eye to the scribes and pharisees, who are many. He is glad to serve Benedetto in a particular matter, but he cannot hope to satisfy him completely until they shall meet, as indeed he trusts they will, in another world." "No, Fogazzaro makes it clear that the struggle for a purified faith can look for little sympathy in a church governed as this is. # # # The great church is the 20 Hobart College great body of the faithful who believe in God, and this remains unchanged, no matter what may be the errors of its rulers. * # # Whatever may be its effect upon the visible Church, if any, this book is a distinct gain for the invisible one which reigns in the hearts of all good men." As a believer in an invisible Church which reigns in the hearts of all good men — a believer in a formula so broad and spiritual — Mr. Fiske could naturally take little interest in the conflicts of Churches Militant. He would be liable to misunderstanding by those who hold the keys and demand countersigns and passports to the gates of Heaven. In fact, he was misunderstood. "He must be a Roman Catholic," said a certain Anglican divine, "he is on such good terms with the priests." Well, he was on good terms with the priests. Some of them had been almoners of his charities; one high-minded and cultivated spirit among them was his devoted friend. During an arid summer he had supplied his neighbors at a convent with water, at a time when water was very scarce and precious. He was indeed a running brook of little kindnesses, les petits soins, to all who came in his way. Anima naturaliter Christiana! His charities blos- somed unseen — they were not a preachment. They were the efflorescence, silent, perennial of a sweet soul that gave much and asked no praise, but affection. And affection he certainly had. It was touching to observe the respectful sympathy with which he was watched as he faded in his latter days — how children greeted him with smiles during his painful afternoon drives and fishermen took off their hats to their Don Giovanni; how the good people in his employ discussed his case sadly, as if he were a member of their own family, or John Safford Fiske 21 plotted for his recovery, and mourned his decline day by day. When the final moments came, they claimed their post at his bedside, and shared the privilege of ministration with wealthier and titled friends. They fol- lowed him to his grave, while "his own nightingales sang a requiem, mingled with the songs of the distant con- tadini as they cut the hay." They will remember and miss him! keenly and fondly as the members of that ESS colony to whom he was a central and representative figure. p So to be missed and mourned by high and low was a meed which he deserved, which he had earned by his charm and grace of life, by daily deeds of thoughtfulness and benevolence. They ran noiselessly, as I have said, like a little stream that hides itself, but their hidden course will be marked by violets of tender remembrance. It is natural to enquire how came Mr. Fiske to take an interest in Hobart College, living, as he did, so far away and being the alumnus of a distant university? Nothing could be more simple or reasonable. In 1893, when on a tour to see the Chicago Exposition, he made a visit in Geneva, and delivered a lecture on the architecture of French and English cathedrals before the College. He made the acquaintance of some of the students, attract- ing them by the charm of his manner ; and he looked with interest into the condition of our library. He recognized also the culture and intelligence of the attentive audience which in its turn recognized his easy mastery of his sub- ject, and the grace of the familiar style in which he pre- sented it. He felt too the refined and cordial hospital- 22 Hobart College ity which welcomed him to many homes and firesides. The gift of his library was the sequel to a happy visit which he never forgot. Not disloyal to his own Univer- sity, but considering the needs of our library, and the quality of the soil where his books could plant seed, he determined almost instantly to bestow his collection where it would do the most immediate good. From that time forth he used frequently to write us lists of new purchases. He cherished a plan of returning at intervals, and delivering courses of lectures at the College, which circumstances prevented his fulfilling. TO THE ALUMNI: Many times Hobart Alumni have asked me, "Why doesn't the Herald have a column that would make the paper of some value to the Alumni?' The Herald has such a department, but in its present state it is of abso- lutely no value. Why? Because you, the Alumni, do not take the time to drop the editor a note on changes of address, marriages, deaths, etc., that may come to your notice. You are, so to speak, at once the College's advance agents and the Herald's reporters. If you are not, you should be. Without reporters can the news- papers exist? How then do you expect the "Alumni Notes" editor to keep track of what you and other alumni are doing? 1 Now let us suppose you and other alumni have done your reporting. Do you know what men in your class are doing, what improvements are being made around college, what the athletic teams are doing, etc.? How many of you know that our football team this year has played four games, lost one to Syracuse, and won the others, and has a good chance this year to clean up Colgate, St. Lawrence, and Rochester? Very few, I know, and only those who live near Geneva. Why is this? Because you do not take the Herald. Some say the price $1.50 is too much. If we can get a hundred paid subscriptions from the Alumni, we can probably afford to drop the price to $1.25. Will you, first of all, help make the paper a paper representative of the Alumni? Will you also aid us in increasing our circulation? I feel sure you will. I never UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA I I 3 0112 110189997 24 Hobart College knew a Hobart man who was a "quitter" yet, and never expect to. My thanks are due to the President and Faculty for the space they have allowed me to use in this Bulletin. It was the only way in which I could reach the whole body of Alumni. H. R. Drummond, '08, Editor-in-Chief Herald.