CONTENTS V. THE FUTURE OF THE Independent CoLLEGE: A paper read X. SEEING THE UNSEEN: The baccalaureate sermon to the gradu- ating class of '93, at Hamilton College, Sunday, June 18, 1893 152 168 Alexander Hamilton AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE HAMILTON CLUB OF BROOKLYN JANUARY 11, 1895 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Hamilton Club-Let me begin with grateful acknowledgment, both of the honor which you have conferred in asking me to speak to you on this anniversary and of your hearty and encouraging greeting. Let me also moderate all expectation by telling you that I am not the adept this occasion merits, but the merest novice at this festal art and withal let me confide, (tho my present presumption seems to contradict me), a modest one. Modest one must be facing such a theme and company-a company to which the details and suggestions of the theme are so familiar and which contains so many speakers of renowned power. You have heard of the good woman who prayed that her minister might be "anointed with the ile of Patmos!" [Laughter.] For many reasons too humorous to mention, I must bespeak, and, too, in your own behalf, your present entreaties for me. I am, alas, like the man who said he could "risk anything except temptation," and I freely confess that my good resolutions to talk less and think more, to have more bung and less spigot, were quite vanquished by the tempting opportunity to stand here as the representative, however poorly, of an interest which holds in reverence that name which is its title, as it is also the title of this group. In a recent most courteous note relating to this evening, your president graciously assured me that you "recognize very distinctively the patronymic relationship of the club and the college." It is indeed a broad common ground and well may we each attempt untiringly to maintain the spirit of Alexander Hamilon and to recognize our debt to his superlative services. But this duty is not elective and singular, it goes with our birthright as loyal Americans. If to that duty we are, e nomine, peculiarly and publicly pledged, it is also one shared joyfully by all citizens of this land who are intelligent in its constitutional history. [Applause.] For his great name is not one merely to grace a holiday, but it is woven into the very texture of our chief events. All that is subsequent to him is like a palimpsest above his original script. His initials are the watermark under every page. If any meager recitation of mine shall be effective to stimulate your mental energyif I can but start your thinking by a kind of flying switch - I shall be satisfied; for a train of treasure is far more than the wheezy engine that moves it. Should I seem parsimonious of ideas, remember that I have now given you the oars and that I only agree to do the steering while you row. -- It was ninety years ago that the heavy-booming guns at the Battery were answered by the French and English warships then in the harbor yonder, and that to their miserere - the three nations to which he was related joining in that last salute -the heart of the people of his fond adoption quivered in responsive pain. So, in Trinity Churchyard, close by the middle of its south wall, where today a quaint and time-worn construction of stone with its obscuring inscription but poorly marks his sepulture, they laid all of him that could die, to "Let the sound of those he wrought for, And the feet of those he fought for, Echo round his bones forever more." There was no Tennyson to celebrate in majestic ode "an empire's lamentations," and sooth it was but a little empire then and this great city but a trivial village: but time and "the strength of a diffusive thought" have wrought the poem, and his mausoleum is a mighty dome upheld by well-nigh fifty pillars. That little provincial New York is now, as a centre of |