for the
most urgent of reasons. We talk so much about her maternity that we are
apt to overlook the fact that a responsible _Father_ is as necessary to
the good name of a well-ordered college as to that of a well-regulated
household. As children of the College, our thoughts naturally centre on
the fact that she has this day put off the weeds of her nominal
widowhood, and stands before us radiant in the adornment of her new
espousals. You will not murmur, that, without debating questions of
precedence, we turn our eyes upon the new head of the family, to whom
our younger brothers are to look as their guide and counsellor as we
hope and trust through many long and prosperous years.

Brothers of the Association of the Alumini! Our own existence as a
society is so bound up with that of the College whose seal is upon our
foreheads, that every blessing we invoke on our parent's head returns
like the dew from Heaven upon our own. So closely is the welfare of our
beloved Mother knitted to that of her chief counsellor and official
consort, that in honoring him we honor her under whose roof we are
gathered, at whose breast we have been nurtured, whose fair fame is our
glory, whose prosperity is our success, whose lease of long life is the
charter of our own perpetuity.

I propose the health of the President of Harvard University: We greet
our brother as the happy father of a long line of future alumni.

* * * * *

DOROTHY Q.

[Speech of Oliver Wendell Holmes at the banquet of the Boston
Merchants' Association at Boston, Mass., May 23, 1884, in honor of the
Hon. John Lowell.]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--It was my intention, when I
accepted the public invitation to be with you this evening, to excuse
myself from saying a word. I am a professor emeritus, which means pretty
nearly the same thing as a tired-out or a worn-out instructor. And I do
seriously desire that, having during the last fifty years done my share
of work at public entertainments, I may hereafter be permitted, as a
post-prandial emeritus, to look on and listen in silence at the
festivals to which I may have the honor of being invited--unless,
indeed, I may happen to wish to be heard. [Applause.] In that case I
trust I may be indulged, as an unspoken speech and an unread poem are
apt to "strike in," as some complaints are said to, and cause inward
commotions. [Applause.] Judge Lowell's eulogy will be on every one's
l