Page:The Dedication of Germanic Museum of Harvard University p28.jpg

28 at the Century Club, almost twenty-five years ago to a day, in the course of which he told, in language which no one could reproduce, of the impression which the first view of Niagara had made upon him. He saw it first at midnight, from the upper suspension bridge, and he said that in the ever-varying movement, in the everlasting sound of the contortion, of the confusion, of the whirl and the chaos of the mighty cataract he saw the emblem of the all-devouring activity, the ceaseless and restless whirlpool of life in America; and then he added, “In the moonlit sky there arose from the falls a column of spray twice as high as the falls themselves, silent, majestic and immovable; and in that I saw the image of the future destiny of America, the pillar of light that should emerge from the destruction of the present.” Had he chosen to carry his figure further, he might have spoken of the emblem that Niagara would represent to him of the two sides of the American character as we find them in the nation as a whole and in so many individuals in that nation: on the one hand the strong, all-powerful, devouring materialism, rushing on and rushing—we all know—so much faster to-day than it did twenty-five years ago when Dean Stanley spoke, carrying everything before it, in its motion downwards; and, side by side with that, standing in front of it, the idealism, the ideal spirit of America rising as a constant reminder in front of the other of the high source from which it had its origin. There is no doubt, I think, to which of those two sides every university should address itself. If the young men of our country, having that ideal to start with, are not taught to believe here that that is the true side of life, that it is the ideal point of view that they must keep in mind as sons of the university, then where, in heaven's name, are they to learn it? It is the university which, more than all—which perhaps alone of all the forces that we have at present for the development of our character—can keep its hold upon the ideal side of the American young man, can keep him from the all-absorbing spirit of materialism and can lead him to believe and act upon the belief that there is a higher side to himself. Knowing that that higher side that speaks in him is a side that deserves cultivation, how is it to be done? How, indeed, if not through the study of the arts,—the most permanent