First. In carrying out the wishes of my late beloved father, George
Goldthwait Ingersoll, as declared by him in his last will and testament,
I give and bequeath to Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., where my
late father was graduated, and which he always held in love and honor,
the sum of Five thousand dollars ($5,000) as a fund for the
establishment of a Lectureship on a plan somewhat similar to that of the
Dudleian lecture, that is--one lecture to be delivered each year, on any
convenient day between the last day of May and the first day of
December, on this subject, "the Immortality of Man," said lecture not to
form a part of the usual college course, nor to be delivered by any
Professor or Tutor as part of his usual routine of instruction, though
any such Professor or Tutor may be appointed to such service. The choice
of said lecturer is not to be limited to any one religious denomination,
nor to any one profession, but may be that of either clergyman or
layman, the appointment to take place at least six months before the
delivery of said lecture. The above sum to be safely invested and three
fourths of the annual interest thereof to be paid to the lecturer for
his services and the remaining fourth to be expended in the publishment
and gratuitous distribution of the lecture, a copy of which is always to
be furnished by the lecturer for such purpose. The same lecture to be
named and known as "the Ingersoll lecture on the Immortality of Man."
LIFE EVERLASTING
[Illustration]
LIFE EVERLASTING
Few incidents in ancient history are more tragic than the death of
Pompey. The spectacle of the mighty warrior who had conquered the Orient
and contended with Cæsar for the mastery of the world, a defeated and
despairing fugitive, treacherously murdered and lying unburied on the
Egyptian strand, was one that drew tears from Cæsar himself and from
many another. Yet among the poets of the sixteenth century Renaissance
there was one who took a different view of the matter. In an epigram of
incomparable beauty Francesco Molsa exclaims:--
Dux, Pharea quamvis jaceas inhumatus arena,
Non ideo fati est sævior ira tui:
Indignum fuerat tellus tibi victa sepulcrum;
Non decuit cœlo, te, nisi, Magne, tegi!
It is almost impossible to preserve in a translation the peculiar charm
of these lines, but a friend of mine in one of the pleasant student days
of forty years ago produced this happy and fitting paraphrase:--
We grieve not, Pompey, that to thee
No earthly tomb was given;
All lands subdued, nought else was free
To shelter thee but Heaven!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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