Your first Vice-President [Charles Francis Adams], whose name and growing fame you know so much better than his bodily presentment, has not been able to gratify your eyes and ears by showing you the lineaments and stirring you with the tones inherited from men who made their country or shaped its destinies. [Applause.] You and I have no choice therefore, and I must submit to stand in this place of eminence as a speaker, instead of sitting a happy listener with my friends and classmates on the broader platform beneath. Through my lips must flow the gracious welcome of this auspicious day, which brings us all together in this family temple under the benignant smile of our household divinities, around the ancient altar fragrant with the incense of our grateful memories. This festival is always a joyous occasion. It resembles a scattered family without making any distinction except that which age establishes, an aristocracy of silver hairs which all inherit in their turn, and none is too eager to anticipate. In the great world outside there are and must be differences of lot and position; one has been fortunate, another, toiling as nobly perhaps, has fallen in with adverse currents; one has become famous, his name stares in great letters from the hand-bills of the drama of his generation; another lurks in small type among the supernumeraries. But here we stand in one unbroken row of brotherhood. No symbol establishes a hierarchy that divides one from another; every name which has passed into our golden book, the triennial catalogue, is illuminated and emblazoned in our remembrance and affection with the purple and sunshine of our common Mother's hallowed past and hopeful future. We have at this time a twofold reason for welcoming the return of our day of festive meeting. The old chair of office, against whose uneasy knobs have rested so many well-compacted spines, whose uncushioned arms have embraced so many stately forms, over whose inheritance of cares and toils have ached so many ample brows, is filled once more with a goodly armful of scholarship, experience and fidelity. The President never dies. Our precious Mother must not be left too long a widow, 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.