“The Brown” or “Century Fellowship Society”, which occupied almost all of Holloway’s leisure thoughts, had been founded in 1790. In 1904 some ceremonies were enacted upon the occasion of the laying of a corner stone for the new hall, it was hoped later to erect.[281] The address of welcome was delivered by a venerable member, ninety-six years of age, and was very brief. The religious services were conducted by the rector of the oldest Episcopal Church in Charleston, himself a veteran of the Confederate war, who, as a major of engineers, had contributed greatly to the “Defense of Charleston Harbor,” the history of which, under such caption, as author, he had also preserved. There was an ode by a member of the Society, and an address by a member of the board of aldermen of the city, also an ex-Confederate soldier. But a review of the aims and aspirations of the Society by J. H. Holloway, throwing as it does a light upon the point of view of a class, not given to undue exposure of their opinions, was probably the most important utterance of the occasion.[282] He said: “My first proposition is that our society was founded upon right principles, having as its foundation stone Charity and Benevolence, and its capstone social Purity. Environed as we have been by the varied conditions through which we have had to pass and to have survived one hundred and fourteen years, with a record no organization may be ashamed of, so we may well exclaim “To the Lord be all the praise.” Our guests today represent the conditions through which the Society has passed during the Century. On the one hand we have the dominant race and on the other we have the backward race. The first looked with a scrutinizing eye on our every movement, so as to charge us with being a disturbing element in the conditions that existed, and they made stringent legislative enactments; and the public sentiment of the masses was to discourage everything that our Society stood for; but fortunately there were the classes in society, and as our fathers allied themselves with them, as a consequence, they had their influence and protection and so they had to be in accord with them and stand for what they stood for. If they stood for close fellowship, so did our Fathers. If they stood for high incentive, so did our Fathers. If they stood for slavery, so did our Fathers, to a certain extent. But they sympathized with the oppressed, for they had to endure some of it, and fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind, and many times they had as individuals helped slaves to buy their freedom, and on one occasion our records prove that the Society loaned one of their members the money to purchase his family. Our Fathers were public spirited, for our records prove, that from 1811 to 1814 the Society was interested in the defense of Charleston. So under perplexing conditions our Society passed more than three score and