At the sight of the Eternal City, Luther prostrated himself and exclaimed,—Holy Rome, I salute thee. A graduate of Andover, on approaching the Sacred Hill, feels a disposition to manifest a like deference. Before him rises the hallowed ground. Andover is not large but there are those who love her. She was always a good mother to me. Andover on the map you can cover with your thumb, but you cannot so cover Andover. Its vital expansive influence has gone out through all the world and its words to the end of it. In an outburst of passionate eloquence, Mr. Webster once exclaimed, "What has America given to the world? It has given to the world the character of Washington." What has Andover given to the world? There is the East. There is India. There is our Western coast, where rolls the Oregon. There are our colleges and churches at home and over seas. In these she has given the world immortal names that were not born to die. It is said that no man now living can read even the alphabets of all the languages through which her sons have sought to interpret the Word of God to the world. Think the graduates of Andover out of it at that time, and sacred literature and religious results would drop immeasurably below their actual attainments. Andover, the very name is beautiful, especially when you look at it in the light of the old days. Its memories are delightful. There I sat at the feet of my own Gamaliel.

The Land We Love

It is impossible that any institution living or dead, in this country or any other, ever gained a firmer hold on the affections of her alumni. If love is the greatest thing in the world, Andover had it in a sort of double measure. With some knowledge of the whole field I do not know of any other place that so takes hold of its students on their affectional side. To do this, all experience teaches that a place must not be too large. A country home grows tendrils around a man's heart that a house numbered with others, in a uniformly brick-faced block, fails to do. A thoroughly cultivated or built-up country is much less beloved by its people than an open one that is close to nature. A strictly fenced locality where all surfaces are exclusively appropriated, leaving only the dusty highways to the people, does not gain the attachment that we all feel for Andover, beautiful for situation. When the Creator prepared the Seminary grounds on that crowning elevation he left little for the hand of man to do in the way of improvement. In my day, the oak tree was still standing into which Dr. Pearson climbed to locate buildings, trace the walks and indicate the settings for trees. Being located in a county that has more people in it than the entire state of Vermont and four times as much wealth, a county of cities, it has afforded great opportunity for students to get experience in pulpit work and the incidental wherewithal. It gave me no trouble or inconvenience the last year of my studies to earn eight hundred dollars. Most students on reaching Andover begin, I began like the rest, by occupying the little Union Chapel on the slope of the Blue Hill in Readville, on the edge of Hyde Park. The honorarium was five dollars, and the fares from Boston. In that pulpit, that has meant so much to under-graduates, Phillips Brooks preached his last sermon. Rev. Samuel F. Smith, author of America, was on his way to preach there when death overtook him and arrested his journey.

Lines Cast in Pleasant Places

When I sing America I think of Andover. She is what S. F. Smith thought of, for in a nature stroke, writing the words in Andover, he sings, "I love thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills," just as Whittier so simply depicts other delightful features of Essex County which were indelibly impressed upon the sensitive plate of his brain. We discern the scenery behind the words. This the Swiss heart does when it is pathetically affected in hearing, in music, as if upon bells, "The return of the Cows." There never has been a nation without patriotism. There never has been a people without a God. The author of the hymn so much used in our great revival of national feeling was in Andover to study theology and produced our most common expression of patriotism. Andover was well born. She has beauty in her own right. This is evident since the first time she sat for her picture. My relations have been such, that it falls to me at times, having visitors from a remote part of the land, to entertain them and to show them the East. For typical New England towns I have usually taken them to Plymouth, Concord and Andover. These three. But in the matter of a large fairly well-trained and useful progeny, the greatest of these is Andover. Dr. Henry M. Storrs used to style the place, the mother of his mind.

Andover is Different

It is Acadian. In other residential localities it is their custom not to point out any celebrities except millionaires. Everything in the community is leveled to its cash basis and a habit of doing it is ingrained, and unconsciously money slips into the conversation and out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaks. But in Andover names do not stand just for mere crude wealth. The homes of the professors were never handled as a commercial proposition. Everything was not computed in terms of bankable wealth. Prosperity was only one word, another was welfare. That noun of all nouns, dollar, was not so often heard as the name Andover. The teaching force is as uncommercialised as Agassiz, Lafayette, or John Brown. Their wealth is their learning and their character. "Now how much is he worth?" He is worth a lot to his pupils. Here is a community which every member belongs to with a conscious pleasure and pride. All the ideals bounded by the dollar are replaced. She had an entirely different code of values, which were not pecuniary.

Where Every Prospect Pleases

I felt that I was exalted to heaven in point of privilege to be there at all. Here I had my first view of acres of girls. At the end of the study hours they would throng through the gates of the Abbott Female Seminary—"The Fem Sem"—and spread out over the town, young, joyous, carefree, fresh-faced, handsomely dressed. It was a delight to see them about.

So many of the books in the library with which I was most familiar, my father's, were published at Warren F. Draper's in Andover that on reaching the town, which my imagination had always placed in Class A, I sent my baggage to the Mansion House that I might not deny myself two things, to go on foot with much feeling up the long hill, also to get a first preliminary glimpse of Draper's. Could so much that is good come out of that Nazareth? It was a travesty on my expectation. I was looking for a book store like Appletons' or Revell's, or Harpers'. When my father graduated, there were thirty different parts on the Commencement programme and I was looking for things on an immense scale like that.

A World of Tender Memories

Andover develops the "We" feeling. The students constitute a brotherhood, while with the years the word grew greatly yet it never outgrew its original manifestation. That little word We is the talisman that awakes the consciousness that there must be sympathy, fellowship and co-operation among students, among those in the same high calling between pastor and people, as there must be for good results between teacher and pupil, between physician and patient. The Seminary gave to us that soul of kindred, which so few understand. It is an essence which perfumes life. Its influence is nothing less to me than sacred, and the benefit received is beyond any estimate I compute. In anticipation of a recent particular visit to that shrine of the heart, for no other purpose than to express my admiration amounting even to reverence, also my indebtedness, to that far famed and justly distinguished seat of learning, I arranged with that useful, unselfish, helpful resident, Charles C. Carpenter, that we should canvass together the sacred precincts. Among holy places none is holier than this. My errand there was to see a great deal and to feel a great deal. I bow with deep veneration at the remembrance of each one of the ornaments of the place. We walked about among the friends whom we had known who were resting in God's acre. The inscriptions made for us a book of remembrance. Some personality lingered about the most far-away name. We lingered long where sleep the great who made themselves a record among the mighties. No other spot in the land, of equal space, contains the dust of so much eminence. By one of the ironies of history those who differed most, where the contention was so sharp between them, like Barnabas and Paul, that they departed asunder, one from the other, come close together in their burial.

Andover's Crowning Glory

When Oliver Alden Taylor, late of Manchester, was graduating from Union College his biographer says:[1] "We find him deliberating where he should resort for his theological education. His thoughts were turned toward Andover, but he says, 'I am afraid of the dislike of elegant speaking which is said to characterize the faculty.' He was reassured however with very faint praise, for he writes, 'Dr. Nott tells me that Andover is not opposed to good speaking, though the graduates are too generally poor speakers.'" We wish that he could have heard Richard Salter Storrs, father and son, Horace Hutchinson, Leonard Swain, George Leon Walker, or either of the brothers, Walter M. or John Henry Barrows, or as he was speaking of the faculty, Professor Park, or his very close second, a very different man but highly distinguished for brilliant uniform work, Austin Phelps.

A Man of Noble Parts

While in the Himalaya Mountains they have many exalted peaks, still there is one that towers above the rest, Mt. Everest, the highest ascertained point on the surface of the globe. So at Andover there was a high general range of intellect, yet there existed one master mind that dominated the whole sphere. The pulpit was his throne. I had never seen a man take so high a position on the mount of God as Professor Edwards A. Park, at the crest of his popularity and power, did as he rose to his own high level in his masterpiece, the Judas sermon. I remember my delight and wonder. He magnetized his audience. I was greatly drawn to him. The heart of the congregation touches his. Deep calleth unto deep. There are those who testify that he became the first vigorous intellectual presence they ever encountered, and they gained much from the relation to so great a man. Of larger than ordinary mould, I suppose no real credit or desert fell to him for rising to his work like a giant refreshed, any more than belonged to Goliath for wielding a spear like a weaver's beam in his mighty hand instead of a weapon of ordinary size. He was one of those rare men who are scarcely ever duplicated. He was not classed with any one in his own or in previous or in subsequent times. His appeal was such that one's own moral sense confirmed all his teachings. The mark of talent is to do easily what is difficult for others. His imposing almost majestic presence, his powerful and brilliant intellect, his great learning, his genius, his uncommon gift of eloquence, his fervor, I do not now describe, after my memory of it, which shines to me like a star, but according to my idea cf what now it will seem to a stranger. It is impossible to reproduce his work in cold type. To attempt it is to spoil it. When we have seen him reported verbatim—that was not his sermon, only its ghost, its shade, its tenantless remains. The air about him became electric as he, having located Judas for a time nearly in front of him, a little to the right, dealt with him as one of the foes of the household. He considered his case past praying for. After he had his picture well drawn he put on more color and the moment he had him well blacked, with sudden great dramatic effect he swung a perfectly knock-out gesture, saying, "Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! Good were it for that man if he had never been born." It needs the Sinai voice to get the effect.

A Soul Melted Into a Voice

Passion, unabated emotion pervaded the great effort from the beginning to the end of the masterpiece. Every sentence, every word had been pruned of every ineffective syllable, like changing "penetrate" to the word of one syllable, "pierce". Every idea went to its mark like a bullet. There was not a cold or weak passage in it. In preparing his direct discourse he did not stick a stake and cart material to it. His great thoughts were not drawn from without but from his subject which he fathomed. He had depth, as someone said, for elephants to swim in and places for lambs to wade. He seemed from the first to be starting a great offensive. I took occasionally great delight in a few moments of his company and I always have congratulated myself that I lived for three years in the same town, and at the same time with so illustrious a person.

He is one of the stars, a planet I should say, in the firmament of the pulpit. "Go and feel his power" I used to say; no one can describe it. Everything seemed to conspire to make my life exceptionally happy and fortunate at Andover, knowing him at the zenith of his glory. Professor Park's work had the element of nicety about it. It was fascinating. We were spell-bound, lost in admiration, even in amazement. His elegance in diction would make one's sense of beauty ache. "Honor is the substance of my story," said the imposing, uplifting man starting on his moving recital, told in his unique, felicitous style, with utterance broken by emotion, of the life and death of Miss McKeen of Abbott Academy, of whose board of trustees he had been president for thirty years. That trinity of qualities, wisdom, eloquence, and pathos, swept everything. Rhetoric cannot be shut up in a book. Its play of words, even in a sympathetic auditory, and among vibrant hearers, while it sparkles, dies.