Proceedings of the Conference for Education in the South (Volume 6) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1903 Excerpt: ... A university, looked at externally, is a thing of buildings, of libraries and laboratories and lecture halls and endowments and apparatus. But none of these things make a university. A university justifies itself in the present age just so far as it is a home of idealism; and, if it be not that, then, as one of the most distinguished of American scholars once said, it were better that its walls should crumble in a night. In the fraternity of this faith in sound learning, in devotion to high thinking and plain living, we clasp hands across what was once a chasm of war but is now a bridge of peace. On the Fourth of July, 1826, John Adams, a son of Harvard and the father of a whole line of sons of Harvard, lay dying in Massachusetts, and it is said that his last words were: "Thomas Jefferson still survives"; yet on that very day, Thomas Jefferson, by one of the strangest coincidences in history, on the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson lay dying here. We of Massachusetts, as we survey the work you are doing here, repeat the words of John Adams, of Massachusetts, Thomas Jefferson still survives; the spirit of democracy he taught flourishes and expands among you still; and we bring you our fraternal greetings and our respectful congratulations in a common loyalty to the ideals of the scholar's life. (Applause.) Dr. Barr1nger: --Those of us who have lived within the shadow of Monticello know Jefferson chiefly as an educator. I have no doubt there are many of you to-day who begin to look on him in a new light since seeing the university he built, and you begin to forget he was a foreign minister, Vice-President, President, and many other things that came to him through politics. Very few people outside of those directly...