FIRST ANNUAL BANQUET. 157 



an offset, mention an anecdote connected with Princeton 

 College a full century ago, when Rev. John Witherspoon 

 was President of that institution. It was then the practice 

 to apply Betula alba and also the ferula when it was con- 

 sidered necessary, and one day the President coming into 

 the Latin teacher's room found him with one of his boys 

 laid upon the form (the desk) and administering a posteriori 

 the fenda. "Tut, mon!" said the President, *« what are 

 you doing?" *'0h," the other replied, «'this boy is 

 lazy. He doesn't get his Latin lessons and I have great 

 trouble with him; more than with all the rest of them." 

 Whereupon the President replied, "Tut, Tut, mon! ye'U 

 never bate the Latin in that wa' ! " 



I did think, gentlemen, at the beginning of this banquet, 

 that there was something I might say, and it occurs to 

 me now that a few words comparing the present and the past 

 would be appropriate to this grand occasion :— the cele- 

 bration of an event which makes an important epoch in your 

 history , the results of a most munificent bequest, which places 

 your city and state far in advance of any other. I wish 

 to compare the conditions now existing for scientific study 

 and teaching in this " far West," which I knew almost as a 

 wilderness fifty years ago, with the conditions which ex- 

 isted in the East during my boyhood. After passing 

 through the ordinary school, or even while I was still an 

 inmate of the ordinary school, such as existed in New 

 England at that time, and in Plymouth County, Mas- 

 sachusetts, I there received my earliest education. Doubt- 

 less I have forgotten much of Betula alba that was vivid 

 to me then; we often forget our pains in the pleasures 

 that follow, and I dare say, I have forgotten most of the 

 ministrations of that beautiful tree which grows in our for- 

 ests and which we utilize in many ways 1 



I was fond of nature, infatuated with nature. I could 

 not go from my father's house without bringing back 

 shrubs and flowers. I appealed in every direction for some 

 information, some instruction which would give me a clue 



