Daniel Coit Oilman 61 



decline and disappearance of the Fourth of July oration 

 a phenomenon which does not by any means necessarily 

 argue a decay of patriotism; it seemed as though every- 

 thing that could be said about the achievement of our 

 country's independence was so familiar to every American 

 that the renewal of it on each recurring anniversary could 

 be nothing more than a matter of form. 



And, yet, it is possible that, in feeling thus about the 

 events which formed the central fact in President Gil- 

 man's life, I may be laboring under one of those illusions 

 that so frequently attend upon advancing years. The men 

 who in their early manhood took part in the work of the 

 opening years of the Johns Hopkins, are now at just that 

 age when they are beginning to grow old, and still have 

 not left off the habit of instinctively classing themselves 

 among the young. It is only by a conscious effort that I 

 can make myself realize that the time which has passed 

 since the foundation of the Johns Hopkins University is 

 as long as that which intervened between the war of 1812 

 and the Mexican War, and more than twice as long as 

 that which separated the Mexican War from the great 

 Civil War. The events of the Civil War are vivid recol- 

 lections of my own boyhood, and yet there was never a 

 time when the Mexican War did not seem to me to belong 

 to a remote past a thing to be read about in history- 

 books, like the Revolutionary War or the Protestant 

 Reformation. And so it may be that, to many of the 

 younger men before me to-day, the state of things in the 

 college and university world of America before 1876 is 

 almost as much a matter of mere book-learning as was to 

 me the massacre at the Alamo or the storming of 

 Chapultepec. 



If we are to appreciate just what it was that constitutes 

 the undying merit of President Oilman's work, we must 

 first of all re-create that time in our minds. We must go 

 back to a time in which, leaving out exceptional cases, 

 the goal of the American student's ambition was fully 



