THE FIRST HALF CENTURY OF THE INSTITUTE. 41 



about the then recent successful laying of the Atlantic 

 telegraph ; and it was interesting to find that both of 

 them, from research and professional experience, were 

 able to add much to the zest of the occasion. 6 



As you may all readily imagine, countless faces of the 

 venerable and the beloved are flitting across my mind 

 to-day. There is one scene that so persistently repeats 

 itself, that I must try to make you stand by the side of 

 the boy of seven, as it rivets itself upon his mind. 



It is the procession of friends, who, two by two, are 

 following seventy years ago next August, the honored 

 centenarian Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke, from his 

 home, about midway between the Market and Central 

 street to the hotel on the opposite side of Essex street, 

 where those professional companions and others, from 

 Boston and elsewhere, will sit down with their revered 

 guest at a banquet in honor of his one hundredth birth- 

 day. It is over a gulf of one hundred and seventy years 

 that we now glance backward to Dr. Holyoke's birth, a 

 date preceding by more than three years the birth of 

 Washington. 7 



My friends : as I listened to } r our President to-day, I 

 thought, "how interesting it is to note, as they move for- 

 ward, and all keep in line, the onward march of succes- 

 sive generations." The grandfather of your President, 

 Robert by name, I vividly recall ; a man of impressive 

 presence and of marked influence. Then came the son, 

 that second Robert, who counted not the cost, but threw 

 himself boldly, as a statesman, into the intellectual con- 

 flict which preceded, by long years, that national triumph 

 which he was not spared to see. And now, here is the 

 grandson keeping step in his turn, as he gives his mind to 



• Soe Proceedings, Vol. v, pp. 60-61. 



"See Historical Collections, Vol. xxxn, pp. 117-122. 



ESSEX INST. BULLETIN, VOL. XXX 3* 



