CAPTAIN WALTER MASON DICKIN- 

 SON, U. S. A. 1 



My Friends, we have met to-day to hold memorial ser- 

 vices for one who was dear to us all. It is very fitting that 

 such services of remembrance should be held here. For 

 this was his home. These were the hills he loved. This was 

 his college, and here he came back in his riper years to share 

 the knowledge he had obtained with his younger brothers. 

 And if the simple story of his life may lead any one not 

 merely in word, but in deed, to follow the path he chose and 

 take as his precious legacy all that was pure and noble and 

 lofty in him, I shall feel that this hour will not have been 

 spent in vain. 



When I first knew him, he was a little curly -headed lad, 

 who, standing at my knee and asking all manner of ques- 

 tions about the Civil War, used to declare that he was 

 going to run away and become either a sailor, or a soldier 

 in the cavalry. Prophetic utterance! The dream of the 

 boy became the reality of the man, and what in his child- 

 ish heart he had longed to be, found its fulfillment in the 

 chosen profession of his life. It is interesting to note how 

 unconsciously, all through his life, there was the same strong 

 undercurrent of patriotic feeling, only occasionally coming 

 to the surface. The crude composition of his sophomore 

 year on "The Greatness of the United States" and its abil- 



1 Address delivered at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, Novem- 

 ber 9, 1898, at the memorial exercises for Captain Dickinson. 



