Tenth Annual Meeting 45 



use, or what tools you should use, I can at least turn my 

 prospectus over to you and tell you something of the function 

 of the trade journal. It seems to me that one of the best 

 things, and one of the most beautiful pictures that I have in 

 my mind to-day, is associated with one of the most beautiful 

 poems I ever knew. 



"Come back a few years with me on the wings of your 

 imagination, to where the greenclad trees are waving on the 

 campus of Bowdoin College. There stands the Cambridge 

 poet, Longfellow, fifty years after his graduation, his snow- 

 white hair blown by the summer breezes, his lips voicing the 

 sublime thoughts and lessons of his ' IVlorituri Salutamus.' 



" 'Oh! Caesar, we who are about to die, 

 Salute you,' was the gladiator's cry, 

 In the arena, standing face to face, 

 With death and with the Roman populace. 



■'So, that grand and noble nature, knowing that his sands 

 of life were ebbing, saluted not only his classmates but the 

 youth who were to fill their places, and assured them that it 

 is never too late to take up a task if the end to be attained is 

 worthy, and gave as an answer to the cry: 



" 'It is too late.' Ah! Nothing is too late. 

 Till the tired heart has ceased to palpitate. 

 Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles 

 Wrote his grand tEdipus and Simonides 

 Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers. 

 When each had numbered more than four-score years. 

 And Theophrastus, at four-score and ten 

 Had but begun his ' Characters of Men.' 

 Chaucer at Woodstock, with the nightingales. 

 At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales. 

 Goethe, at Weimar, toiling to the last. 

 Completed Faust when eighty years were past. 

 These are indeed exceptions, but they show 

 How far the gulf stream of our youth may flow 

 Into the Arctic regions of our lives, 

 Where little else than life itself survives.' 



"So I, in spite of the years that have taken the thatching 

 from my roof, have set myself a task, that of creating and 



