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The devices heretofore ranked as models have been relegated to 

 distant shelves, and ten times their space occupied by a collection 

 worthy of the name — not equalled in this country nor excelled in 

 any other. 



Many similar improvements directly in the line of accumula- 

 tion around the nuclei of the past are visible on every hand, but in 

 addition we are pleasantly confronted with new departures long 

 desired and now realized. The Experimental Laboratory begins 

 its important functions with the coming term and under auspices 

 which render it impossible that it should be second to any in the 

 land. 



Coming rapidly, systematically and with the characteristic ener- 

 gy of this institution, its managers and its benefactors, these things 

 are even more marked and more potent for good than if brought 

 piecemeal between long stages of inconvenience and incomplete- 

 ness. The impression produced and sustained is that the depart- 

 ment is in its every action progressing, reconstructing, and in its 

 effect meeting the demands of the times. Honor be to him 

 through whose generosity this is possible. 



In present prosperity we should not underrate the past. A nat- 

 ural tendency to so underrate springs from seeing before us many 

 things which have heretofore existed only in our catalogue of 

 wants. I venture the opinion with confidence, that the graduates 

 of this department have obtained as large a percentage of what 

 they desired as they can reasonably expect in any department of 

 life ; certainly more than is realized in the average results of busi- 

 ness undertaking ; certainly a greater ratio than the professor's sal- 

 ary bears to his reasonable expectations ; surely equal to the propor- 

 tion of the engineers' contemplated achievements that are fulfilled. 

 If any have been so alive to the needs of the department as to has- 

 tily adopt inexpedient methods of expressing opinion, let me here 

 state positively that such actions can only be properly criticised as 

 being an exponent of too ardent a zeal. If any have appeared in- 

 different, the cause has chiefly been an indisposition to co-operate 

 with methods adopted by their fellow graduates, of which methods 

 they did not approve. To-day I can say that the Alumni stand a 



