Proceedings of the Inauguration 
21 
appreciation of the honor conferred upon you by the election, but 
you quietly pocketed the letter conveying it, stepped aboard a 
steamer, and sailed for Europe, remarking that we might expect 
to hear from you later. All the summer we waited, anxiously 
waited, still no answer. It came time for the new year to open. 
We were thinking of making arrangements for a President pro- 
tem, when word came that you had landed in New York, and 
almost at once a letter was received announcing your hearty 
acceptance of the appointment. Our fears were dispelled. 
The lateness of your arrival, together with the many new 
and important questions demanding your attention, because it 
was already proving to be for the University a transitional 
period, made it quite impossible to give thought to the inaugural 
ceremonies which were early determined upon by the Trustees. 
You said, “Let things go for the present. In the spring we 
we may be able to carry them out.'' And so we are here today, 
this beautiful, God-given May day, we, your Trustees, all con- 
nected with these schools, your neighbors and friends, these dis- 
tinguished educators from various parts of the country — all of 
us have come together to give you greeting, to rejoice with you 
on this auspicious occasion, and to congratulate the University 
in its rare good fortune. 
Dr. Chamberlain, I have been requested by the Committee 
of Arrangements to present you with the Charter of the Univer- 
sity. I promptly accepted the appointment, for the Committee 
gave me no opportunity to say no, and then I wished to have 
some post in the joyous ceremonies. The ancient engrossed copy 
was reduced to ashes in the great fire of 1905, which destroyed 
all the laboratories of the college. There was preserved, how- 
*ever, among the records of the college a copy of the old charter. 
I had it engrossed anew, and will present it to you in the roll 
which I hold in my hand. I was not a little surprised to find how 
accurately we had been quoting and adhering to that old charter 
during all these years. It proved to me that there had been a 
time when it had been carefully cherished and stored up in the 
memory of the fathers, and had been handed down to the younger 
generations of Trustees with no deviations from year to year. 
And so had the younger men carefully treasured it up that it 
required no reference to the old original word in order to settle 
any disputes that might arise. It was better, stronger and more 
