Memorial Address—David Bower Franlcenburger. 913 
corrected. Dreary things, those essays. Then there was the 
college paper to supervise, and the annual. This meant seeing 
the editors and talking with them constantly, over and above 
the task of correction. As the most courtly man on the faculty 
—I believe his colleagues will all concede this-—he was in con¬ 
stant requisition as master of ceremonies. All social functions 
of the University, as such, were under his supervision. He 
presided at the debates, arranged the commencement exercises 
and supervised them. And we must not forget the correcting of 
some twenty commencement day orations, and the drilling of 
the speakers, and the correcting of the class-day literary pro¬ 
ductions and the drilling of the performers. And on top of all 
this, literary people in town were always asking the professor 
to correct and criticise their manuscripts, and he was always 
doing it. ; 
We students used to wonder how he could do it all. We 
used to say it was a shame that one man should work so hard, 
should give the best in him so willingly and unselfishly. It 
was something we often talked about. And as we ceased to be 
students and talked as men, and as other people gradually real¬ 
ized what a burden he was carrying uncomplainingly, cheerful¬ 
ly—with never other than a smile and a gracious word, never 
out of temper after a late night with a stuffy oration in dim 
Assembly hall, always the same courtly gentleman of the old 
school—some of the burden was lifted from him. He was given 
assistants, a number of them. Yet he still remained one of the 
hardest-working men on the faculty, and his old students will 
believe that his last years of illness were the result of his un¬ 
ceasing and unselfish labor. He still gave to various literary 
activities in the city the same aid and encouragement he ever 
did. Even in his vacations, the city was demanding something 
of him. It was too much. 
I have called him the most courtly member of the faculty. 
And yet he was a farmer lad. There was that other courtly 
man with the manners of a born aristocrat—a born aristocrat^ 
mind you, not a money-made, self-made aristocrat—President 
Adams, a Vermont farmer boy who sawed wood, husked corn 
