Wofford College - Bohemian Yearbook (Spartanburg, SC)

Page 33 text:

COLLEGE C HAPEf..

Page 32 text:

The world of business has been strengthened by the influx of hundreds of able alumni of this institution, a few of whom are George Cofield Csz), Dr. H. Baer CsS), John B. Cleveland ( ' 69), J. E. Wannamaker ( ' 72), A. B. Calvert ( ' 80), T. B. Stackhouse ( ' 80), T. C. Duncan ( ' 81), W. A. Law ( ' 83), J. A. Law ( 87), and Wm Coleman ( ' 95). Numbers of others might be named; especially gratifying is the progress in the business world of the alumni of the past ten years. In the professions of law and teaching the contribution of Wofford has been so great as to render enumeration both tedi- ous and useless. It must be remarked, however, that the politics of the State have been benefited by the successful participation of a number of the alumni, especially from the legal profession. The greatest personality in the history of Woi¥ord College is Dr. James H. Carlisle, the only one with us to-day whose life and service cover the entire history of the college. A glance at the educational field in 1854 gives a juster conception of his historic position. The present vigorous system of denominational colleges which has powerfully stimulated the ethical and moral elements of education in South Carolina, was just taking shape. A great work waited to be done; an ideal was to be presented and lived up to which was to be far reaching in the history of South Carolina and was not to be confined to State limits. Consecrating his life with a singleness of devotion unsurpassed to this ideal and this work, James H. Carlisle has for fifty years put aside all other aim or ambition than to impress with a force titanic in its power and fatherly in its affection ideals of Chnstly purity and integrity upon the future manhood of the State and to lead it along the most elevated plains of thought and action. There have been in connection with colleges in the State a few more accomplished orators, some more learned scholars, some equally as high charactered men; but take him for alj in all, Dr. Carlisle stands as the greatest teacher in the history of education in South Carolina; and he lives and will live, as no other man in South Carolina ever has lived, in the lives of the men upon whose souls he has stamped with overpowering moral force the mintmark of his personality. What, then, does it all mean, and what does it amount to? What are the actualized ideals of Wofford College in schol- arship and character? The answer as to scholarship is not simply the accomplishments of her alumni and the courses presented m her class rooms, but also the large proportion of her graduates who seek university training to feed the aspirations kindled here. A mark of scholarship is dis.satisfaction with present attainment. What the ideals of Wofford College are in character is best answered by the type of man represented in the every day, average man among the alumni. The college has been of service to State as well as church. She has never stood for sectarian policy or ideals; but she has stood for intelligence and liberality joined to positive Christian character. She trains men to be the best citizens they can be in the actual world of which they are a part. No minister of education could ever bring against her the charge of ultra-montanism, or any other spirit hostile to the most patriotic and useful citizenship. In his bequest of fifty-four years ago Benjamin WofYord put himself in alliance with those forces which make for good in the world and enrolled himself among those whose lives count in the long run. 28

Page 34 text:

. O. Watson Pastor Cejsthal, M. E. Chitbch, South.