Albright College - Speculum Yearbook (Reading, PA)

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Historical Sketch The history of Albright College and the surrounding region is fraught with a rich interest. The landmarks of this history are still visible. Go out to the old graveyard at Tulpehocken and read on the brown tombstones the romance of faith- ful lives, lived in the midst of perils known only to the pioneer. Stand by the grave of Jacob Albright, or Colonel John Conrad VVeiser, each but a few miles distant, and you cannot but get a glimpse of what immortal fame triumph over persecution and adherence to principle ever brings the fighter of such battles. It is of these two men that we wish especially to write. The one ranked second only to William Penn in the making of Pennsylvania, the other first in the rank of founders of our own Evangelical Church. John Conrad Weiser springs from the old German ancestry that fled from per- secution in the old world. He settled at Tulpehocken in 1729, with the intention of becoming a farmer. But his intimate knowledge of the Indian language and ways made him indispensable to the government. His services were demanded by Indian and white government alike, because they were Hvery honest, as the old record says. Weiser was officially recognized as the interpreter of Pennsylvania in 1732. Treaties between all tribes and nations were carried on by him. One record says: lt is not too much to say that the pacihc spirit of Penn was perpetuated by Weiser, and that the fair name of our commonwealth, touching our treatment of the Indians, is as much owing to the fine policy of the latter, as to the amiable mind of the formerf' To Jacob Albright is due the credit of keeping aglow the religious spirit that animated Weiser and his generation in their pursuit of liberty. Hardship, toil, and the lack of religious instruction in a generation or so caused a partial ignorance of the true way of God. Under the preaching of one of those mighty pioneers of lllethodism, Albright, in 1790, then a man of thirty, became powerfully convicted of need of the true light. When he found it, like the converts of old, set out to carry it to others. Branded as a heretic by the old churches, mobbed, his meetings broken up, still he persevered through twelve years of service. From 1796 to 1808, he fol- lowed the German settlements of Pennsylvania, hflaryland and Virginia. His ad- herents grew, for who could resist the mighty zeal and earnestness of the man? ln 1807 the first Evangelical conference was organized at Kleinfeltersville, and may the work inaugurated there never cease growing. Schuylkill Seminary, Albright College, and a number of institutions of like kind are a part of the fruit that has ripened from the labors of Albright. So the religious and educational life of eastern Pennsylvania has for its pioneer none other than Jacob Albrightg the establishment of the state borders and the preservation of the fair honor of Pennsylvania with the Indian so much abused elsewhere, is due to Col. Conrad Weiser. Both men belong to our neighborhood. In pride we claim them, in gladness we do them homage. llflay we, as their descendants, keep high the banners of civil and religious life that they carried! E. B. LOGAN. 30

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SENIOR PCEM The 9fClerk's Soliloquy fa fragment? O vast and boundless, sightless, yawning depth lXfIysterious as the silvery stars that deck The tenuous ethereal realms of space! I stand as on the edge of some vast shore Of hoary oceanls grey and dismal waste, A mast sinks in his restless heaving breast, I can not follow I can only think. Gr child upon the brink of some abyss, Dismal, dark, and solemn cavernous, A stone I cast into his hollow throat And listen long and wait for some report To tell when it has reached the depth below, But all in vain I listen, stand and think. lylysterious is the spell that we call time, And shores of boundless space to apprehend, The wisdom that hath myriad systems planned, The Power that controls with mighty handy But soul of man immortal and divine By far surpassing form in native worth, Eternity shall be thy long abode, Infinity thy contemplation blest! The strange experience of thy natal hour The abnegation of all former self, To round the varied sphere of spirit life Be bound by cruel corporeal bands . And learn this strange and limited domain! Upon this dark void stepping cautiously The torch of knowledge only in my hand, Yet by its beams I scarcely see my wayg lldid sights and shapes of formless beings round The feeble llame scarce marks upon the ground What step is next to take, and so I grope In darkness almost feltg but Yet I know 'When limitations of this span are past Upon my dilate eyes shall burst the light- The Eos of a boundless endless day. +In the Wliddle Ages the student was called a clerk. 29

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