Armour Institute of Technology - Cycle Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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f 31 n 01 cm ortam IPorUc opokcn at tbf funeral Permere of |JI)tIip Armour, “Jr. bp frank il . (SJunaaulufl Nothing but a profound belief in the all-fatherliness of God and a faith that His goodness is over all His works could support me in the task to which 1 am called today. Many of the dearest hopes of my own life lie apparently dead in yonder casket. Cover the pall as you have with a summer of flowers, it is still true that with the death of Philip I). Armour, Jr., winter seems to have come over many of the dreams of our lives. 1 stand here only as a mourner, and yet I must speak to the mourning ones. God grant that what comforts me may comfort you also! Honored as I have been with the friendship of the Armour family, and acquainted as I am with the far-reaching plans born at the fireside where their son was reared and where his youth blossomed into manhood, I seem to stand at this hour in the presence of a broken column. Ix ve hangs garlands upon it and they are moistened with tears. From the fragmentary beauty come reflections of the light of two homes; and it is the kind of light that will never cease to bring out of the mist of our sorrow the frustrated hopes and broken aspirations which throng our hearts at this hour. If this young man had not been dowered with extraordinary ability as a merchant who had just entered the realm of trade and commerce whose gates were flung open to him so gladly, his relationship to one of the most important enterprises in the world, as one of its heirs and future directors, would have given him eminence and supplied him a pedestal which only too clearly exalts his powers, now that, so far as this world is concerned, they are forever to remain unused. Hut Philip Danforth Armour, Jr., proud as he was of his inheritance and clear-headed as he was with reference to the value of the name given

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to him in babyhood, had already proven himself more than a mere recipient of Fortune’s pleasant whim. He had so far entered into the commercial life which his very genius, as well as his circumstances had chosen for him, and he had given such demonstration of brilliant and solid qualities as a business man, that the glow of promise upon his forehead places him among the chosen young men of earth who have been stricken down by death in the splendid morning of their powers. With them he has departed. To their long home he has migrated. They are the company who have left .the world of art and literature and science and religion, as he left the world of commerce, to mourn and to muse over the shining prophecies with pride and with regret, and to calculate from these prophecies how rich or beauti- ful or true or harmonious the world would have been if they had reached only the noontide of their strength and achievement. It is when we study petal after petal involved in such buds of mighty promise so suddenly or slowly denied the possibility of unfolding their love- liness or power, that we take firmer hold upon the conviction that this life must be indeed, especially in such cases, only the portal to the larger life where all buds reach their perfect flowering and where all mornings journey to mid-noon and where all fragmentary and incomplete lives reach fullness and harmony under the guidance of the Father of all things. Only the infinite love working through infinite time can gather together and put in order the broken threads of our earthly years. Our science as well as our faith proves that this is a universe of marvelously strict economies, and that, therefore, it is impossible that anything of value may be lost. It is in this conviction and in this serene l elief, that we l ehold, not without confidence in the unfoldings of the future, the genius of poetry leaving her tears where Shelley dies at the age of 29; the genius of painting weaving her garlands for the tomb of Raphad dead at the age of 37; the genius of literature stooping ever the hallowed dust of Arthur Henry Hallam, who left love and life here at 22; the genius of our American mercantile life, pausing today at this grave, to Ik- less known but not to be less significant, where Philip I). Armour, Jr., at the age of 31, lies with still pulses, and his pen- etrating, restless eye, with the urgent and sagacious brain is at rest forever. It would not be a universe worthy of (Jod or man, if it were not so ordered that this little circle of life which we call time breaks into the larger circle which we call eternity. Fternitv is youth and youth is the realizing of eternity. A young man, looking out into the certainty of his early decease, could well sing of that comradeship in the future—a comradeship which must exist somewhere among those, who, endowed with gifts and opportu nities such as we honor here today, were not permitted to realize their fruition in this mortal life.