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

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One young man of genius prayed: “ With the tear-worthy four, consumption killed In youthful prime, before the nebulous mind Had its symmetric shapeliness defined, Had its transcendent destiny fulfilled— May future ages grant me gracious room, With Pollock, in the voiceless solitude finding his holiest rapture, happiest mood : Poor White for ever poring o’er the tomb; . With Keats, whose lucid fancy mounting far Saw heaven as an intenser, a more keen Re-integration of the Beauty seen And felt by all the breathers on this star ; With gentle Bruce, flinging melodious blame Upon the Future for an uncompleted name. At the age when Philip I). Armour, Jr , was called hence, the young Scotch poet, David Gray, had been in his grave seven years, and yet alwve the grasses life seemed to be singing a song that quenches the discords of death. It was a song which the | oet himself had sung in anticipation of his early death. He felt that this life is only the first chosen soil in which the seed sometimes sprouts and only the bud comes, and that God often transplants the life at the time when its petals are not unfolded as yet, in order that in another soil and in air more subtly suited to the particular nature of the plant and its history, the half open destiny have its entirety of development. “ Whom the Gods love die young” said the old Greek pagan. Shall we not believe also that love had plans for him that no earthly wealth could carry out, and that, by and by, we shall see that we did not over-estimate his possibilities? We rather under-estimated them. God, his Father, alone so truely estimated them that He was moved to take out of merely human hands and associations the guidance and development of his destiny. Therefore, above this grave where we leave the dust of our strong and hopeful young friend, we may remember that lie also felt only “ the faint beatings in the calyx of the rose, and while we realize all that friend or child, father, mother and wife found in his buoyant and prophetic career, we can place upon his gravestone what the Scotch poet wrote for a similar gravestone that now guards the little plot of ground in the old home of Mr. Armour’s ancestors: “ There is life with God, In another kingdom and a sweeter air. In Kden every flower is blown : Amen.” In a ministry of a quarter of a century, I have never known a young man into whose life and career on earth there have come a larger invest- ment of affectionate hope. We all hung our desires upon this child of

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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.

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fortune and promise. The magnitude of the commercial enterprises allied with the Armour name was as nothing to the magnitude of love with which his steps were followed. He was shy, especially to those who were likely to make much of his kindliness, but behind the fortress he made there was the sunny and impulsively generous man whom to know was to love. The richness of the mansion whose roof sheltered with every art. his wife and boys, is not comparable to the richness of the hopes that leapt up like visions at the mention of his name. We all waited for the day when maturity would prove that what pledges he made at thirty-one. when he entered seriously into the arduous task of taking up his family’s great pro jects of business or beneficence, would l e grandly redeemed at ten and two score. The significance of the noble philanthropies which his wise and loving parents have barely inaugurated pales before the clearly defined significance of the child to whom such responsibilities were coming. That is, the man and his opportunity met in proper order; and no family, even though as loyal and true as this, ever had larger reason to think that love would have its way and hope its full and long reward, as years upon years would evolve the riches of Philip's nature and make him one of the most influential men of his time. Where then, with this dream shattered, can we turn? Where, with this grave open, shall we gaze for a gleam of assur- ance ? Where then, with our tears to magnify every blasted anticipation, shall we look to discover a vision of life and an interpretation of the universe that shall soothe and support ? We think of that beloved father and mother today so far away in the body, but so near and dear to us in the spirit. We pray for them. Was there ever another Father whose Son left our earth before the time which our limited conceptions would have appointed for His going? Ah, yes! Iajt us look to Him and pray for an understanding of that diviner philosophy of life which sets this small earth-life in its true relations, gives it only its just proportions, and grants us the immeasurable perspective of eternity. God’s perfect Son left our world with an unfinished life, as it seemed. Let us pray that the father and mother of this son may get God’s point of view. Jesus of Galilee was the embodiment of the world's hope. He was much else, but he was the world’s greatest young man. If we look at Him only from the loftiest of those mountain tops of vision to which men are permitted to ascend, we will say that His was the life most apparently- needed to be lived out in its entirety upon the earth. No business enter- prise of this world has ever apparently poised its possibilities and destiny upon any one life as did the weal of humanity upon the life of Jesus. We may reverently say that no most loving father apparently could have ever felt that the enterprise nearest his own heart so resided and throbbed in the beating heart of his child here below as did our heavenly Father, when