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

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away shore, has somewhat lifted us by means of an impelled wave coming shoreward, as its own out-going was accomplished. Great- ness has been here and gone. A life of importance to the whole business and philanthropic world has vanished from our sight. The harbor lights are aware. The river is not yet calm. It is ours to take hold of the oars a little more firmly; to look a little more closely, and, perhaps, affectionately, at the treasures of the shores which are left, and above all to rejoice that no vastness of the sea, no mightiest storm, no distance of port to which that ship sails, can ever permanently separate us from the unique and ma- jestic thing we loved, or ever take entirely from us the lofty sky and the abysmal sea, deep answering unto deep—with whose mys- teries all things are safe, the sea and sky being the symbols of the love of God. Let us paint him as we knew him here. I dreamed the other night that there was a picture of Philip Danforth Armour hung in yonder great temple of commerce—the Board of Trade—and all that art might suggest or reflect of the qualities of an unsur- passed commercial genius was placed upon the canvas, by hands of accuracy and power, set to adequately limn and accentuate that countenance. There he stood, master and even monarch, the organizer of great movements, the creator of numberless enter- prises, undaunted in apparent defeat, self-controlled in peril, earn- est when others faltered, vanquisher of tempests, and ice and storm, the builder of a great fortune, and a beginner of a new era in the development of the resources of America. And I said: “That is not our picture.” And then I saw another picture, the picture that was created out of the colors which lie in your heart and mine, fellow-students, the picture that comes to us as we bring back the days when he came and lived the happiest nours with us and plan- ned with us for our Institute of learning, and hoped, while he pro- vided for some trembling and fallen one a means of escape from a blighted past and of entrance into a happier future, so that a new life and a new hope were created by his generosity and his courage. I saw the genial, humorous, even witty, bluft', hearty, healthful man in that vision; and 1 said, “If God will give me power and self- command, we will not lament; we will not apologize; we will simply make the picture out of our memories of the man we loved.” Fra Angelico, painting in Florence, found the tears

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QYlemortaf ($bbre66 of (p. ©. ($rmour A majestic oak, upon which we have gazed for years, under whose shade we have found refreshing coolness, by whose roots the flowers of beauty and fragrance grew, has fallen. It is not ours to gather about a ruin and to unite in words of lament, for too much has been given to the world in the life of him we honor. Through him has come to us a new revelation of the power God has lodged in humanity. We must not sorrow, and sorrow only that the oak has fallen; so deeply do the roots of this life run into the earth, so grandly did this life unfold under the influences of heaven. Ours must not be a sigh or a tear save as it is accompanied with a song of thanksgiving. Neither is it ours to gather here, where this great tree shaded so many with its kindly and genial influences and pronounce words of eulogy: for this oak was too massive, too grand, too simple and too sublime to harmonize with our poor ex- pression in words of description or of praise. Least of all, look- ing up into the open heavens and standing on the spot where this oak ruled in the sovereignty of its expanding beauty, need we apologise for its gnarled and twisted trunk and its knotted limbs, as we seek to remember more kindly influences, the various airs which played through the branches in all the moving seasons, the drifting tides of sunlight which flooded the leaves, and the count- less happy memories and inspirations which associated themselves with the tall and sovereign growth ever lifting our eyes and thoughts toward the skies. It is very hard to part with Philip Danforth Armour. The effect of his going continues. We who remain are like the lesser craft in a great river, which widens to a harbor of departure, over whose surface there has gone out to sea a monarch of the deep. We like to feel the evidences of greatness. It is almost enough that we realize the displacement and movement of the waters upon which our smaller boats must sail. A mighty and kingly thing, a great ship, indeed, bearing many precious things, bound for a far

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mingling with his colors while he painted the figures which are im- mortal amongst the thousands celebrated in the country of religion and art; and it would now be easier far for my heart and for yours to pour out our feelings in tears. I think that all of them would be tears of gratitude; they would not be tears of sorrow. I could not be true to the massive manhood, the granitic character of Philip Danforth Armour, if 1 did not realize that his command to us, spoken out of the unknown land, is this: “Let the Sun- shine In.” It ought to be for us an occasion of grateful rejoicing. It must be an hour in which a better courage and hope shall come into your and my sleepy and weary veins. It must be an hour in which we shall find ourselves face to face with the supreme facts which help to make this picture of this life, with all that he had to fight and all that he had to acquire, furnishing a testimony to the triumph of God’s gooddess and God’s acting in and through humanity. As a little child he trusted God, at the last as at the first, and he was not afraid. F. W. Gunsaulus