Beloit College - Codex Yearbook (Beloit, WI)

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lggjejg T1-IECODEX QXQI gardless of the imminent danger to himself, was carried to the topmost level, and descended safely with the freight unbroken. In the autumn of his senior year when the football season seemed darkening to disaster, it was he who organized the second eleven, and so held them together, and so Hung them upon the college team, that the latter gained from the encounters a reinvigoration which carried them to victory. The winning team was greeted with well-deserved plaudits, it was enough for Henry that his exertions which gained him no distinction had given the team the means of triumphing, and so had brought honor to old Beloit. Disciplined by defeat in debates of preceding years, his senior inter-collegiate debate was characterized by a resistless leadership which won the decision and lifted the college to a high pitch of enthusiasm. He just missed his 'tmagna cum laude by his devotion to these public interests in college, but he made the sacrifice with a heart single to the wider interest he was serving, ungrudging of the cost. Next came two years on the faculty of a little college in the far west, whose handful of students became the winners in contest after contest in oratory and debate under the inspiring guidance of their young instructor. Then he was called to the service of Beloit along lines of self denying labor, at the same time that he was urged to enter upon business openings in the west, giving fine promise of large pecun- iary returns. It was the day of ultimate decisions. He turned his back upon pros- pective wealth to give himself to the college and eventually to work for the great and needy empire of China whose call to him grew more distinct and imperative with the passing years. During the year in Beloit he delighted, on returning at night from a day devoted to college business, to give himself until the morning to studying with the prospective debaters the question chosen for their contest, and no team which he coached failed to win the decision of the judges. It was during this year that the idea of a Greater Beloit took possession of him. How he inspired students and alumni with his project, how he wrought day and night throughout the summer for its realization, and how the entering class that fall registered an increase of fifty per cent over the usual Freshman numbers-all that is a part of Beloit history. But it is not generally known that he went to the Yale Divinity School with health seriously impaired by the physical expenditures of his summer's campaign, so that he was gravely warned by his physician of the peril of such lavish giving of himself even in such a cause. It is most fitting that the class which entered Beloit that year, the class of 1909, should cherish the memory of Henry Smith with peculiar affection, regarding it as in a special sense their own pos- session. May it not be theirs to take up and complete the wide life-work which was in the horizon of his thought and purpose? ' At Yale he had hardly recovered his health, when he was chosen one of the con- testants in the Yale-Harvard debate. Again his whole being was thrown into the effort, an harrassing illness set in, but on the very day of the debate he regained his voice, went into the struggle with every power keyed to the highest point, was be- lieved by Yale to have won the debate-but lost the verdict. That night' he had a T E61

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I THE CODEX asiasal 16211113 Eirkinsnn Smith HERE are some lives, true and useful ones, which move in tranquil ,Z ' . -S' ways, with measured heart beats, to their natural and forseen con- fv 4 clusion. They are like long, serene summer days. There are other , ig. ,T , lives that are eager, tumultuous, rushing, throbbing with high pur- F pose, accomplishing arduous tasks in unexpected even catastrophic fi 3, ways. F hey are like rivers sweeping in torrents and haunted with the sound of cataracts. There is no question as to which of these two types of life has the more fascinat- ing interest, and draws us with deeper sympathy to generous emulation. It is eager- ness that makes us eager, profound impulses stir our hearts. And there is no doubt which of these two represents the life of Henry Dickinson Smith. Preceding him was a long line of ancestors of fine intellectual and spiritual qual- ity, reaching back to the great brain and heart of jonathan Edwards. His father, Dr. Arthur H. Smith, one of the ablest of Beloit's graduates, stands easily in the front rank of eminent missionary leaders who are profoundly affecting the destinies of the Chinese Empire. His books are already classical authorities on Chinese character and life, and his conversation scintillates with brilliant expression of insight and ob- servation. At the great Centenary Conference at Shanghai this year, two presiding officers being chosen to represent respectively Europe and America, it was fitting that Dr. Smith should be the one who represented our continent. Mrs. Smith, too, has remarkable power of concentrated purpose and of graceful and graphic expression, beneath which is the mystic's soul with unfathomable depths of self devotion. Intensity has characterized their son's life throughout. In infancy, in a land where the children are patterns of tranquility, he was a little dynamo. A story is current in one of the missionary families of Pang Chuang, which suggests in the child the qualities we all admired in the young man. The mules kept in the mission compound for the purposes of evangelizing tours, sometimes broke loose and stampeded through the premises, causing much temporary confusion. After one of these ex- periences, little Henry said very earnestly to a grown up friend: 'tThe next time a mule does that, l'll get a big stick and hit him a 777ZL'7llZ70'Ll.Y whack! How largely hiswhole life was made up of emergencies in the midst of which he stood, valiant and aflame, dealing blows with all his might at antagonists within his own soul, or grappling with situations or competitors in generous but tremendous struggle. For one so intense as he was, his power of sinking himself and his own interest in some larger interest and aim was little less than marvelous, and made him both honored and beloved. When a mere lad employed as an elevator boy, some one in the basement carelessly sent the elevator, loaded with fragile merchandise, spinning up to the top of a high building at a perilous speed. Henry clung to the ropes re- E51

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l am THE connx tmaiail long conversation with an old-time friend upon the meaning of defeat. It was no easy task for him to give up anything upon which he had set his soul. He felt that he had been chosen, not merely to do his best, but to win, and that without the ver- dict on his side the ideal was not attained. Through what hard struggles he won self-mastery 5 at what a price he gained his freedom! So with unconquerable energy he came back once more to Beloit, cherishing a vision of a yet greater Beloit. He pressed impetuously through the first stage of the campaign, and went to Lake Geneva to snatch a few days rest before it was time for the second stage. There, at the sight of a young life in peril, he flung himself into the lake, and in the supreme effort to save was himself overborne. In spite of all the resources of devotion and skill lavished upon him in days and nights of agon- izing effort, he passed beyond the reach of eager hands and the sight of loving eyes, in his delirium dictating letters and yet more letters about the College, of which he had spoken in his last letter to his parents as the dearest place in all America to him. Could a young life fulnll more completely the high aspirations which the poet has imagined for us: In some good cause, not in mine own, To perish, wept for, honored, known, And like a warrior overthrownf, But not to perish! Such a life as that of Henry Dickinson Smith transcends the measures of the local and transitory. It requires-the background of a universe to render it explicable, and eternity for its field of action. Springing from a far-reach- ing and widely influential past, it beckons toward a life worthy of its hopes, its strug- gles, its equipment for service. Into what ampler opportunities, what larger minis- tries, what higher leadership our friend has been called, we cannot know, but the thought of him challenges us to look forward, to strive, and to expect. I EDWARD DXVIGHT EATON. I , Qr- vl4Xbl 56:51:29 . 553:62 , 5: 140122293 ' iV'f I fax W 'lla -all ' 3,5 +' 'I' E71