Rice University - Campanile Yearbook (Houston, TX)

Page 24 text:

FOR RICE NINETEEN THIRTY-ONE BIT OF PROPHECY BY WAY OF PARABLE .• .. ' ' ■}} ' ' i | NE of the best friends I ever had I never knew, except from hearsay, and .. A . as pictured from time to time in my own imagination. ' -W I had heen attracted to him I know not how: vet so strongly, that sift- ' ••!.. ••■ i ' -.. .!•• ' ' ' n S ' ' ' wheat from the chaff of what men said about him. I had evencon- ||!ii:{iih{i||| strutted a skeleton of his life; and I had longed to meet him in the flesh. 1 hail met men like him. like him in the backgrounds of his people, like him in the en- vironment of his youth, like him in the circumstances of his maturer powers, and like him. too. in the seemingly easy, hut willful, meeting and mastering of the chances and changes of life. In due time I came to acknowledge his leadership, even as he acknowledged the leadership of others, for alike in his doubts and in his decisions he always sought counsel of men dead and living, hut only in the end to do his own thinking. For his was the sort of leadership that commands the heart by convincing the head. Its illuminating appeal was to the reason of mind, and to tilings reasonable to men. If thus an intellectual leadership, it was none the less a mystical one; and this, it always seemed to me, was the secret of its power over me. For him, science more than politics was changing the face and future of the world, while what men call let- ters was to him as large as life: and in each he found full play for the aesthetic sense within him. Reason and religion, science and service, he could dissociate in study and laboratory; nevertheless thev met harmoniously in the chapel of his conscience, the sanctuary of his spirit. In my desire to be like him, I came to liken myself to him. part and parcel of all that shall be. of a destiny reckoned in thousands of years. He had knowledge of what was. and what is. but these things were of significance to him only for their bearing on what may be and what shall be. He thought he would live always, and had faith he stood where earths foundations stand. In the borderland of opinion, between faith and knowledge, he could suspend judgment and with pa- tience seek and await more light. It was towards such a goal of light that this friend and leader allured me. even as men have been drawn by quest of Holy Grail, or promise of truth, or legend of gold. His name ' . ' ' He has as many names as you have. He is the man within each of us that each of us aspires to be. It has been the business of this place to bring him out, and I confidently expect to see this friend and leader in each of you attain to fullness of stature and noble achievement. With confidence. I say. because I have known something of him from hearsay, and as pictured from time to time in my own imagi- nation, and I still hope, by the grace of God, to meet him.— jEdfiar Oilfll Lovetl