Swarthmore College - Halcyon Yearbook (Swarthmore, PA)

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In Recog ' nition Of nineteen years of unceasing devotion and service, evidenced by her more than doubled capacity and the ever-increasing spread of her fame and good name, Alma Mater, through the Halcyon, her spokes- man, here expresses her love and grati- tude by this dedication to President Joseph Swain

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President Joseph Swain

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Swartl)more ' s faster ! uil6cr (Dr. liller and Dean Alexander, as those two Swarthmoreans who have known President Swain longest and most intiniatel}-, were asked to write articles about him for the Halcyon. The results fol- low, one in the form of a letter, the other as an article ) : Dear Mr. Editor : It is ith great pleasure that I undertake to comply with your request. I am afraid. howe -er, that I cannot ap] roach the cjuestion of Dr. Swain ' s personal qualities in a judicial manner. Thirt --fi -e •ears of intimate association — always helpful to me — has led me to endow him with almost superhuman qualities. He was my course adviser and teacher for four undergraduate years and for one graduate year. I taught in two universities in a department of which he was the head. Since 1895, I ha e been a professor in an institution of which he was president. The self-same qualities which characterize him as a great teacher and a great colleague ha ' e made him a great president. In each of these capacities he has been a leader, — a leader of an ever-in- creas ing throng of forceful men and omen ; a throng that contains neither a drone nor a weakling. He believes in the gospel of work. He has worked ver} ' ' hard himself and found great joy in it. It was a tradition among his stu- dents that no one ever came to his classes unprepared. He has an un- compromising sense of loyalty, to an ideal, to a cause to which he de- votes himself. To such a cause he gave his best powers, enlisted the best in others, and he never was contented until the best that could be obtained was a part of such an institution. He engenders the same spirit of loyalt - in his co-workers. His students of Mathematics (Dr. Swain was a professor of Mathematics) are students of Mathematics now, located in the colleges and univer- sities of this country. Many of them have contributed to the mathe- matical literature of the country either in the way of books or to the leading mathematical journals. The same spirit pervaded his facul- ties. They were as 103 ' al to the institution as he was, and this loyalty was built upon the foundation stone of belief in the cause, and the be- lief that Joseph Swain had engendered, in some w ' ay other than by