West Side High School - Legenda Yearbook (Saginaw, MI)

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and how refined his tastes, lighted as they were with the play of wit and fancy. In his person lie illustrated the gentler and more elevated side of that strong race of men who have come to our shores from the great German fatherland. And 1 know that if he is sentient now, there is no public association of his name which would so please him as to connect it with our annual graduating exercises, with the music and the fiowers in which he found such fine delight, and the gathered youth, with eager, glowing faces. And so it shall be. I have attempted here, gentlemen, to do homage to friend¬ ship, and to unselfish public service, but this is only incidental to my desire to quicken the intellectual pulse of the youth of the city which has been my home from early boyhood. And 1 trust it will not be deemed unbecoming when I say, that whether the days that lie before me be many or be few, there enters into them with this act a singular serenity, grow¬ ing out of the nature of the thing done. Looking forward, I see from time to time, some humble scholar—and true scholars are humble, all—with eyes lifted across these scholarships to that lofty mountainpeak of learn¬ ing, our great state University, and I see that scholar, having higher aims, gaining higher ends. Not that scholastic learning is everything, for the chiefest attribute to a complete nature is a heart generous beyond mere giving. But the student who goes up to one of our great seats of learning becomes one of the heirs of the best tho ughts of the best men of all the ages, and both mind and heart are enriched thereby. And the student meets there the intellect¬ ual elite of the nation. Friendships are formed which endure as long as life, and to consort on equal terms with these choice spirits develops chivalry, humanity, as well as intellect¬ ual brightness. The field of university teaching continually broadens, so that today the leading mechanical arts are taught in all their essentials and, moving along these new paths, the student constantly finds new sources of an honorable livelihood. And so it is that, year by year, when the mellow October days shall come, I have the hope that some bright-faced young man, or sweet, clear-eyed young woman, will have found in this modest provision an inspiration and a purpose and will enter the college portals to their great and lasting gain. If this shall be, then, in their persons 1 shall tread the old halls again and, garbed in perpetual youth, shall realize my present dream of immortality. Yours respectfully, Arthur Hill. Saginaw, Dec. 25, 1893.

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The scholarship to he awarded in 1895 and quadrennially thereafter I would designate as ‘‘The Wells-Stone Scholar¬ ship, to continue in perpetual association the names of Charles W. Wells and Farnam C. Stone around whose open graves we have lately and with such sadness gathered. A graceful and grateful pen has fitly applied to them the one con¬ soling verse in the beautiful lament over Saul and Jonathan. “The}’ were lovely and pleasant in their lives and in their death they were not divided. Plain men of business, they were yet princely in their getting and in their giving, and though in¬ tensely occupied, they had equally that royal quality of having always time and temper to hear and generously deal with every public and every private appeal. I had planned to attach to the scholarships only the names of those who had been directly connected with our public schools. Farnam C. Stone died a diligent and devoted member of your board and so came within my first intention. But I could not—would not, even here sever it from that of his all but brother, and my much prized friend, Charles W. Wells. The scholarship to be awarded in 189(5 and quadrennially thereafter, I would designate as “The Alonzo L. Bingham Scholarship, giving to it the name of that veteran teacher and veteran soldier who in both fields did such honorable service. He was my teacher during the last years of my at¬ tendance at the city schools, and to my great advantage. His methods were not of the modern “advanced type, but they were thorough and they were exact and exacting, as to all the fundamentals of a sound, common school education. He impressed the love of learning on every pupil through his great earnestness, and constantly incited to effort. In 1862, when the Union cause in the great civil war looked darkest, though middleaged he raised a company and led it to the front, and, as the army rolls show, was four times wounded. But with that tenacity which we who knew him understood, he did not lay down his sword until the enemy ' s flag was lowered. When his long life peacefully ended last winter, a corps of his old scholars showed their love for him by assisting at his obse¬ quies, and it is as one of these, and in behalf of them all, that I thus seek to commemorate his name. The scholarship to be awarded in 1897, and quadrennially thereafter, I wish to designate as “The Otto Roeser Scholar¬ ship,” to give recognition to the rare claim to remembrance of one who loved and served our schools, our scholars and our teachers with a personal devotion, which in his last hours was both pathetic and inspiring. Associated with him for the last five years of his membership of the board of trustees, I came to know how he loved literature, how tender was his heart,

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