Part 2

The last three presidents of Burritt College were W. S. Graves, serving twice, H. B. Walker, and H. E. Scott. For several years the College continued to prosper. President Billingsley bequeathed the most of his estate as an endowment for the benefit of Burritt College and the Church of Christ in Spencer and for the preaching of the Gospel in backward communities. A new dormitory, called Billingsley Hall, was erected and also a gymnasium. But certain developments in education began to make it difficult for Burritt to make progress. The first was the establishment of county high schools throughout the State, with free tuition, which took away a large number of students from the Preparatory Department of the College. The second adverse development was the increase in the facilities of the University of Tennessee and the establishment of State Normal Schools and other state schools on the college level. Burritt could not successfully compete with such institutions in which tuition was free. As a private school Burritt could have survived only with a large endowment, and that was not to be secured. No Vanderbilt, Duke, or Peabody came to the rescue of Burritt.

The scientific age, then far advanced, and the growing emphasis on athletics demanded laboratory equipment and gymnasiums and fieldhouses which cost much money. The old claim that a log with Mark Hopkins sitting on one end with a student on the other constituted a college was long out of date. Under such conditions it was only a question of time until Burritt ceased to function in the form in which it had had a remarkable influence for good for nearly one hundred years.

We have all watched the deterioration, decay, and death of our beloved institution with painful forebodings but without power to help. God grant that the College is not actually dead but only sleeping, and that we may hear soon of its awaking to a new life as fruitful of good as it was in the past.

Joseph Conrad declared, “The dead can live only with the exact intensity and quality of the life imparted to them by the living.” The truth of this, as applied to man, is open to serious doubt, but it is applicable to institutions like Burritt. Our College can never really die as long as there are those who love it and who live by the high intellectual, moral, and religious principles learned within its walls. Burritt College lives in the influence still alive in the hearts and minds, and spirits of its alumni scattered far and wide.

That we still love the old College is evident by our presence here on this historic occasion. We are here to drink from a kind of Ponce de Leon “Fountain of Youth.” We would not drink, as did the characters in Hawthorne’s “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” of a magic elixir that would make us physically children again “just for tonight.” But we may be restored imaginatively to that golden youthful period of life, and the imagination works more easily and effectively in the physical surroundings of our youth.

I question the truth of Robert Browning’s lines in “Rabbi Ben Ezra,”

“Grow old along with me; The best of life is yet to be.”

As I grow older, this seems to me like the whistling in the dark I used to try when passing a country churchyard to keep my courage up. No, from my vantage point, I hold rather with Wordsworth who declared in _The Prelude_ with regard to his youth:

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven! O times, In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways Of custom, law, and statute took at once The attraction of a country in romance!”

Ah, yes, “to be young was very Heaven!” As we look upon these scenes of our early recollection, we are “softened and subdued into a sweet, pensive sorrow, which only the happiest and holiest associations of bygone years can call into being.” These last words are from the lecture on “Visions and Dreams” by the eloquent, tender-hearted Bob Taylor. “O beautiful isle of memory,” he continued, “lighted by the morning star of life, where the roses bloom by the door, where the robins sing among the apple blossoms, where bright waters ripple in eternal melody! There are echoes of songs that are sung no more, tender words spoken by lips that are dust, blessings from hearts that are still!”

I hesitate to break the charm cast over us by such a beautiful expression of truth and feeling. But I must end our imaginative rejuvenation and backward turning to the days of our youth at this dear College. In conclusion, may I quote the closing paragraph of President Billingsley’s address to the graduating class on May 19, 1911, the last speech of this kind he delivered at Burritt. May it be a benediction to us as we return to our homes and the duties of life, which we have laid aside, for a time.

“I desire to speak a word of congratulations to you,” he declared, “for your success in completing the prescribed course of instruction in this institution with so much honor to yourselves and pleasure to your instructors. Right nobly have you performed your parts, and the impressions you have made upon us will not be forgotten.

‘The echoes roll from soul to soul, And are not lost forever.’

“Scattered though you may soon be from the Atlantic to the Pacific, whether in the remotest West, where the weary sun sinks nightly to his ocean bed, or in the golden East, where the gates of the morning unbar their shining folds to let in the day god’s flashing beams, wherever you may be, let the thought of the love of Burritt College cheer and comfort you and be an inspiration to you to always be the noblest and do your best.”

Transcriber’s Notes

--There was no copyright notice on the original pamphlet, scanned from the library of John C. Hutcheson.

--Provided a cover, based on the frontispiece image, and released for unrestricted use with this Distributed-Proofreaders eBook.