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The Courier-Review.
achieve the highest success. That can come only when the heart is put in command.
"For long as the grass may be growing and long as the waters run,
waters run,
The heart will forever be winning as hearts have forever won,
Commanding the battle of life till the battle of life is done."
It is my high honor and my great pleasure to stand before you to-day to speak for a man whose life deserved well to be cited as an example to enforce the truth of the doctrine our Poet Laureate proclaimed. I cannot speak, as I wish I might, from personal knowledge, for it was not my privilege to enjoy an acquaintance with Wm. B. Spooner. Neither can I speak from any written record, for the short and simple annals that have been available for me, condense the story of a long life into a dozen lines. They tell only of the humble birth in the obscure New England village away back near the beginning of the century; of the meagre schooling, only three years all told, and they from the age of seven to ten; of the boyhood of privation and the youth of toil; of the manhood of accomplishment; of the old age of contentment and peace, with "riches, honors, troops of friends." But even this record, brief as it is, could not close without two short sentences of characterization, and they are worth more to us now than all the rest. "He had a stainless reputation," is one of the sentences, "His charities to the poor were many," that is the other. Sentences that are almost harsh in their blunt brevity. And yet what orator eloquent enough to pronounce a prouder eulogy? He had a stainless reputation. "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches." His charities to the poor were many. "And now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three, and the greatest of these is charity." It is easy to see that during all the long life, while brains and industry and sagacity were gathering the great fortune, HEART was in command, directing how it should be gathered and dictating how it should be used. And then when the lengthening shadows warned him that his day was ending and it was time that the gathered fortune should be scattered, it is clear from the provisions of the last
will and testament that HEART was still in command. For we read here of bequests to the Massachusetts Total Abstinence Society, to the Baldwin Place Home for Little Wanderers, to the Children's Mission, to the town of his birth for the maintenance of a library, to the Unitarian Fraternity of Churches, to the Divinity School connected with Harvard University, to the Society for the Education of the Colored People of the South, to the National Temperance Society of New York, to the needy of Boston "who have seen better days," to the Massachusetts General Hospital, for free beds, to the Theological School at Meadeville, Pa. It is only a cold catalogue, put down in set legal phrase. But what elaborate statement could tell us more clearly how catholic were this man's views, how wide the range of his interest, how deep and strong the current of his sympathy. The cause of religion, the cause of education, the cause of temperance, the cause of the sick and unfortunate, the cause of the homeless, the cause of those who have been slaves, the cause of the little children. All these had found room and a welcome in the great and loving heart of Wm. B. Spooner. For such a man there can be no failure and no defeat. Accident or disaster might have scattered his fortune; and yet he would have died rich.
"For long as the grass may be growing and long as the waters run.
waters run,
The heart will forever be winning as hearts have forever won,
Commanding the battle of life till the battle of life is done."
It is in behalf of this man whose noble and useful life has so well deserved the tribute of our love, and in his revered and honored name, that I now present to the State of Kansas, through the Board of Regents of this University, this splendid and imposing structure. May the elements deal gently with it and the hand of Time touch it tenderly, that it may stand here through the long years that are to come, massive and beautiful, a monument to its illustrious founder prouder than stately shaft or gorgeous mausolem, an example to inspire others to whom great wealth has opened great opportunity, and better and higher than all, an