Harvard Students, you come here to be educated in the lecture-room and in the laboratory by your teachers, and to be educated by your daily life with each other; and it is a question which form will profit you more.

With the former part of your education, we laymen may well be content, trusting to your own zeal for work and to the powers of this chosen band of teachers.

For the latter part of your education the chances are less because the opportunities of free social intercourse among yourselves have not kept pace with the increasing number of students.

Excellent as are the existing clubs they do not furnish the required field, for by their very nature they are limited in numbers and restricted by elections. Hence the need to you of this house for meeting each other, for meeting your teachers, who would gladly see you more freely, and for meeting the older graduates, who ask for the sunshine of your young, fresh years. One common meeting-ground we already have.

Yonder on the Delta stands a hall built in memory of Harvard men, who gave all they had or hoped for in this life that their country should be one, and should be ruled in the spirit of a broad and generous democracy. So high were the hopes of these men, so strong were their wishes, so firm their resolves, that our land should be the home of a free, united people, a field for the full development of the human race, that they thought no price too great to pay for that end.

Such was their problem and such their spirit, and in future years you will meet your great questions in the same spirit.

It is much to give up home, health, even life, in order to carry out one's national ideal, and yet it is the plain, over-mastering duty of the citizen in a free land. It is much for the loser in such a fierce struggle as our civil war, to give up the ideal for which he has paid the last price, and to accept the outcome with a fine magnanimity as our brothers of the South have done. They have recognized that this whole country is theirs as well as ours.

We older men can hardly enter the cloister of Memorial Hall without a quickening of the pulses and a moistening of the eyes, without a feeling of sadness at the loss of our comrades, and of gladness that they never hesitated in their course.

But it is not the memory of these men alone, whose names stand there on the roll of honor for all time, which moves us. We think of other friends who have run equal chances of danger, and have fought the long battle of life as bravely; men who have made this University what it is, or who have rendered distinguished services to their fellow-citizens and their country - we think of the many men who, leading useful lives in the background, are rarely mentioned, but whose memories are cherished by their classmates.

We think of all these comrades with equal tenderness and respect, and as one after another, worn out with work or by the hard blows of life, drops, we close up the ranks, and drawing nearer to each other, we move on. It is the record of deep mutual trust and friendship, and such a boon we would pass on to you.

Our new house is built in the belief that here also will dwell this spirit of democracy side by side with the spirit of true comradeship, friendship; but today this is a mere shell, a body into which you, Harvard students, and you alone can breathe life and then by a constant and generous use of it educate yourselves and each other.

Looking back in life I can see no earthly good which has come to me so great, so sweet, so uplifting, so consoling, as the friendship of the men and the women whom I have known well and loved-friends who have been equally ready to give and to receive kind offices and timely counsel.

Is there anything more delightful than the ties between young fellows which spring up and strengthen in daily college life-friendships born of sympathy, confidence, and affection, as yet untouched by the interests and claims of later life?

We older men would offer to you a garden in which such saplings will grow until they become the oaks to whose shade you may always return for cheer and for rest in your victories and your troubles. Be sure that you will have both, for the one you will win and the other you must surely meet; and when they come, nothing will steady and strengthen you like real friends who will speak the frank words of truth tempered by affection; friends who will help you and never count the cost.

Friendship is the full-grown team-play of life, and in my eyes there is no limit to its value. The old proverb tells us that we have as many uses for friendship as for fire and water. Never doubt it, for you know all these things, and bye and bye you will feel them all around you-in your hearts.