This kind of dignity of temporal precession is
likely, with prolonged life, to become more familiar, possibly less
welcome; but I felt it strongly then, it is strongly on me now, and
I am the more emboldened to speak with my successors in the tone of
a parent and a praiser of things past.
For, indeed, that which they attend is but a fallen University; it
has doubtless some remains of good, for human institutions decline
by gradual stages; but decline, in spite of all seeming
embellishments, it does; and what is perhaps more singular, began
to do so when I ceased to be a student. Thus, by an odd chance, I
had the very last of the very best of ALMA MATER; the same thing, I
hear (which makes it the more strange), had previously happened to
my father; and if they are good and do not die, something not at
all unsimilar will be found in time to have befallen my successors
of to-day. Of the specific points of change, of advantage in the
past, of shortcoming in the present, I must own that, on a near
examination, they look wondrous cloudy. The chief and far the most
lamentable change is the absence of a certain lean, ugly, idle,
unpopular student, whose presence was for me the gist and heart of
the whole matter; whose changing humours, fine occasional purposes
of good, flinching acceptance of evil, shiverings on wet, east-
windy, morning journeys up to class, infinite yawnings during
lecture and unquenchable gusto in the delights of truantry, made up
the sunshine and shadow of my college life.
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