Mr. McKinley was elected, and thus, in my judgment, was averted the greatest peril which our Republic has encountered since the beginning of the Civil War. Having now some time for myself, I accepted sundry invitations to address the students of two of the greater State universities of the West. It gave me pleasure to visit them, on many accounts, and above all for the purpose of realizing the magnificent advance that has been made by them in becoming universities worthy of our country.

My antic.i.p.ations were far more than met. My old student and successor at the University of Michigan as professor and at Cornell University as president, Dr. Charles Kendall Adams, welcomed me to the inst.i.tution over which he so worthily presided--the State University of Wisconsin; and having visited it a quarter of a century before, I was now amazed at its progress. The subject of my address, in the presence of the whole body of students was ''Evolution versus Revolution in Politics,'' and never have I spoken with more faith and hope. Looking into the faces of that immense a.s.sembly of students, in training for the best work of their time, lifted me above all doubts as the future of that commonwealth.

From Madison I went to Minneapolis under an invitation to address the students at the State University of Minnesota, and again my faith and hope were renewed as I looked into the faces of those great audiences of young men and young women. They filled me with confidence in the future of the country. At Minneapolis I also met various notable men, among them Archbishop Ireland, who had interested me much at a former meeting in Philadelphia. I became sure that whatever ecclesiastics of his church generally might feel toward the United States, he was truly patriotic. Alas for both church and state that such prelates as Gibbons, Ireland, Keane, Spalding, and the like, should be in a minority!

But my most curious experience was due to another citizen of Minnesota. Having been taken to the State House, I was introduced, in the lower branch of the legislature, to no less a personage than Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, so widely known by his publications regarding the authorship of Shakspere's writings; and on my asking him whether he was now engaged on any literary work, he informed me that he was about to publish a book which would leave no particle of doubt, in the mind of any thinking man, that the writings attributed to Shakspere were really due to Francis Bacon. During this conversation the house was droning on in committee of the whole, and the proceedings fell upon my ear much like the steady rumble of a mill; but suddenly the mill seemed to stop, my own name was called, and immediately afterward came the words: ''Mr. ---- of ---- and Mr. ---- of ---- will escort Mr. White to the chair.'' It was a very sudden awakening from my talk with Mr. Donnelly on literature, but there was no help for it. ''Accoutred as I was, I plunged in,'' and, in a long fur- lined coat much the worse for wear and bespattered with mud, was conducted to the speaker, who, after formal greetings, turned me loose on the audience. Naturally my speech revealed what was uppermost in my mind--wonder at the progress made by the State, admiration for its inst.i.tutions, confidence in its future, pride in its relation to the Union. At the close of this brief talk a few members set up a call for Mr. Donnelly to respond, whereupon he promptly arose, and of all the speeches I have ever heard his was certainly the most surprising. It had seemed to me that my own remarks had glorified Minnesota up to the highest point; but they were tame indeed compared to his.

Having first dosed me with blarney, he proceeded to deluge the legislature with balderdash. One part of his speech ran substantially on this wise:

''Mr. Speaker, I ask the gentleman, when he returns to his home, to tell his fellow-citizens of the East what he has seen during his visit to this great State; and, sir, we also wish him to tell them that Minnesota and the great Northwest will no longer consent to be trodden under the feet of the East. The strength of the United States and the future center of American greatness is here in Minnesota.

Mr. Speaker, not far from this place I own a farm.'' (Here I began to wonder what was coming next.) ''From that farm, on one side, the waters trickle down until they reach the rivulets, and then the streams, and finally the great rivers which empty into Hudson Bay. And from the other side of that farm, sir, the waters trickle down into the rivulets, thence pa.s.s into the streams, and finally into the great Father of Waters, until they reach the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Speaker, on this plateau are now raised the great men of the Republic. Formerly Virginia was the mother of statesmen; that is so no longer. The mother of statesmen in these days, and of the men who are to control the destinies of this Republic, is Minnesota.''

Never before had I any conception of the height to which ''tall talk'' might attain. It was the apotheosis of blather; but as my eye wandered over the a.s.semblage, I noticed that many faces wore smiles, and it was clear to me that the members had merely wished to exhibit their most amusing specimen.

I felt that if they could stand it I could, and so, having bidden the Speaker and Mr. Donnelly good-bye, pa.s.sed out and made the acquaintance of the neighboring city of St.

Paul, which struck me as even more beautiful than Edinburgh in the views from its princ.i.p.al streets over hills, valleys, and mountains.

At the University of Michigan, in view of my recent visit, I did not again stop, but at Harvard and Yale I addressed the students, and returned home from the excursion with new faith in the future of the country. James Bryce is right when he declares that in our universities lie the best hopes of the United States.

Early in the year following the election I was appointed by the President amba.s.sador to Germany. I had not sought the position; indeed, I had distinctly declined to speak of the matter to any of those who were supposed to have the management of political affairs in the State.

It came to me, directly and unsought, from President McKinley; I therefore prized it, and shall ever prize the remembrance of it.

While it was announced as pending, I was urged by various friends to speak of the subject to Mr. Platt, who as the only Republican senator from New York and the head of the Republican organization, was supposed to have large rights in the matter. It was hinted to me that some statement to Mr. Platt on the subject was required by political etiquette and would smooth the President's way. My answer was that I felt respect and friendship for Mr. Platt; that I called at his rooms from time to time socially, and discussed various public matters with him; but that I could never make a request to him in the premises; that I could not put myself in the att.i.tude of a suppliant, even in the slightest degree, to him or even to the President.

The result was that the President himself spoke to Mr.

Platt on the subject, and, as I was afterward informed, the senator replied that he would make no objection, but that the appointment ought not to be charged against the claims of the State of New York.

The presidential campaign of 1900, in which Mr. McKinley was presented for relection, touched me but slightly.There came various letters urging me to become a candidate for the Vice-Presidency, and sundry newspapers presented reasons for my nomination, the main argument being the same which had been formerly used as regarded the governorship of New York--that the German-Americans were estranged from the Republican party by the high tariff, and that I was the only Republican who could draw them to the ticket. All this I deprecated, and refused to take any part in the matter, meantime writing my nephew, who had become my successor in the State Senate, my friend Dr. Holls, and others, to urge the, name of Theodore Roosevelt. I had known him for many years and greatly admired him. His integrity was proof against all attack, his courage undoubted, and his vigor amazing.It was clear that he desired renomination for the place he already held--the governorship of New York--partly because he was devoted to certain reforms, which he could carry out only in that position, and partly because he preferred activity as governor of a great State to the usually pa.s.sive condition of a Vice-President of the United States.Moreover, he undoubtedly had aspirations to the Presidency.These were perfectly legitimate, and indeed hon- orable, in him, as they are in any man who feels that he has the qualities needed in that high office. He and his friends clearly felt that the transition from the governorship of New York to the Presidency four years later would be more natural than that from the Vice-Presidency; but in my letters I insisted that his name would greatly strengthen the national ticket, and that his road to the Presidency seemed to me more easy from the Vice-Presidency than from the governorship; that, although during recent years Vice-Presidents had not been nominated to the higher office, during former years they had been; and that I could see no reason why he might not bring about a return to the earlier custom. As to myself, at my age, I greatly preferred the duties of amba.s.sador to those of Vice-President. The Republican party was wise enough to take this view, and at the National Convention he was nominated by acclamation.Early in August, having taken a leave of absence for sixty days, I arrived in New York, and on landing received an invitation from Mr. Roosevelt to pa.s.s the day with him at his house in the country. I found him the same earnest, energetic, straightforward man as of old. Though nominated to the Vice-Presidency against his will, he had thrown himself heartily into the campaign; and the discussion at his house turned mainly on the securing of a proper candidate for the governorship of the State of New York.I recommended Charles Andrews, who, although in the fullest vigor of mind and body, had been retired from the chief-justiceship of the State on his arrival at the age of seventy years. This recommendation Mr. Roosevelt received favorably; but later it was found impossible to carry it out, the Republican organization in the State having decided in favor of Mr. Odell.During my entire stay in the United States I was constantly occupied with arrears of personal business which had been too long neglected; but, at the request of various friends, wrote sundry open letters and articles, which were widely circulated among German-Americans, showing the injustice of the charge so constantly made against President McKinley, of hostility to Germany and German interests. Nothing could be more absurd than such an imputation. The very opposite was the case.I also gave a farewell address to a great a.s.semblage of students at Cornell University, my topic being ''The True Conduct of Student Life''; but in the course of my speech, having alluded to the importance of sobriety of judgment, I tested by it sundry political contentions which were strongly made on both sides, alluding especially to Goldwin Smith's very earnest declaration that one of the greatest dangers to our nation arises from plutocracy.I took pains to show that the whole spirit of our laws is in favor of the rapid dispersion of great properties, and that, within the remembrance of many present, a large number of the greatest fortunes in the United States had been widely dispersed. As to other declarations regarding dangers arising from the acquisition of foreign territory and the like, I insisted that all these dangers were as nothing compared to one of which we were then having a striking ill.u.s.tration--namely, demagogism; and I urged, what I have long deeply felt, that the main source of danger to republican inst.i.tutions is now, and always has been, the demagogism which seeks to array labor against capital, employee against employer, profession against profession, cla.s.s against cla.s.s, section against section. I mentioned the name of no one; but it must have been clear to all present how deeply I felt regarding the issues which each party represented, and especially regarding the resort to the lowest form of demagogism which Mr. Bryan was then making, in the desperate attempt to save his falling fortunes.During this stay in America I made two visits to Washington to confer with the President and the State Department.The first of these was during the hottest weather I have ever known. There were few people at the capital who could leave it, and at the Arlington Hotel there were not more than a dozen guests. All were distressed by the heat. Moreover, there was an amazing complication of political matters at this time, calculated to prostrate the Washington officials, even if the heat had not done so; and, among these, those relating to American control in the Philippine Islands; the bitter struggle then going on in China between the representatives of foreign powers, including our own, and the Chinese insurrectionists; the difficulties arising out of the successful result of the Spanish War in Cuba; complications in the new administration of Porto Rico; and the myriad of questions arising in a heated political campaign, which was then running fast and furious.Arriving at the White House, I pa.s.sed an hour with the President, and found him, of all men in Washington, the only one who seemed not at all troubled by the heat, by the complications in China, by the difficulties in Cuba and Porto Rico, or by the rush and whirl of the campaign. He calmly discussed with me the draft of a political note which was to be issued next day in answer to the Russian communications regarding the mode of procedure in China, which had started some very trying questions; and then showed me a letter from ex-President Cleveland declining a position on the International Arbitration Tribunal at the Hague, and accepted my suggestion not to consider it a final answer, but to make another effort for Mr. Cleveland's acceptance. During this first visit of mine, the Secretary of State and the First a.s.sistant Secretary were both absent, having been almost prostrated by the extreme heat. At a second visit in October, I again saw the President, found him in the same equable frame of mind, not allowing anything to trouble him, quietly discharging his duties in the calm faith that all would turn out well. Dining with Secretary Hay, I mentioned this equanimity of the President, when he said: ''Yes; it is a source of perpetual amazement to us all. He allows no question, no matter how complicated or vexatious, to disturb him. Some time since, at a meeting of the cabinet, one of its members burst out into a bitter speech against some government official who had been guilty of gross rudeness, and said, 'Mr. President, he has insulted you, and he has insulted me'; thereupon the President said calmly, 'Mr. Secretary, if he has insulted ME, I forgive him; if he has insulted you, I shall remove him from office.' ''Newspapers were teeming with misrepresentations of the President's course, but they failed to ruffle him. On his asking if I was taking any part in the campaign, I referred to a speech that I had made on the Fourth of July in Leipsic, and another to the Cornell University students just before my departure, with the remark that I felt that a foreign diplomatic representative coming home and throwing himself eagerly into the campaign might possibly do more harm than good. In this remark he acquiesced, and said: ''I shall not, myself, make any speeches whatever; nor shall I give any public receptions. My record is before the American people, and they must pa.s.s judgment upon it. In this respect I shall go back to what seems to me the better practice of the early Presidents.''I was struck by the justice of this, and told him so, although I felt obliged to say that he would be under fearful temptation to speak before the campaign had gone much farther. He smiled, but held to his determination, despite the fact that his opponent invaded all parts of the Union in an oratorical frenzy, in one case making a speech at half-past two in the morning to a crowd a.s.sembled at a railway station, and making during one day thirty-one speeches, teeming with every kind of campaign misrepresentation; but the President was faithful to his promise, uttered no word in reply, and was relected.Not only at home, but abroad, as I can amply testify, the news of his relection was received with general satisfaction, and most of all by those who wish well to our country and cherish hopes that government by the people and for the people may not be brought to naught by the wild demagogism which has wrecked all great republics thus far.But alas! the triumph was short-lived. One morning in September, while I was slowly recovering from two of the greatest bereavements which have ever befallen me, came the frightful news of his a.s.sa.s.sination. Shortly afterward, for family and business reasons, I went for a few weeks to the United States, and, in the course of my visit, conferred with the new President three times--first at the Yale bicentennial celebration, afterward in his private office, and finally at his table in the White House.Hard indeed was it for me to realize what had taken place --that President McKinley, whom I had so recently seen in his chair at the head of the cabinet table, was gone forever; that in those rooms, where I had, at four different times, chatted pleasantly with him, he was never to be seen more; and that here, in that same seat, was sitting my old friend and co-laborer. Hard was it to realize that the last time I had met Mr. Roosevelt in that same room was when we besought President Harrison to extend the civil service.Interesting as the new President's conversation was, there was constantly in my mind, whether in his office or his parlors or the dining-room at the White House, one deep undertone. It was like the pedal ba.s.s of an organ, steadily giving the ground tone of a requiem--the vanity and evanescence of all things earthly. There had I seen, in the midst of their jubilant supporters, Pierce, Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Cleveland, Harrison, and, finally, so short a time before, McKinley. It seemed all a dream.In his conversations the new President showed the same qualities that I had before known in him--earnestness, vigor, integrity, fearlessness, and, at times, a sense of humor, blending playfully with his greater qualities. The message he gave me to the Emperor William was characteristic.I was naturally charged to a.s.sure the Emperor of the President's kind feeling; but to this was added, in a tone of unmistakable truth: ''Tell him that when I say this, I mean it. I have been brought up to admire and respect Germany. My life in that country and my reading since have steadily increased this respect and admiration.''I noticed on the table a German book which he had just been reading, its author being my old friend Professor Hans Delbrck of the Berlin University. At the close of the message, which referred to sundry matters of current business, came a playful postlude. ''Tell his Majesty,''said the President, ''that I am a hunter and, as such, envy him one thing especially: he has done what I have never yet been able to do--he has killed a whale. But say to him that if he will come to the United States, I will take him to the Rocky Mountains to hunt the mountain lions, which is no bad sport,--and that if he kills one, as he doubtless will, he will be the first monarch who has killed a lion since Tiglath-Pileser.'' I need hardly add that when, a few weeks later, I delivered the message to the Emperor at Potsdam, it pleased him. Many people on both sides of the Atlantic have noted a similarity in qualities between these two rulers, and, from close observation, I must confess that this is better founded than are most such attributed resemblances. The Emperor has indeed several accomplishments, more especially in artistic matters, which, so far as I can learn, the President has not; but both are ambitious in the n.o.blest sense; both are young men of deep beliefs and high aims; earnest, vigorous, straightforward, clear-sighted; good speakers, yet st.u.r.dy workers, and anxious for the prosperity, but above all things jealous for the honor of the people whose affairs they are called to administer. The President's accounts of difficulties in finding men for responsible positions in various branches of the service, and his clear statements of the proper line to be observed in political dealings between the United States and Europe where South American interests were concerned, showed him to be a broad-minded statesman. During my stay with him, we also discussed one or two points in his forthcoming message to Congress, and in due time it was received at Berlin, attracting general respect and admiration in Germany, as throughout Europe generally.PART III AS UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR CHAPTER XV LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN--1857-1864 As I looked out upon the world during my childhood, there loomed up within my little horizon certain personages as ideals. Foremost of these was the surpliced clergyman of the parish. So strong was my admiration for him that my dear mother, during her entire life, never relinquished the hope, and indeed the expectation, that I would adopt the clerical profession.Another object of my admiration--to whose profession I aspired--was the village carpenter. He ''did things,''and from that day to this I have most admired the men who ''do things.''Yet another of these personages was the princ.i.p.al of Cortland Academy. As I saw him addressing his students, or sitting in the midst of them observing with a telescope the satellites of Jupiter, I was overawed. A sense of my littleness overcame me, and I hardly dared think of aspiring to duties so exalted.But at the age of seven a new ideal appeared. The family had removed from the little town where I was born to Syracuse, then a rising village of about five thousand inhabitants. The railways, east and west, had just been created,--the beginnings of what is now the New York Central Railroad,--and every day, so far as possible, I went down-town ''to see the cars go out.'' During a large part of the year there was but one pa.s.senger-train in each direction, and this was made up of but three or four small compartment-cars drawn by a locomotive which would now be considered ridiculously small, at the rate of twelve to fifteen miles an hour.Yet I doubt whether the express trains on the New York Central, drawn by hundred-ton locomotives at a speed of sixty miles an hour, produce on the youth of the present generation anything like the impression made by those simple beginnings. The new personage who now attracted my homage was the locomotive-driver. To me his profession transcended all others. As he mounted the locomotive, and especially as he pulled the starting-bar, all other functions seemed insignificant. Every day I contemplated him; often I dreamed of him; saw him in my mind's eye dashing through the dark night, through the rain and hail, through drifting snow, through perils of ''wash- outs'' and ''snake-heads,'' and no child in the middle ages ever thought with more awe of a crusading knight leading his troops to the Holy City than did I think of this hero standing at his post in all weathers, conducting his train to its destination beyond the distant hills. It was indeed the day of small things. The traveler pa.s.sing from New York to Buffalo in those days changed from the steamer at Albany to the train for Schenectady, there changed to the train for Utica, thence took the train for Syracuse, there stayed overnight, then took a train for Auburn, where he found the train for Rochester, and after two more changes arrived in Buffalo after a journey of two days and a night, which is now made in from eight to ten hours.But the locomotive-driver was none the less a personage, and I must confess that my old feeling of respect for him clings to me still. To this hour I never see him controlling his fiery steed without investing him with some of the attributes which I discerned in him during my childhood.It is evident to me that the next heroes whom poets will exploit will be the drivers of our railway trains and the pilots of our ocean steamers. One poet has, indeed, made a beginning already,--and this poet the Secretary of State of the United States under whom I am now serving, the Hon.John Hay. Still another poet, honored throughout the world, has also found a hero in the engine-driver, and Rudyard Kipling will no doubt be followed by others.But my dream of becoming a locomotive-driver faded, and while in college I speculated not a little as to what, after all, should be my profession. The idea of becoming a clergyman had long since left my mind. The medical profession had never attracted me. For the legal profession I sought to prepare myself somewhat, but as I saw it practised by the vast majority of lawyers, it seemed a waste of all that was best in human life. Politics were from an early period repulsive to me, and, after my first sight of Washington in its shabby, sleazy, dirty, unkempt condition under the old slave oligarchy, political life became absolutely repugnant to my tastes and desires. At times a longing came over me to settle down in the country, to make an honest living from a farm--a longing which took its origin in a visit which I had made as a child to the farm of an uncle who lived upon the sh.o.r.es of Seneca Lake. He was a man of culture, who, by the aid of a practical farmer and an income from other sources, got along very well. His roomy, old-fashioned house, his pleasant library, his grounds sloping to the lake, his peach-orchard, which at my visit was filled with delicious fruit, and the pleasant paths through the neighboring woods captivated me, and for several years the agricultural profession lingered in my visions as the most attractive of all.As I now look back to my early manhood, it seems that my natural inclination should have been toward journalism; but although such a career proves attractive to many of our best university-bred men now, it was not so then.In those days men did not prepare for it; they drifted into it. I do not think that at my graduation there was one out of the one hundred and eight members of my cla.s.s who had the slightest expectation of permanently connecting himself with a newspaper. This seems all the more singular since that cla.s.s has since produced a large number of prominent journalists, and among these George Washburne Smalley, the most eminent, by far, among American newspaper correspondents of our time; Evarts Greene, a leading editor of Worcester; Delano G.o.ddard, late editor of the ''Boston Advertiser''; Kinsley Twining, for a considerable time an editor of the ''Independent''; Isaac Bromley, who for years delighted the Republican party with his contributions to the editorial page of the ''Tribune''; Dr. James Morris Whiton, a leading writer for the ''Outlook''; and others. Yet in those days probably not one of these ever thought of turning to journalism as a career. There were indeed at that time eminent editors, like Weed, Croswell, Greeley, Raymond, and Webb, but few college-bred men thought of journalism as a profession.Looking back upon all this, I feel certain that, were I to begin life again with my present experience, that would be the career for which I would endeavor to fit myself. It has in it at present many admirable men, but far more who are manifestly unfit. Its capacities for good or evil are enormous, yet the majority of those at present in it seem to me like savages who have found a watch. I can think of no profession in which young men properly fitted--gifted with ideas and inspired by a real wish to do something for their land and time--can more certainly do good work and win distinction. To supplant the present race of journalistic prost.i.tutes, who are making many of our newspapers as foul in morals, as low in tone, and as vile in utterance as even the worst of the French press, might well be the ambition of leading thinkers in any of our universities. There is nothing so greatly needed in our country as an uplifting of the daily press, and there is no work promising better returns.But during my student life in Paris and Berlin another vista began to open before me. I had never lost that respect for the teaching profession which had been aroused in my childhood by the sight of Princ.i.p.al Woolworth enthroned among the students of Cortland Academy, and this early impression was now greatly deepened by my experience at the Sorbonne, the College of France, and the University of Berlin. My favorite studies at Yale had been history and kindred subjects, but these had been taught mainly from text-books. Lectures were few and dry. Even those of President Woolsey were not inspiring; he seemed paralyzed by the system of which he formed a part. But men like Arnould, St. Marc Girardin, and Laboulaye in France, and Lepsius, Ritter, von Raumer, and Curtius in Germany, lecturing to large bodies of attentive students on the most interesting and instructive periods of human history, aroused in me a new current of ideas. Gradually I began to ask myself the question: Why not help the beginnings of this system in the United States?I had long felt deeply the shortcomings of our American universities, and had tried hard to devise something better; yet my ideas as to what could really be done to improve them had been crude and vague. But now, in these great foreign universities, one means of making a reform became evident, and this was, first of all, the subst.i.tution of lectures for recitations, and the creation of an interest in history by treating it as a living subject having relations to present questions. Upon this I reflected much, and day by day the idea grew upon me. So far as I can remember, there was not at that time a professor of history pure and simple in any American university. There had been courses of historical lectures at a few inst.i.tutions, but they were, as a rule, spasmodic and perfunctory. How history was taught at Yale is shown in another chapter of these reminiscences. The lectures of President Sparks had evidently trained up no school of historical professors at Harvard. There had been a noted professor at William and Mary College, Virginia,--doubtless, in his time, the best historical lecturer in the United States,--Dr. William Dew, the notes of whose lectures, as afterward published, were admirable; but he had left no successor. Francis Lieber, at the University of South Carolina, had taught political philosophy with much depth of thought and wealth of historical ill.u.s.tration; but neither there nor elsewhere did there exist anything like systematic courses in history such as have now been developed in so many of our universities and colleges.During my stay as resident graduate at Yale after my return from Europe in 1856, I often discussed the subject with my old friend and companion Gilman, now president of the Carnegie Inst.i.tution, and with my beloved instructor, Professor Porter. Both were kind enough to urge me to remain at New Haven, a.s.suring me that in time a professorship would be established. To promote this I wrote an article on ''German Instruction in General History,''which was well received when published in the ''New Englander,'' and prepared sundry lectures, which were received by the university people and by the New York press more favorably than I now think they deserved. But there seemed, after all, no chance for a professorship devoted to this line of study. More and more, too, I felt that even if I were called to a historical professorship at Yale, the old- fashioned orthodoxy which then prevailed must fetter me: I could not utter the shibboleths then demanded, and the future seemed dark indeed. Yet my belief in the value of better historical instruction in our universities grew more and more, and a most happy impulse was now given to my thinking by a book which I read and reread-- Stanley's ''Life of Arnold.'' It showed me much, but especially two things: first, how effective history might be made in bringing young men into fruitful trains of thought regarding present politics; and, secondly, how real an influence an earnest teacher might thus exercise upon his country.While in this state of mind I met my cla.s.s a.s.sembled at the Yale commencement of 1856 to take the master's degree in course, after the manner of those days. This was the turning-point with me. I had been for some time more and more uneasy and unhappy because my way did not seem to clear; but at this commencement of 1856, while lounging among my cla.s.smates in the college yard, I heard some one say that President Wayland of Brown University was addressing the graduates in the Hall of the Alumni.