OCTOBER MEETING, 1901. THE stated meeting, the first since the summer recess, was held on Thursday, the 10th instant, at 3 o'clock, P. M.; the President in the chair. The record of the June meeting was read, and also the list of donors to the Library and the accessions to the Cabinet. Mr. Arthur T. Lyman, of Boston, was elected a Resident Member, and Mr. Charles H. Firth, of Oxford, England, a Corresponding Member. The President and Rev. Morton Dexter were appointed to represent the Society at the approaching bi-centennial anniversary of the founding of Yale University. Rev. Henry F. Jenks communicated the memoir of the late Rev. Dr. Lucius R. Paige, and Mr. James M. Bugbee the memoir of the late Samuel F. McCleary, which they had been respectively appointed to prepare for publication in the Proceedings. The PRESIDENT, who had recently returned from a visit to England, then said: Gentlemen, Members of the Society,- Meeting here after the summer's vacation, with an interval of four months since we last assembled, the first thought now, as always, is, and necessarily must be, of our numbers. Do we come together with full ranks? If not, what vacancies have occurred? Whose seat here is next to be filled? Naturally enough, it is not often the good fortune of him who may preside at this autumnal meeting to announce that all are present, or accounted for among the living; and to-day constitutes no exception to the rule. Since the 13th of June one vacancy has occurred in our roll of Resident Members, and two in that of our Corresponding Members. Professor John Fiske died at Gloucester on the 4th of July; and, of our Corresponding Members, Professor Herbert B. Adams died at Amherst, July 30, and G. W. Ranck on the 2nd of August. Eminent as he in many ways was, and noteworthy as his contributions to written history have been, Mr. Fiske was never closely identified with this Society; and of him, therefore, there is little to be said by me. Others, better equipped for the purpose, will presently speak and write of John Fiske, his personality and his labors. And this is as it should be; for, with powers of assimilating knowledge almost phenomenal, he was also unquestionably the most picturesque and popular of American historical writers living at the time of his death, if, indeed, any exception of time should be made. It would, therefore, not be fitting if our Proceedings failed to contain some careful appreciation of him, indicating how we, his contemporaries and fellow-laborers in the same field, regarded him, and the estimation in which his work was by us held at the time his labors came to their premature and sudden close. Of his ultimate standing as an historian it would, of course, be premature now to speak; for the verdict of fifty years later-if the second generation after a man ceases to be cares to pause long enough in its course to pass any verdict at all upon him is notoriously apt to be very different from that rendered the day of death. Fashions change; and they change not less in the writing of history than in music, architecture, and art. Genius only confers even a century of fame; and much more is needed to assure an immortality: and, in the recognition of genius, contemporaries are not conspicuous for accuracy of judgment. They unquestionably do now and again, so to speak, hit it off correctly, time setting its stamp of final approval on their verdict. It was so in the case of Gibbon; but many other eighteenth-century historical works which had an almost equal vogue with the "Decline and Fall" in their day the effusions of Hume and Robertson, for example have long before. their centennials been quietly relegated to the repose of the upper shelf. However it may a century hence be with the writings of Professor Fiske, it can, as matter of record, now truthfully be said that he was, taken for all in all, the most successful, as well as one of the most industrious and prolific 1 "He [Fiske] has never been one of those thorough investigators of fundamental data and ideas whose conclusions are accepted by historical scholars, even when unfamiliar and unwelcome. But the great popular vogue of his books has been based upon a belief that facts so well presented, with such clarity of statement and such attractiveness of style, must have been well considered." Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, in the North American Review" for August, 1901 (p. 171). " of the American historical writers of his time, and in a very marked degree he, so to speak, popularized a fairly correct understanding of our history, assimilated it and its traditions with the national thought. He was supreme in his province; and this is much to say of any man. But, in announcing a death, it devolves on me merely to speak of a member of this Society; and in that connection, as I have already intimated, there is in the present case little to dwell upon. Elected at the March meeting of 1892, Professor Fiske had at the time of his death been a member a little over nine years; yet I remember only once to have seen him at a meeting. That single occasion was in the old building overlooking the King's Chapel graveyard, and shortly after his election. At the meeting at which Professor Fiske was elected Mr. Winthrop, then an octogenarian, made an incidental reference to that long flight of "iron stairs” which we older members remember so well, and acknowledged the hesitation he felt in attempting to climb them. Those stairs, I fancy, had some connection with Mr. Fiske's habitual absence from our meetings. Not only was he a man of many engagements and much occupation, almost incessantly in physical movement as well as intellectual action, but of him it might have been said, more truthfully, I apprehend, than of Hamlet, "He's fat, and scant of breath." On the single occasion of his attendance I chanced to meet him on those "iron stairs" and accompanied him up them and into the room. Obviously the ascent was to him toilsome, and in no way a source of satisfaction. I think he did not covet a repetition of the experience. In any event, as a Society we never saw him save then. He contributed nothing to our Proceedings, nor did he serve on the Council or our committees. Nevertheless, our roll would not be complete did it fail to bear his name. He was de jure one of us. Of Professor Adams and Mr. Ranck, I will merely say that the name of the former has been upon our rolls since January, 1883, and that of the latter since December, 1879. Of Professor Adams something will presently be said by one peculiarly qualified to pass upon his work. The death of Mr. Ranck, killed in a railway accident in the full tide of his activities, was especially deplorable. He had done much work of a most valuable character in connection with the history of the the early settlement of his native State of Kentucky, Daniel Boone period, with the spirit of which he was thoroughly impregnated. Only within the last few months, I had been in active correspondence with him over an admirable monograph on his favorite theme recently brought out in the collections of the Filson Club. It was in every respect an extraordinarily creditable publication, and, with his permission, I have given the copy of it he sent me to this Society. It is to-day upon the table. A few days only after his last letter to me, Mr. Ranck's death was in the papers. As a local investigator and monographist he left work of much historical value. Passing to other matters proper to this occasion, all here I am sure must feel, as I feel, that the record of the meeting would not be complete did it fail to contain fitting reference to the tragic and terrible episode in national life which, since we met last, has burned itself into history, the assassination of President McKinley. Twice before has this Society, in common with the whole land, been shocked by like occurrences. Mr. Winthrop occupied this chair at the time of both, and, on each, appropriate resolutions, submitted by him and unanimously adopted, were spread upon our record. From the precedents thus established I propose to deviate; not that I have failed to sympathize in the outburst of feeling this truly terrible event has excited, or the expressions elicited by it; but, on now reading the resolutions heretofore passed on similar occasions, they seem to me, though drawn with all Mr.. Winthrop's accustomed felicity, unequal to the occasion,in one word, almost of necessity, formal, conventional, perfunctory. I also feel that I could not express myself more adequately. Of President McKinley all has in this way been said that can be said: "Duncan is in his grave; After life's fitful fever he sleeps well; Treason has done its worst; nor steel, nor poison, Can touch him further." He cannot hear; and, as to her for whom the latter years of the dead President's life were one long record of affectionate, self-sacrificing care, no formally set down words of mine could 1 Proceedings, April 20, 1865; First Series, vol. viii. p. 256; September 8, October 13, 1881; Ibid., vol. xix. pp. 4, 63. add one iota to the expression of sympathy-deep and prolonged as sincere - which has already gone forth. This being so, silence seems best. to some Still, to one aspect of this awe-impelling tragedy I wish to call attention, for that aspect has to my mind an historic interest. Perhaps, already discussed, it is an old story; if such is the case I can only excuse myself on the ground that, having been absent from the country, and only just returned to it, I am less informed as to what has been said than I otherwise might have been. But when some event like this last murder of a high official startles and shocks the whole civilized world, the first impulse always is to attribute its occurrence to present conditions, - moral or material, circumstance or teaching or appliance peculiar to the day,and to ask in awe-struck tones, To what are we coming? Whither do tendencies lead? In what will they result? So, as of genuine historical interest, in this connection, I want to call attention to the very noticeable fact that this murder of President McKinley by the wretched, half-witted Czolgosz has no significance whatever, as respects either cause or method, in connection with the times in which we live, its destructive appliances, or its moral instruction. This, somewhat curiously, is true not only of President McKinley's assassination, but of all the assassinations of a like nature, with two exceptions, which have occurred within the last half-century. Of such, I easily recall eight: (1) the Orsini attempt on Napoleon III. in 1858, which resulted in numerous deaths, though the person aimed at escaped unharmed; (2) the slaying of President Lincoln in 1865; (3) that of the Czar Alexander II. in 1881; (4) that of President Garfield three months later in the same year; (5) that of President Carnot in 1894; (6) that of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria in 1898; and (7, 8) those of King Humbert in 1900, and, more recently, of President McKinley. This is truly enough the age of advance, scientific and intellectual. Strange doctrines are promulgated and widely preached. There is a freedom given to utterances, at once wild and subversive, the like of which the world has not known before; we do not believe in the suppression of talk; the press disseminates incendiary doctrines broadcast among the partially educated, and the half, where not wholly, crazed. |