This book story related of civil war and napoleon war history. I have given the words Tis Sixty Years Since. As some here doubtless recall, Given to the world in 1814, hard on a century ago. I entered Harvard as a student in the year 1853 sixty years since! It may fairly be asserted that school life ends and what may in contradistinction thereto be termed thinking and acting life begins the day the young man passes the threshold of the institution of more advanced education. For him, life's responsibilities then begin. Prior to that confused, thenceforth things with him become consecutive, a sequence. Insensibly he puts away childish things. The day of individualism as it existed in the American ideal of sixty years since is over that of collectivism and possibly socialism has opened. The War of Independence, mistakenly denominated the Revolutionary War. It may, indeed, safely be asserted that up to 1815, the end of the Wars of Napoleon and the time of your Professor Lieber, steam even had not as yet practically affected the operations of man, while electricity, when not a terror, was as yet but a toy. I would substitute for the present brief tenure of the presidential office--a tenure well nough perhaps in the comparatively simple days which preceded our Civil War--a tenure sufficiently long to enable the occupant of the presidential chair to have a policy and to accomplish at least something towards its adoption.
