President Angell's Reception

The welcome to President Angelí Saturday was a hearty ons. He wai met at the depot by the university senate, atudents of the university, school board and citizens and escorted by the city band to nis residence on south university avenue. In the evening he was given a grand reception in uuiversity hall. Dr. Frieze delivered the ddress of welcome, as follows: Mr. President :- Tuis is a bright day in the history of the university. For myself I count it one of the happiest days of mylife. It is my duty and piivilege, íd behalf of the university, to welcome you home from your important, and responslble, and grandly successful natioual embassy. More than 18 months ago you were sent abroad by tbe government as minister plenipotentiary from th United States to China as an envoy from the youngest to the oldest nation of th earth. To-day we buil your return from that rx.Usion crowned with gplendid success ; not only honorable to youreelf, but rebounding to the credit of this institution of which you have so long been the honored head. Our rejoicing can only be measured by the regret with which we saw you depart for the far ofE land and scènes of your diplomatic labor. Our thoughts har been with you in your long joumeyiogs by land and sea - across tbe continent, and the broad Pacific, and during your sojourn in China; and we have counted the months and days to the hour of your safe arrival at home, thankful to the Merciful Providence which has watched over your safety in the miast of unusual perils on the ocean voyage. I am sure, Mr. President, that in your whole passage round the world you have met no assembly so happy and joyous as that -which greets you here to-night. There is but one feeling in every heart, one word on every tongue: welcome, welcome, President Angelí, welcome home! Welcome back to the university, wel come back to Michigan! Welcome back to the associations, private and public, religious, literary and benevolent, which have so long missed you, and which will be aeain encounged and slrengthened by your presence. We know that you accepted the proffered mission to China wita very great reluctance. It was chiefly your sense of duty to the public added to the urgent solicitations of the authorities at Washington and of many personal fi iends that finally induced you to yield consent. You feit, as many of us here feel, that no office or dignity in the gift of the governmeut can be any real promotion to one who holds the presideucy of this university. The government was under the necessity of revising its treaty with China. The neeotiations were to be of a delicate and difflcult nature. The service required a minister of exceptional qualiflcations; a man of large and varied information and expeiieuce; uf mature wisdom and a liberal spirit, of practical sense, tact, and quick appreheusion ; with a clear head, and honest purposes; well acquainted with national affairs and with internation al law; calm, self-possessnd, dispassionate snd discreet in deliberation and action, gentle, kind, courteous and conciliatory in address and bearing. AU these qualities the emergency required. The gov. ernmeut looked over all the etatesmen and scholars of the land ; looked over 300 college presidenta of the land, and it found all these necessary qualities most perfectly united in the president of the univenity of Michigan. The discnminalion and good sense of the government I need not say Las been fully justifiedby the result. And now, my dear Mr. President, what remains for me but to place again in your hands the responsibilities of the admiuistration which has been committed to me in your abience, ooly too happy if nothing has been done or suffered in th meantime detrimental to the institution which we all love and cherish. The burden of the office ha been indeed no heavy weight. With faculties so cordial and so ready to help, with student so earnest, so orderly and so manly, the machinery, so to speuk has run itself epontaueously, with the need, perhaps, of a little oiling now and then. Indeed of three things in the university I have learned to be proud ; I am proud of the faculties, of the students and of the president. And now, again, in the name of the honorable boud of regenta, in the name of the faculties, and or tuis great and lively body of undergraduates, and in the name of all these citizens and friends.with my whole heart, with the heart of this whole assembly, I bid you, and those who are dearest to you, welcome home; thrice and four times welcome; and God be thanked you ure here. ON BEHALF OF THE CITT. The Hon. W . D. Harriman addresseil President Angelí as follows: President Angkll:- In addition to the hearty and eloquent greetina; which you have received from Prof. Frieze on behalf of the facully and students of the university permit me, in behalf of the board of education and the common council of the city and o our citizens, to ■Wblcoine your return to Ann Arbor and to the head of that great institution which alone bas given our little city a worldwide faine. I need not conceal the fact that we citizens of Ann A.rbor feit a personal pride when one of our number wa selected aj the representative of the most powerful nation on our continent to the most ancieut and the mos; populous empire on our globe; and empire which seems to be exempt from the wutability incident to human affaire; an empire which was already hoary with age when Csesïr was warriug with our anceutors, the rude tribes of Britian; an empire which, when we consider its marvellous history, the fixed ideas and habita of its innumerable subjec 8, we may well beheve will still be one of the great nations of the earth when that New Zealander of Macaulay is found missing - and musing again, musing on the ruins of London bridge. Neither will I conceal the fact that the people of Ann Arbor have feit a personal interest in the progress and success of this embaisy, and it rejoices our hearts to feel that our national representan ?e, a citizens of Ann Arbor, had the manly courage to rise above the miserable prejudices of race, and in the execution of his great trust never lost sight of tliose versal principáis of humanity and justice which shüuld govern the intercourse of ations and iadividuals alike, without re jard to the degree of their civilization, heir religión or their race. Mr. President, your mission to the con ral flowery kingdom has ended with íonor and success; but when we consider liat you are to mold and direct, we trust 'or many years, the minds, the habits and lie purposes of an army of young raen nd woinen, the very flower of our youth, who annually go forlh from these halls to very part of our country to assume posiions of trust and influeuce in every proession in Ufe, who shall say tkat the dues which you have laid hown are moré mportant, more dignified or more far eaching in their influence than the duies which you take up as president of the niversity of Michigan? And so re welcome your return to our eautiful city, to the greeting of hearts as warm, tis friendly, as appreciative as any rou have found iu your circuit of the great globe. In your long absence we know that you ïave kept the honor and welfare of the niversity near your heart, and I can asure you as a citizen of Michigan that in ts number, its reputation abroad, in its ufluence and harmonious working at ïome, this republio of learning has reeived no detriment under the wise and rudent management of that accomplished cholar and gentlemen who for nearly 20 months haa with ability and zeal perormed those arduous and responsible duieg which he now lays down and which rou this day resume. President Angelí tlien addressed the audience as folio ws: My friends, araid all the joy of this evening I find one thought presaing upon me, as I am sure ít presses upoa the ininds of some of you, to which it ia perhapa not improper that I should give brief utterance. Aa I come here and see so many of my oíd friends, I am saddened by the recollecüou that some faces I fondly hoped to see I find not here to-night, and Devermore shall find this side the grave. I cannot teil you how the news of the death of Prof. Watson fell upon me in that faroff land. He was a man who aa I fondly hoped had long years of brilliant service before him in his chosen prolession ; a man who, aa it seems to me, after recalling a considerable number of very eminent men of science and very eminent statesmen whom it has been my privilege to know had pefhaps as much of what we cali the inspiration of genius in him, that ntuitional insight which lea pa straight to recondite resulta witliout working its way painfully along the staircase of syllogism aa most of us have to do, as any man whom I have met round the whole world, wherever 1 have been. Even in far off Asia where he went to take his obsorvationa of ihe trausit of Venus and where hia name waa familiar to he Chinaman aa a d8tinguished foreigner, he wa8 known and honored. Then I think ol the dear old man who in other years carne walkug, perhaps with the decrepitude of age, but who alwaya gave a hearty graap ot the hand, hat grand old man who stood there to welcome the firat student who ever eet foot upon hisground; he too ia goue. What a joy, what a bleaaing it was to see him enter within ha co'.lege grounds; how, whenever his ïealth permitted, he carne day after day to ait at my side in the chapel, I used to feel as though a saint, a patriarch of the latter diapeuaation, had come to bleas the asaembly with his presence. Then, too, newa of the death of my immediate predeceaaor, Dr. Haven, reached me afterwards. As I traveled from here to California I tound his friends everywhere filled with pleasure with the thought that he waa to gladden them with hia preaence in hia official labora. I found them fullof hope and expectation that the church aa well aa the whole public, would be ble8sed and enriched by his labora. We all remember his winning spint, a singular tact, his great administrativo skill which made his years of service of such signal value in the history of the University. [lardly had I stepped on the shores of Europe aefore I was shocked by hearing of the death of Dr. Tappan whom I had cherished some iope of meetiüg at some point on the continent He was the man whose plastic hand rave the form to thia institution as we know t, and whose vigorous spirit breathed into it ie breath of that new life which has given it ts strengtu and its glory. The eulogies of ;hese men have been spoken by more eloquent tongues than mine. I may not pause noir even to make an estímate ot their work, but it ia one of the great treasures of this University that we have the memories of these men as ourinheritance,of which nothing can rob ua. Af ter a song by the university glee club, president Angelí was escorted to Room A where he and Mrs. Angelí received their friends informally, an opportunity was given to all to personally greet the president. The room was tastef ully decorated with flags, festoons and flowers, and a portrait of Dr. Angelí appropriately flnding a place on the wall. A large number availed themselves of this opportunity to shake hands with the president and congratúlate him on the success of bis ruission and his safe return. In his memorial oralion on Garfleld, Mr. Blaine did good service in destroying the myth which ihe late president bas shared with other eminent men - tbe myth of his exceeding poverty in early youth. Tbis has taken so strong a bold upon tbe national imagination that it is somehow acsounted a virtue in a man if be can show Ihat bis youtb was squalid and harsh in its surroundings; that his associations were mean and his lif e-a mere struggle for bread; that he was a " tow path boy," or a " bobbin boy," orsome other boy whose painful exertions to keep soul and bode together made him a fit object for charity and alms giving. That many of our great men shojld come from the ranks of those wbo have to struggle for existence was meritable. For the first fifty years at least of our natioual life, tbis was the common lot of all; few were rich ; nearly all were poor. But as Mr. Blaine says, they were poor as Webster and Jackson and Clay were poor. They had to wrench from the soil, but not trom the poor fund or tbe alms of the benevolent, the means of Ufe; and undoubtedly in this struggle soms becaine great who otherwise might not have been great; but it added noother merit to their sliuggle than tbe prooi of the will and intellect thatsurvived struggle. They ai e entitled to the same praise tor emerging from disadvantageous circumstances as is the rich mau's son, who, rejecting the alluremeuta to indolence aud selt-indulgence, and resistiug the temptations which surround his youth, makes himsulf useful to hisfellow men, conspicuous tor his learniag, his industiyand his achievements. lt is true tha, he has advaatages which "the poor boy" has not, but he has also disadvantages of which the poor boy knows little or nothing. It is a curious circumslance. lo say the least, that the founders of this repubhc were not in their yojth " poor boy." On the contrary, with the exeeption perhaps of Benjamin Frankliu, they had lavge advantages lor educatiou, rnfined ment and social distiüction. It is hard lo mention one oí thein who came trom the " poor boy" stock. Washington, Ji-fferson, Madi&on, Mouroe, Adams, Hamilton, Jay, Hancock, Quincy, were all descended from families of tither wealth or importante, in some cases of both wealth and importauce. But they were iiot less gieat for baving been bom amidst such surroundings - they probably would not have been greater had they been born in pover ty and obscurity. Thousands of men are born poor and obscure, and so remain; hundreds of men are born rich and obscure, and so remaic. Neither great wealth nor pinching and abject poverty is favorable to the development of character. Wealth is the heat of the tropics, which enervates and relaxes the moral fibre. Iudigence, which humiliates and embitters, is the polar cold, shrivelling the energies, benumbiug the faculties, and reducing the viclim of it to a grose and torpid animal. The poveity from which some of the great men of the country emerged was ouly a ulating and btioyant sea in which they swam; with a hcalthy consciousness of their strength the poverty in which it is sometiines popular to represent thein as iving would have been the mire in which they would have wallowed all their lives. Mr. Blaine, therefore, was equally hapjy and just in discriminatingbetween the cal poverty which was not poverty but ' the beginning of wealth," and the imaginary degradalion of pauperism which he orator who paints JUis effects with a broad brush is in the babit of depicting as the state of life common to tbe poor joys that have arigin themselves to fame and position in tbis country. - Free Press. Joe. T. Jacobs announces in to day's paper his sixteenth anuual closing out ule. A dollar saved is a dollar earued. Now ïf you wish to raake a few dollars, you should attend the great reduction sale of Joe T. Jacobs'. It will coatiFiue uutil the evening of March 15.