Ebook Views of an Ex-President

Delivered at Stanford University, March 6, 1894

When I yielded to the request of Governor Stanford and consented to deliver some lectures before the students of this university, I confidently expected that he would be here to give me that stimulus and encouragement which a genial and familiar face, reflecting a friendly approval that does not wait upon performance, affords to one who enters upon an unaccustomed work. As we shall, on the ninth instant, observe the anniversary of his birth, I will reserve for that occasion my tribute to the virtues of a friend whose death I now first realize, because he is not here.

I am glad to have even so slight and casual a part as that of a non-resident lecturer in the work of this young but already great university.