FOUNDED BY SAMUEL KIRKLAND IN 1793. HAMILTON COLLEGE, CHARTERED IN 1812. "No great history of our government can be written which does not make this state of New York its central point. As this truth shall be impressed upon our people, not only will the interest in the character of SAMUEL KIRKLAND increase, but the College he founded as a means of education to the Indian, as well as the white man, will be regarded as a memorial of a race which at one time held despotic rule over a region greatly exceeding the united territories of France and Britain. The relationship of its Founder to the long line of missionaries, who for a century labored with savage tribes in danger and suffering, will give to the College a sacredness in its religious aspect. It will not be merely a memorial of the past, for it fittingly crowns the range of hills from which flow the rivers that bind together our union with silver bands. It overlooks valleys once travelled by armies in war, which are the channels of commerce in peace, and which will be in the future what they have been in the past, the pathways of great events." HORATIO SEYMOUR. "We would have no compromise with infidelity or skepticism; we are Christian educators; we prize God's word above all earthly science. There is our banner : We fling it to the breeze! If you send your son hither; we shall do all that in us lies to teach him what this book contains, and to make its truths effective in the control of his life. We shall not apologize for Christianity, nor treat it as a handmaid to natural science: but as the queen-regent over all our studies; our richest possession in time, our only hope for eternity." PRESIDENT FISHER. CLINTON, Oneida Co., N. Y., is widely known, not only as the seat of Hamilton College, but as a village of Grammar schools and ladies' seminaries. It is near the center of the Empire State. The beautiful college town nestles in a tranquil valley, "Where the Oriskany winding flows, And tells its story as it goes, Of warrior bold and Indian maid." The nearest city, (Utica,) is nine miles away, twenty-five minutes by rail. Clintonians are justly proud of their academic village. Recently with much pomp and display they commemorated the one hundredth anniversary of the settlement of the place. The President of the United States was present. President Cleveland, when a youth, studied in the Clinton Grammar School, preparing to enter Hamilton College, but the death of his father, a Presbyterian minister, frustrated his hopes. His brother, also a minister of the gospel, graduated at the College, and his cultured sister, Rose E. Cleveland, graduated at Houghton, one of the Clinton seminaries for young ladies. Years ago students reached Clinton by stages, the more fortunate securing seats within the lumbering vehicles, and teaching some fair fellow-traveller how to conjugate Amo, while the less fortunate, perched themselves on the outside, and sang their student-songs-"Litoria," or "I sat upon the quarter deck, and whiffed my cares away," or "Its the way we have at old Hamilton," or, College Hill in Clinton commands a magnificent view. It is reached by College Street, the longest avenue in the beautiful town. Between the foot of the hill and the College campus, the street is divided into four parts, known far and wide, among all Hamilton men, as Freshman hill, Sophomore hill, Junior hill and Senior hill. For nearly a century students have been treading that famous hillside walk. So many have left those winding paths to render Church and State large service and, as alumni, to climb to undying fame, that when the long procession moves before the eye of the scribe up the historic slope, under the sentinel poplars, through the grey halls, and out into the world, he does not wonder that successive graduating classes, about to say farewell to the College, salute the weather-beaten stone buildings with cheers and music. "For the good and the great, in their beautiful prime, While they girded their spirits and deepened the streams, If those who compile the Triennial Catalogues of Hamilton, would publish, as some other colleges do, the names of all stu dents, whether graduates or not, the reader might know how many have studied within the walls of the old institution. Prob ably the number would approximate four thousand. Many who did not graduate have become eminent men and recall with pleasure and gratitude their student days at the College. The institution has been enriched by their gifts and rejoices in the laurels they have won. The whole number of graduates is over twenty six hundred. |