378 Extracts from Addresses
and delighted at the progress that has been made and at the ideals
which are manifestly sought.
It takes a number of things to make a great institution of education.
It takes men; it takes money; but, more than either of these, it takes
ideals. Rice Institute appears to have all of these qualities, and it has
a brilliant future. It is doing its work in accordance with the highest
standards of education. It is taking advantage of being one of the
latest in the arena of educational facilities.
I am also delighted to be here at this time when the representatives
of the older Anglo-Saxon civilization are here as your guests. It seems
a far cry from so recent and beautiful a set of structures as these at
Rice Institute to the ancient cloisters and quadrangles of Oxford; and
yet I suppose that any of us who has had the privilege of visiting Oxford
on any occasion, especially more than once, has come to feel how all
academic life really is unified ; how we derive our very best traditions
from these ancient sites of Oxford and Cambridge, along whose paths
we have wandered, and in whose cloisters and quadrangles we have had
such joy.
I was never a resident at Oxford, in the institution itself. I was
always baffled more or less by the idea that if I went to Oxford, I
would have to learn some of that habitual and customary Latin, or else
I could not get on. I understood that when the roll was called in the
morning in the class room they did not say: “Present,” but they said:
“Ibi sum,” whatever that means, and instead of saying: “I am not pre-
pared for recitation,” they said: “Non paratus.” A friend of mine not
very long ago was telling me of a bit of poetry that he had read some-
where as a by-play on this Oxford method of using Latin. The case
was that of a freshman who had just come to one of the colleges, and
with the carelessness and incorrigibility of a freshman, he was unprepared
for recitation on a particular day, and so had to answer in the usual
fashion, “Non paratus.” So that near-Latin verse ran:
“ ‘Non paratus,’ dixit freshie,
Cum a sad and doleful look.
lOmme rectum,’ Prof, respondit,
Et ‘nihil’ scripsit in his book.”
On the whole, I thought that perhaps it was wiser to master a modern
language than a classic one, and so my academic days in foreign lands
were spent on German soil. It would be very interesting indeed to
speak to the point that Sir Henry Jones has mentioned here to-night,
as to the character of German scholarship; its persistence and almost