Address: A Tour of Harvard in 1908

Extract

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am here as the best that could be got, which is to say that there are at least three others who would be much better suited to the task assigned to me than myself. Two are dead, my great teacher George Williams, who knew everything about everything and would have kept us much longer than I intend to keep you today; Bill Hutchison, whose field was modernism, of which the Harvard Theological Review is a remarkable example, and Conrad Wright, who is not dead but is retired, and may have decided never again to darken our precincts. These three, all of whom were my friends, teachers, and colleagues, would be able to explicate all the interstices of the year 1908 with fascinating and passionate insights, while I, as their student and the only one here, shall simply do the best I can with the assignment.