"TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE"

ADDRESS OF

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS



FOUNDERS' DAY, JANUARY 16, 1913



"'TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE"

In the single hour self-allotted for my part in this occasion there is
much ground to cover,--the time is short, and I have far to go. Did I
now, therefore, submit all I had proposed to say when I accepted your
invitation, there would remain no space for preliminaries. Yet something
of that character is in place. I will try to make it brief.[1]

As the legend or text of what I have in mind to submit, I have given the
words "'Tis Sixty Years Since." As some here doubtless recall, this is
the second or subordinate title of Walter Scott's first novel,
"Waverley," which brought him fame. Given to the world in 1814,--hard on
a century ago,--"Waverley" told of the last Stuart effort to recover the
crown of Great Britain,--that of "The '45." It so chances that Scott's
period of retrospect is also just now most appropriate in my case,
inasmuch as I entered Harvard as a student in the year 1853--"sixty
years since!" It may fairly be asserted that school life ends, and what
may in contradistinction thereto be termed thinking and acting life