Thet rived the Rebel line asunder,'--

I thanked God, with patriotic pleasure, that the first contingent
of negro troops from the North should have been led to death and
fame by an alumnus of Harvard; and I remembered, with additional
pride of race and college, that the first regiment of black
troops raised on South Carolina soil were taught to drill, to
fight, to plough, and to read by a brave, eloquent, and scholarly
descendant of the Puritans and of Harvard, Thomas Wentworth
Higginson. [Great applause and cheers.]

"Is it strange, then, brothers, that I there resolved for myself
to maintain the standard of the College, so far as I was able, in
public and in private life? I am honored by the invitation to be
present here to-night. Around me I see faces I have not looked
upon for a decade. Many are the intimacies of the College, the
society, the buskin, and the oar which they bring up, from
classmates and college friends. I miss, as all Harvard men must
miss to-night, the venerable and kindly figure of Andrew Preston
Peabody, the student's friend, the consoler of the plucked, the
encourager of the strong, Maecenas's benign almoner, the
felicitous exponent of Harvard's Congregational Unitarianism. I
miss, too, another of high scholarship, of rare poetic taste, of
broad liberality--my personal friend, Elbridge Jefferson Cutler,
loved alike by students and his fellow-members of the Faculty for
his conscientious performance of duty and his genial nature.

"Mr. President and brothers, my time is up. I give you 'Fair
Harvard,' the exemplar, the prototype of that ideal America, of
which the greatest American poet has written,--

"'Thou, taught by Fate to know Jehovah's plan,
Thet man's devices can't unmake a man,
An' whose free latch-string never was drawed in
Against the poorest child of Adam's kin."

"[Great applause.]"

Prof. Greener rendered legal services in the case of Cadet Whittaker
at West Point, and in the trial at New York City, where, as associate
counsel with ex-Gov. Chamberlain,--an able lawyer and a magnificent
orator,--he developed ability and industry as an attorney, and earned
the gratitude of his race.

Prof. Greener entered Harvard as a member of the Baptist Church; but
the transcendentalism and rationalism of the place