Tribute Paid Professor Royce in Current Graduates Magazine

Professor George Herbert Palmer '64, in the current number of the Graduates' Magazine, renders his personal tribute from 34 years of association to the late Professor Royce. It is not often that a Harvard publication is so fortunate. The grace and beauty of utterance which have made of the early quiet service of Class Day for so many years the most impressive ceremony of the College, are turned to appreciation of the last of the founders of a historic Department to leave his active work.

"A picturesque figure," Professor Palmer has written, "has left us, a prodigious scholar, a stimulating teacher, a heroic character, a playful and widely-loved friend." And at the close--"That elvish figure, with the unconventional dress and slouching step, that face which blended the infant and sage, that total personality, as amused, amusing and intent on righteousness as Socrates himself--happy the university that had for a long time so vitalizing a presence."

"When one of us dies," again says Professor Palmer, "his colleagues mourn, not for the public loss alone, but for their own much more, each sharing with each such bits of remembrance as illustrate the beauty and excellence of the absent friend. In the family journal of Harvard I would record in this fragmentary and intimate way the affection which 34 years have bred in me for Josiah Royce."

From pages of drearily ponderous notes and other pages which are by the nature of the Graduates' Magazine dedicated much to bits of history and the accomplishment of Harvard men, from the latest graduate to the most ancient dead, such a voice stands out as pure gold.

The issue also contains a summary of the work of four Harvard editors: E. S. Martin, of Life; Ellery Sedgwick, of the Atlantic Monthly; Frank H. Simonds, of the New York Tribune, and Mark Sullivan, of Collier's Weekly. Of these the suggestion of Mr. Sullivan's career--the great national weekly built on the early knowledge of a small Pennsylvania town, is easily the most interesting. The equally interesting work of Mr. Sedgwick in editing the Atlantic has not received quite the same keen weighing.

There are also tributes to Norman Prince '08, Dillwyn Starr '08, Victor Chapman '13 and Alan Seeger '10 in "From a Graduate's Window"; a history of the Department of Classics and a statement of its present aims by Professor Clifford H. Moore, and a short article on the historical revelations of the growth in the Harvard forest at Petersham by Professor R. T. Fisher '98.