made.  It amounts, however, to little more than a ‘good time,’ as there are very few who wait to be influenced by ‘facts’ they know will be so distorted.  The advocates of each society feel bound, of course, to present its affairs in the most favorable aspect.  Disputants are selected, generally with regard to their ability as speakers, one from the Junior and one from the Senior Class.  The Presidents of each society also take part.”—­N.Y.  Daily Times, Sept. 22, 1855.

As an illustration of the eloquence and ability which is often displayed on these occasions, the following passages have been selected from the address of John M. Holmes of Chicago, Ill., the Junior orator in behalf of the Brothers in Unity at the Statement of Facts held September 20th, 1855.

“Time forbids me to speak at length of the illustrious alumni of the Brothers; of Professor Thatcher, the favorite of college,—­of Professor Silliman, the Nestor of American literati,—­of the revered head of this institution, President Woolsey, first President of the Brothers in 1820,—­of Professor Andrews, the author of the best dictionary of the Latin language,—­of such divines as Dwight and Murdock,—­of Bacon and Bushnell, the pride of New England,—­or of the great names of Clayton, Badger, Calhoun, Ellsworth, and John Davis,—­all of whom were nurtured and disciplined in the halls of the Brothers, and there received the Achillean baptism that made their lives invulnerable.  But perhaps I err in claiming such men as the peculium of the Brothers,—­they are the common heritage of the human race.

 ’Such names as theirs are pilgrim shrines,
  Shrines to no code nor creed confined,
  The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
  The Meccas of the mind.’

“But there are other names which to overlook would be worse than negligence,—­it would be ingratitude unworthy of a son of Yale.

“At the head of that glorious host stands the venerable form of Joel Barlow, who, in addition to his various civil and literary distinctions, was the father of American poetry.  There too is the intellectual brow of Webster, not indeed the great defender of the Constitution, but that other Webster, who spent his life in the perpetuation of that language in which the Constitution is embalmed, and whose memory will be coeval with that language to the latest syllable of recorded time.  Beside Webster on the historic canvas appears the form of the only Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States that ever graduated at this College,—­Chief Justice Baldwin, of the class of 1797.  Next to him is his classmate, a patriarchal old man who still lives to bless the associations of his youth,—­who has consecrated the noblest talents to the noblest earthly purposes,—­the pioneer of Western education,—­the apostle of Temperance,—­the life-long teacher of immortality,—­and who is the father of an illustrious family whose genius has magnetized all Christendom.  His classmate is Lyman Beecher.