PROCEEDINGS. ANNUAL MEETING OF THE SOCIETY, OCTOBER 16, 1907, AT THE HALL OF THE SOCIETY IN WORCESTER. The meeting was called to order by the President, Rev. EDWARD EVERETT HALE, D.D. The following members were present: Edward E. Hale, Nathaniel Paine, Samuel A. Green, William A. Smith, James F. Hunnewell, Edward H. Hall, Charles C. Smith, Edmund M. Barton, Franklin B. Dexter, Charles A. Chase, Samuel S. Green, Andrew McF. Davis, Frederic W. Putnam, Daniel Merriman, Henry H. Edes, Edward Channing, Granville S. Hall, Carroll D. Wright, Henry A. Marsh, John Green, William DeL. Love, Ezra S. Stearns, Leonard P. Kinnicutt, George H. Haynes, Charles L. Nichols, William R. Livermore, Waldo Lincoln, George P. Winship, Austin S. Garver, Samuel Utley, E. Harlow Russell, Benjamin T. Hill, Edmund A. Engler, Alexander F. Chamberlain, William MacDonald, Clarence W. Bowen, Deloraine P. Corey, Clarence S. Brigham, Lincoln N. Kinnicutt, Franklin P. Rice, Caleb B. Tillinghast. The by-laws being incorporated in full in the minutes. of the last meeting, it was voted to dispense with the reading of the record. Dr. HALE spoke as follows: I have asked the Council and I ask the gentlemen of the Society to-day to accept my resignation of the post of President. Mr. Barton tells me that it is sixty years since I was honored by election into the Society. My nomination was undoubtedly made by my near and dear friend, our librarian, Samuel Foster Haven, whose life work gave so much dignity to our association. I was living in Worcester, a young minister, with everything in life to learn; he honored me by his friendship and as the years went by there was scarcely a day in which I did not make one excuse and another for visiting our Library. With his guidance and counsel, it was an admirable school for any young man. At to-day's meeting, our attention is called to those years of the middle of the century, by a letter from the trustees of an association formed to render fit honor to the memory of Elihu Burritt. He was a student in our library, who was always eager and proud to give it credit for the benefits which he had received from it. The younger generation of Americans hardly recollects as it should do the interest which attached to the work of this remarkable man. He early won the title of "the learned blacksmith, for he had that remarkable quickness in the acquisition of language, which is a special gift to some men,-which enabled him to use every prominent language in literature with more or less ease. When he was a workman at the forge in this town, he was made welcome in our Library and was using every day and night our lexicons and other authorities. Mr. Burritt was well in advance in all the reforms of that day. His work was international and his plea for a "High Court of Nations," made at Brussels, at Paris, and at Frankfort in 1848-49, and '50, has in our times assumed interest and importance which the world hardly anticipated then.1 I am glad that we have an opportunity to commend to the people of New England the interesting historical memorial which his townsmen in New Britain are establishing. It is a pleasure to try, at the last moment of official life, to discharge the duties which belong to an office so honorable as mine. Early in the summer, therefore, I addressed privately, five of our members whom I regarded as high 1See our Proceedings for October, 1841, for Burritt's own words. |