DINNER IN HONOR OF PROFESSOR JOHN BATES CLARK 355 
he shares my regret at the loss of those eighty speeches. The fact that we 
are not going to have eighty speeches deprives this occasion of one of the 
characteristics of excellence to which I looked forward, my dear Chairman, 
with some anticipation. I was called upon a few weeks ago to take the 
chair at a dinner in this speech-stricken town, where I was handed a 
list of seventeen speakers and was assured that no one would speak more 
than two minutes. We discontinued the order of exercises at quarter of 
two in the morning, when a certain number of the seventeen had begged 
to be excused. 
I can begin my tribute to my long-time friend and colleague, Professor 
Clark, by paying a tribute to one of his associates and mine, whom I hold 
in the deepest affection and esteem, as an old teacher, as an intellectual 
guide, as a personal friend, and as a colleague for a generation, whose letter 
I hold in my hand. Professor Burgess has written this letter with the 
suggestion that I read it to this company and Professor Clark: 
Your letter of January 19, forwarded from Newport, reached me yesterday 
and found prompt and sympathetic response of my own feelings. I yield 
to no one among our colleagues in appreciation of Professor John Bates 
Clark, as a scholar and a gentleman. I have the honor to be an alumnus 
of the same college with him, to have joined as a member of the Board of 
Trustees of our Alma Mater in extending to him the invitation to the 
Chair of Political Economy in that Institution, and then as Dean of the 
Faculty of Political Science at Columbia, to have initiated his call to the 
Chair of Political Economy in this university. 
For a quarter of a century I was almost daily witness to that rare and 
refined scholarship, that modest and courteous demeanor, that honest and 
conscientious dealing which have marked his distinguished career throughout 
its epoch and there is no man among those with whom he has lived and 
labored to whom it would give more genuine pleasure to grasp his hand as 
he crosses the frontier of the eighties, than my humble self. Failing strength 
forbids my effort to be with you in physical person upon this highly 
interesting occasion. 
I, also, have crossed the frontier and have left it some distance 
behind and am obliged to acclimate myself to the limitations which age 
imposes. I shall be there, however, every moment of the time in spirit 
and shall await with intense and impatient interest the account of the 
occasion. 
Please extend to my friend my most cordial greeting and congratulations 
and say to him for me that while I pen these lines there comes the thought, 
or rather the query to me whether the day may be reserved for my dis- 
embodied spirit from some far-off star of higher culture in this vast universe 
of mind to extend the hand of welcome to spirits such as his and those 
with whom we have labored for civilization, as has been my great privilege 
here. If such shall be the case, then will the riddle of existence have been 
solved for me and a paradise for which I have longed and hoped and prayed, 
been attained. 
Faithfully and affectionately, your friend and colleague, 
JorN WimLiaM BURGESS. 
It would be difficult, Mr. Chairman, to put into ten thousand words a 
more gracious, a more intimate, or a more just appreciation of the life 
and work of our friend, Dr. Clark. We so rarely have the courage to speak 
kindly of a man while he lives, that it is particularly gratifying to be able 
on an occasion like this, to say just what is in one’s mind and heart. Man