Butler Alumnal Quarterly University Special Collections

Butler University Digital Commons @ Butler University Butler Alumnal Quarterly University Special Collections 1913 Butler Alumnal Quarterly (1913) Butler University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/bualumnalquarterly Part of the Other History Commons Recommended Citation Butler University, "Butler Alumnal Quarterly (1913)" (1913). Butler Alumnal Quarterly. 3. https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/bualumnalquarterly/3 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the University Special Collections at Digital Commons @ Butler University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Butler Alumnal Quarterly by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Butler University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. mk Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/butleralumnalqua21913butl WILLIAM M. THRASHER ; Butler Vol. II INDIANAPOLIS, IND., APRIL, 1913 No. i The Point of View By William M. Thrasher [From 1865 to 1899 Professor William M. Thrasher occupied the chair of Mathematics in Butler College. Professor Thrasher was an accomplished mathematician; a man widely read in many languages; ahve with scien- tific interest and intelligence; appreciative of art in all its forms; a keen wit; the best of friends; a good man. His feeUng for his former students rose to affection. In the last sad weeks spent in California, where he died, he spoke of them frequently, showing a surprising knowledge of their career and their character, a tolerance, a tenderness, a pride. The following article is one of Professor Thrasher's chapel lectures read January 12, 1894-] For every great picture much depends on the Hght and the point of view. Artists are particular about these. To see men, institutions, and nature in her myriad manifestations, the point and the all-round-ness of view, as well as the distance, are of much importance. A painting, intended for a fifty-foot distance, is a daub when seen at ten feet. The state of the object seen imports much. Nature never poses is never on exhibition. The cow in her stall is no nicer in her man- ners with twenty people looking at her, than when alone. Not so men. One advantage of a kodak over the old two-minute camera is that you may take a snapshot at a man when not on dress parade. One of the funniest things in the world is the sight of a plain, humble person in front of a camera trying to look like John Quincy Adams or the Prince of Wales. My cousin Jane sat in her parlor talking to me in a very natural, simple way. All at once her countenance put on an expression of ineffable sweetness and supernal dig- nity. I thought at first she was an Adventist, ready to ascend. Not so. She had only heard the doorbell, and was getting on her com- pany expression. 2 Butler Alumnal Quarterly A ship is on fire. Fifty people fall on their knees in prayer. They do not begin with Adam and pray through the Old and New Testa- ments down to Revelation. It is man face to face with his God. The earnestness is te-rrible. In most of the long metaphysical prayers I hear, I long for some one in the audience to get up and shout "Fire !" The world poses. I can slip up to the keyhole of the south door of this chapel and one peep at the platform informs me whether students are assembled, or have all gone out. If each professor has one leg over the other and is looking with the placidness and immobility of the Egyptian sphinx, the boys are here. If both feet are on the floor, the countenance human in its variety of expression, the boys and girls have gone. The proverb declares that no woman is plain on her wedding day. I account for it thus : She has forgotten to pose under the divine transfiguration of love and joyous expectancy. In death's presence, under sway of tremendous feeling, we never pose. Nature has full sway. The consummate actor understands this. He does not play, he is Hamlet. So, it comes about that the state of the thing viewed, as well as the point of view, counts for much. Our mirrors give us only front views ; our neighbors get an all-round view. Their esti- mate of us has great advantage. One of the grandest objects in the world is the ocean, whether by day or by night ; whether in calm or in storm, as seen from the deck of a great liner. The view inspires, elevates, brings to the fore all the poetry latent in the observer. But the same ocean seen by cast- aways in a small boat, without provisions or water, chart or compass, fills the bosom with fear and dread, with a sense of unutterable loneliness, of the nearness of death, of eternity, of the black .wall dividing the sunny, real world from the dark, mysterious unknown land. You have read in The Rambler, that charming paper of Samuel Johnson, "The Journey of a Day." In early morning the traveler, fresh and joyful, steps gaily along the path bordered by stately trees, trailing vines, flowers, lovely views of field and forest. He carelessly enters a by-way on pleasure intent, is overtaken by night and tempest ; is lost ; sees a light which leads to the cave of a hermit, The Point of View 3 who gives him shelter and wise counsel for the morrow. His eve- ning and morning were spent in the same beautiful world, and yet how changed to him! The baying of a pack of coon dogs under a tree in the moonlight forest is inspiring. To the hunter, it is jolly. To the artist, it is full of poetry. To the coon, it is strictly "coon versus dog." Charles Reade names a novel "Put Yourself in His Place." There is the rub. li we only could, what generous catholic judgments we should render. More than any other man in literature, Shake- speare was able to do this very thing. He made clowns and kings, soldiers, Christians and infidels. Moors, Italians, dwarfs, fairies, gnomes, spirits of the nether and the upper world, each speak so naturally, so fitly, you would have thought the poet by some necro- mancy had lain in wait, and by divine insight had entrapped the thought and the tongue of each. This is the Catholicity of Genius. So penetrated the secrets of all hearts the Nazarene, and His judgments never erred. It is curious to note the various ways in which men are viewed by the various crafts. To the observant tailor, the tabernacle of an im- mortal soul is but a dummy on which he may conveniently hang a suit of clothes. To a good surgeon, he is an anatomical museum of heart, liver, lungs, arteries and muscles—a subject for the dextrous use of his dissecting knife. To the artist, he is a Hving statue, differ- ing more or less from his ideal, a bundle of symmetries and expres- sions. To the preacher, he is a brand to be snatched from the fiery pit. To Napoleon, he is so much food for gunpowder, a part of a regimental machine through which are manipulated artistic parade drills. A landscape, to an artist, is a glorious mixture of colors and forms, with a dominant motive. To the real estate agent, heaven and earth are material for inside and corner lots ; his right eye is on the landscape, his left on gullible humanity. To the sectarian, God is chief of mankind in a general way, of his own sect in a very particular way. To the simple Christian, God is the All-Father, whose love is all-embracing, not willing that any shall perish. To God, all men are possible children ; to Christ, possible brethren. So various are the points of view to men, angels, God. Some men see the world from the mouth of a cavern, some from the bottom of 4 Butler Alumnal Quarterly a valley, some from a breezy upland, some from a mountain summit. What we see depends very much upon the place whence we look. In Pompeii I found the cart ruts in the stone pavements of the narrow streets to be quite six inches deep, resulting from the wear of ages in the same track. So creeds, artistic, political, religious, tend to make men go in ruts, from which broad and charitable views of life and humanity are scarcely possible. We want more freedom of movement, greater diversity of standpoint. No liberalizer has been so effective among material agencies as printing. In ancient days, books were multiplied painfully by the pen. A general diffusion of intelligence was impossible. Ignorance became the fertile soil whence sprang superstitions, cruelties, tyran- nies, as also narrowness, bigotry and intolerance. Monasteries and nunneries were filled with devotees. The curse of seclusion, it is true, was partially obviated by contact with books. They became the depositaries of all classical learning, preserving the records of the giants of the past. Don Quixote immured himself in his library of books of chivalry, read only the "Amadis of Gaul" and extrava- gances of that ilk, whence resulted a character which, for ludicrous mixture of folly and wisdom, has been the source of infinite de- light to readers of every following age. The Greeks, prior to Xerxes, and China, with its excluding wall, are notable instances of the narrowing effect of isolation. Greece partially escaped through its many tribes and its great variety of scenery and climate.

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