more was made the brightest educational spot in our country" by the development of the university under Doctor Oilman's guidance. Questions of scholarship broadened into those of statesmanship. A new era opened in educational matters; and to President Gilman must be awarded praise for awakening and stimulating most powerfully the love of the higher learning and of research in our American life. His interest in the men who surrounded him was intense. Their work was watched and encouraged by him; and many of them attribute to his sympathetic suggestions of a career, and to his encouragement in it, much of the success of their later life. For years he made "the university the paradise and seminarium of young specialists."
Doctor Gilman's optimism and idealism have been two most prominent factors in his success. He sustained the courage of all in the difficulties which attended the beginning of such a work, and through the depressing years when non-paying investments of funds for a time seriously crippled his plans, he kept alive enthusiasm alike among instructors and students. It is in the brain of such leaders that great educational impulses and inspirations arise; and it is by the will of such men that they are put into practical form for the guidance of succeeding generations. Pure learning, progressive knowledge, practical results, are the standards set before young men in this institution, which has received its impress and power from the mind and services of its first president. Thoroughness and expansion have marked the courses of study in Johns Hopkins university; and no doubt individual supervision of work, and the remarkable opportunities for research so freely offered to young and ambitious aspirants, individually, are among the reasons why so many of its graduates are appreciative of the work of the university which gave them a successful launch in their life-career. Doctor Gilman's twenty-fifth anniversary in the presidency brought out abounding evidence of the gratitude, appreciation and reverence of the men who had studied under his guidance. To him the whole educational system of the United States is indebted, not only for keeping this leading university free from narrow ideas of competition and rivalry with other institutions, but also for a magnificent fight against the materializing tendencies which are too prevalent in American life. His work has done much to demonstrate that "often the most ideal course is also the most practical."
