USA > New York > Niagara County > History of the Seminary of Our Lady of Angels : Niagara University, Niagara County, N.Y., 1856-1906 > Part 23
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The Prefect of discipline from 1895-1897 was Rev. James F. Ken- nedy, C. M., an alumnus of Niagara, 1889, who was Professor like- wise in the preparatory and later in the collegiate department. His assistant was Rev. John J. Brady, C. M., the first year, with the ad- dition of Rev. Edward M. Farrell, C. M., in the second year of his Prefectship. Father Kennedy's rule among the boys was successful and popular, especially in what related to the introduction of larger liberties than the first Prefect himself had enjoyed when he was an inmate of the study hall. The movement towards an enfranchisement of the juniors from the severe exactions of previous years may be said to have been inaugurated about this time, because of the more lenient policy adopted by Father McHale, and promulgated through his Pre- fects. Anyone acquainted with the temper of college boys will under- stand how freely they shower plaudits upon an officer who gives them liberties where their predecessors had found only rigid, and, to their inexperienced minds, unmeaning restrictions. But the college boy is not only generous with his praises but likewise discriminating in his estimate of official character. He knows from Christian instinct if not from books, that priest and gentleman ought to be synonymous terms. In Father Kennedy's case our boys found the terms strictly interchangeable, thus doubling their appreciation because of his courteous manners and his liberal rule. After leaving Niagara Father Kennedy served on the missions with headquarters at German- town until the opening of the present scholastic year, when he was made head of the mission band established at Niagara.
Rev. John J. Brady, C. M., Father Kennedy's vigorous assistant for two years, was of athletic frame and inclinations, so that college sports at Niagara were not without an inspiriting promoter in the energetic second Prefect. At present Father Brady is chaplain of Mount Hope near Baltimore, where he ministers with all charity to
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the afflicted, and aids the convalescents with the most tonic exercises known to the promoters of physical culture.
Rev. Jeremiah A. Tracy, C. M., came to Niagara as a Profes- sor in the autumn of 1895. He was employed at first in the pre- paratory and in the collegiate department as teacher of physical ge- ography, Latin, penmanship, Greek, and algebra. Later, he taught calculus, natural philosophy, and rhetoric. In 1900, on the removal of Father Carey to Brooklyn, he became Prefect of studies, remaining in that office until January, 1903, when he was called to Germantown and placed on the missions, in which field he is at present successfully laboring.
The opening of studies in 1897 found Rev. P. J. Conroy, C. M., 1889, installed as Director of our Seminarians. Having been a mem- ber of the senior department prior to his departure for our novitiate in Germantown, he was already well supplied with that practical knowl- edge which goes far towards making the work of a Director easier and more successful. Moreover, he had held a similar office in the Brooklyn Seminary, so that he may be said to have possessed the requisite experience for guiding our young aspirants to the priest- hood. During the six years that he remained in office, he devoted all his splendid energies to his special work, seldom going abroad, teach- ing philosophy, rubrics, homiletics, and kindred branches with unwearied regularity and most gratifying success. When our new mission house was opened in Springfield, Mass., in 1903, Father Conroy received due recognition for his labors at Niagara by his appointment as Superior of our latest institution. A facile and entertaining speaker, well versed in all that pertains to ecclesiastical learning, he has already won the esteem of experienced churchmen by the manner in which he has conducted our newest missionary venture.
A single year at Niagara was sufficient to convince Rev. John P. Molyneaux, C. M., that Brooklyn Bridge was greater than Suspen- sion Bridge (no longer suspended), and the East River more navi- gable than our turbulent flood of waters. Father John came from the " City of Churches," legally only a borough, to Niagara at the open- ing of studies in 1897, teaching, with commendable resignation, arithmetic, bookkeeping, and physical geography, while going the rounds as assistant Prefect to Father Talley. On the death of the latter in March, Father Molyneaux became first Prefect, continuing in that office until the close of studies, when he received the glad tid- ings to return to Brooklyn, where he has been stationed ever since. All who are acquainted with Father "John P." know him to be
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courtesy itself, an indefatigable laborer in the Lord's vineyard, and if he made known his preference for one little patch in that great field over another little patch far northwest of it, he only manifested through his candor of character what others may have hidden through over prudence.
After some lads have been here for a while they learn to sing with tolerable fidelity :
" This is our home, our college home,"
but it is only around the Kalends of Commencement day that their diapason swells high above our rushing torrent as they chant in chorus :-
" We love her rocks and river Where'er we chance to be, Then hurrah for Old Niagara And her lovely scenery."
There are other lads, again, who fall in love with our surround- ings as soon as they catch a glimpse of our cross-crowned dome tower- ing above Niagara's waste of waters. "It is good for us to be here," they say to themselves, and they live up to the edict, and when at last they turn their faces from the dear old spot, as, for instance, on Ordination day, they do so with the sad conviction that they are leaving the dearest college home on earth. Sentimental reasons may exaggerate this conviction in certain cases, but we of the present Faculty will not go on record against its general truthfulness, especially as not a few among ourselves have known no other home for years except that which is sheltered under the dear name of Our Lady of Angels.
Rev. William J. Egan, now engaged in the Archdiocese of Cin- cinnati, was earnest and popular, whether as Prefect or Professor, during his term of service here, from September, 1898, until his departure from our midst after the close of studies in 1905.
Rev. John P. Downing, C. M., now attached to Saint John's Col- lege, Brooklyn, was assistant Prefect here from 1899-1901. His pleasant disposition made him popular with the boys on the campus, and successful with them in the class-room, while his liking for Niagara made it regrettable that the need of his services elsewhere should have deprived our Faculty of so valuable a member.
Another whose stay among us was short, embracing only the scholastic year beginning with 1899, was Rev. John J. Lee, C. M. After good work here as Professor of languages and mathematics, he
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took up the more active life of a missionary, resigning later on to return to the quiet of the class-room. At present writing he is a member of Saint John's College Faculty in Brooklyn.
The Professor of physics, chemistry, astronomy and languages this year was Rev. George J. Eckhardt, C. M., who left us the suc- ceeding year, but returned a year later, remaining until the close of studies in 1905. He is now stationed at Saint John's College, Brook- lyn, doing the same good work that characterized him at Niagara.
Rev. Joseph J. Elder, C. M., was born at "The Barrens," Perry Co., Mo., in 1857. He made his classics at Cape Girardeau College, and entered our Congregation in 1879. After his ordination in 1885 he was sent to Saint John's College, Brooklyn, where he was Treas- urer for several years. He was transferred to Niagara in Father McHale's first year as President, remaining here until September, 1905, as professor of French and mathematics. His proficiency in music, and his willingness to aid in any movement intended to advance that art at Niagara, made his services of great value to the Cecilian organization, of which he was censor for a number of years. It was largely through Father Elder's efforts that the present sumptuous quarters of the N. C. A. were provided in Alumni Hall.
The short-term and the long-term confreres who lived at Niagara with Father McHale can bear testimony to a fact not always observed by those outside of our Community or family circle. He was, indeed, liberal towards the students in granting permissions ; he was as lenient with the seminarians as their exacting and somewhat immutable rules would permit, but indulgence in neither of these respects exhausted his generosity. He kept first place for his Community brethren.
When, at the opening of studies in 1901, Father McHale was missing from Niagara, having gone to Saint John's, Brooklyn, as President of that institution, grief, wide and sincere, took possession of our household. Accustomed as we are to changes, confident as we have reason to be that God provides in great emergencies, we could not help experiencing a feeling of anxiety for Niagara's future. This, however, was rather a tribute to the ability of the outgoing officer than any well-founded doubt concerning his successor. The acceptable standard which Father McHale had established and maintained in all the departments of the University could not be lowered without retro- action of a most pernicious nature, yet it must also be advanced to greater perfection - a something which Father McHale was certain to accomplish had he not been summoned to another field of labor.
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It was not long, however, before joy succeeded to sorrow, and cer- tainty to speculation, when the assistant to Father McHale in his last year at Niagara was announced as his successor in the office of President. Father Likly's accession assured us that Father McHale's broadening policy would be maintained and advanced to the widest limit consistent with our fundamental principles.
In his present position Father McHale is occupied with more numerous duties than when he was at the head of our University. Be- sides having a college and seminary under his charge, he is pastor of one of the largest parishes in the Brooklyn diocese, and maintains a parochial school for the thousands of children belonging to his flock. In addition to all this, he is Vice Visitor of our eastern province, an office which is far from being a sinecure, since it has already entailed frequent visits to our houses on account of our Visitor's disinclina- tion to travel far from Germantown, owing to precarious health. In relation to traveling officially, by the way, Father McHale has had more, perhaps, than falls to the lot of the average Vincentian. Short- ly after the war of the United States with Spain, he was sent, in com- pany with Father Hartnett, now of our Faculty, to Cuba, to in- vestigate the condition of our Community in that and the neighbor- ing island. Last year he was commissioned by our Superior General, Father Fiat, to visit our Spanish confreres in the Philippines, and report to him concerning their present status. He was received with the greatest cordiality by our Spanish brethren, and was able through their co-operation to make a full report to our chief Superior. Again, as we write, Father McHale is outward bound on board the Majestic, this time for Ireland, where he is under commission to represent the Superior General in an official visitation of our establishments in that country. We are sure that the open-hearted welcome which the American confreres extended to Very Rev. Malachy O'Callahan, C. M., when he paid an official visit to our institutions in the name of the Superior General in 1893, will be more than reciprocated by our Irish C. M.'s towards our cultured Father McHale. To him, Niagara's sixth President, the personal friend of so many on her staff, we pray a long life of usefulness in the sphere which he has continued to honor by his talents and his virtues.
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CHAPTER XX VERY REV. WILLIAM F. LIKLY, C. M., SEVENTH PRESIDENT
A T length we have reached the days in which " we live and move and have our being." All before us has been history; most of the characters hitherto described have been removed from our little stage, affording us thereby an opportunity of studying them in clear perspective. With ourselves it is different : we are upon the scene, and how to estimate ourselves that justice may be satisfied and modesty kept from blushing is a delicate question, easier to pro- pose than to solve.
However, posterity is entitled to know something of the President and Faculty controlling the affairs of Niagara at the close of her fifty years in the educational field. And our friends, too, would wish to hear through our jubilee volume whence we came and what we have done since our advent to this institution. Even though they may know our records by heart, and their judgment in our regard is fixed long before we pen a line in our own behalf, they would be dis- appointed, we are sure, if they missed our " living obituary " from these jubilee pages. And so, with a prayer upon our lips and an anxious glance at our dry, official records, we proceed to unfold the history of Niagara's present rulers.
"Laudate eum in sono tubae, "praise him with sound of trumpet," comes to our mind as we extract from Niagara's personnel the announcement: "William F. Likly, 1884, Superior, born 1864, joined the Community, 1884, ordained 1891, appointed President, 1901." We have no trumpet ready ; we have praise, but our pen re- fuses to formulate it into written words. What incense we have to offer shall not be burned in public, nor shall its sweet odor manifest itself even in private within the sacred precincts of our Community life except by that loyal support which is the best testimony of our appreciation.
Father Likly was born in Rochester, N. Y., but moved at an early age with his parents to Cleveland, Ohio, from which city he came to Niagara as a student in September, 1882. Prior to his entrance here he had studied at Saint Mary's, Ellicottville, Md. His two years' experience in our study hall, gained at a time when he had to deal only with a boy's way of thinking, gave him an insight which has
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VERY REV. W. F. LIKLY, C. M. Seventh President
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been of great value to him in treating as President with our students. He had, moreover, the unusual advantage of judging school matters from the Prefect's stand point, having been assistant in that office when only a cleric during the scholastic year of 1888-1889.
Father Likly spent one year, that of 1887-1888, at Saint John's College, Brooklyn, when yet only a cleric, and after his ordination, he was appointed Prefect of our apostolic school in Germantown. After a year's service in that position he was placed on the mission- ary band whose headquarters are at Saint Vincent's Church, German- town, and twelve months later was promoted to the office of Director of our Internal Seminary, taking up his residence at the Mother House. In 1900, he changed places with Father Hayden, thus be- coming Vice-President and Treasurer at Niagara. The following year, on the transfer of Father McHale to Brooklyn, he was ap- pointed our President. During the five years that Father Likly has been at the head of affairs at Niagara he has aimed to make our in- stitution a home in the most cheerful sense of the word. He has no taste for the exercise of authority, preferring to mingle among his brethren as their equal, not their Superior, deferring to them when- ever possible, relying on their matured condition that no violation of the proprieties shall occur. Superiors of the olden school, if they were resurrected long enough to witness some of the " holy famil- iarity " current throughout our college home, might recommend a more severe visage to our President when he tries to say " no " to some importunate demands of our college boys. He has, we admit, the com- mendable weakness of knowing how to say " yes," and of saying it without reluctance to any reasonable petition.
That he is a man of charming personality all who observe may readily perceive, and as readily proclaim without flattery. His great object seems to be to make others happy, not by way of purgatory, but rather by way of a plenary indulgence. It is possible, we know, to confer a gift, and to take the good out of it before it is delivered, but Father Likly has somehow overlooked his education in this sleight-of-hand extraction. What he gives is bestowed generously, and what he refuses is kept back in such an amiable way that only a boor devoid of gentle breeding can take offense.
Men who lived under Father Rice, and who are now living under Father Likly, say that these two men are almost counterparts of each other as far, at least, as gentle government is concerned. We have more than a faint recollection, however, that our fourth President
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was a past master in college philippics whenever a culprit was ar- raigned before the study hall prior to packing his trunk. Father Likly, we know, prefers the private interview to public arraignment, and is satisfied to let the banished one " fold his tent and silently steal away." Nor has there been much banishment in Father Likly's time or that of his immediate predecessor. Dismissals for violations of rule have been among the rarest occurrences at Niagara within the past twelve years, not because our boys are more holy than their pre- decessors, but because the " criminal calendar " has been reduced to about half its original size.
Formerly, when, for instance, the use of tobacco was prohibited (but not thereby prevented) lads rendered themselves liable to ex- pulsion through indulging in the weed. When the old, staggering, picket fence was made a veritable " dead-line " beyond which it was fatal to advance, many a good-natured boy stole Bridgeward or to Lewiston, only to pack up his effects upon his return and buy his ticket homeward. When monastic silence around the pump, or in the dormitories, was made imperative after night prayers, more than one loquacious lad, by violating the rule, came for the first time, per- haps, into adverse contact with the Prefect. His experience on that occasion did not sweeten his disposition, we imagine, since he could not understand from his boyish point of view the relation between silence and sanctity. Afterwards, he talked through " pure cussed- ness " whenever it was safe to do so, tantalizing the Prefect, and finally receiving his ticket-of-leave as one of the college incurables. Good enough boys were sent away in former years for these and similar offences. Had they been better boys they would have observed the restrictions imposed upon them. Had there been no such restric- tions some good enough boys would have been spared the shame of dismissal from college for faults which the alembic only of a great imagination can distill into heinous moral offences.
Our readers will remember, of course, that our remarks on the present discipline at Niagara have reference to our dealings only with the inmates of the study hall. Regulations made for the seminary department in 1856 are in their primitive vigor in 1906. The President and his associates are responsible for the present mild regime in the junior department, and while they sternly refuse even to suggest an apology for their mode of action, they are not opposed . to speculating on a subject in which even the Church herself changes. Our reflections may tend to soften the opinions of those conservatives who condemn all change, as if a departure " from what used to be the
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B RY OF UNION THECHEMICAL
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REV. E. J. QUINN, C. M. Vice-President
REV. L. A. GRACE, C. M. Secretary
REV. J. J. MAHER, C. M. Treasurer
REV. J. P. CRIBBINS, C. M. Director of Seminarians
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practice in their time " were a reflection on their perspicacity. We know that in the reflections which we are about to make we are voicing the sentiments of numerous alumni who, in their practical love for their Alma Mater, give precedence to none on our honored list. Several of these alumni, among them Father Likly himself, are mem- bers of Niagara's present Faculty.
A quarter of a century is a wide enough field in which to accom- plish changes of a most radical nature unless a stronger power than time be at hand to prevent such a mutation. For more than that space of time, however, the discipline originally established at Niagara re- mained as inflexible as the laws of the Medes and Persians. Indeed, it seemed to partake of that imperishable character apparently be- longing to the rock-ribbed banks enclosing our impetuous river. Nor can substantial change be discerned even now in that announcement formulated once each year when the catalogue is peeled from the Index press, sent to the binder, and distributed broadcast through the educational world. The prospectus of 1906 will be very much like that announced, if not printed, in 1856, the first year of our college existence; and the students whose names are to appear in the list of pensioners will be neither better nor worse than their predecessors. To students of the period elapsing between 1856 and 1895, when milder discipline was introduced, the names of most of the Faculty or governing body at Niagara from the latter year to the present will have an unfamiliar ring, but the worth of these men as professors, their devotion to the best interests of the institution, will not be questioned on that account. Even in dictation class better logic than that has been our rule with no exception.
The writers of these notes disclaim all intention to flatter the powers that be, or slight the powers that used to be dominant " on the highest point on Mont Eagle Ridge." "Owing to circumstances over which some of us have had no control," we have been roving around Niagara's three hundred acres several years longer than Rip Van Winkle is said to have dozed in the Catskill Mountains. This unin- terrupted, pleasant exile, has enabled us to compare the effects of different systems followed by different individuals for the accomplish- ment of the ever prime purpose, to make Niagara students men of virtue as well as of learning. We have seen rigorous methods em- ployed by the most kind-hearted men in the world; moderation by those constitutionally inclined to be severists; and conciliation for the sake of peace by those who, if they had followed their natural
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bent, would have had their pound of flesh with the freckles thrown into the bargain.
The maintenance of discipline, even as writ in the code, is after all only a means to an end, and if the latter can be accomplished with- out the former why insist on each jot and tittle, as though a school like ours were a war college or a penal institution under the paddle of a Brockway? Moreover, it seems quite safe to say that school dis- cipline is milder all over the country nowadays than it used to be twenty or thirty years ago. And what, we are inclined to ask, induced pedagogues of the long ago, or the not so very long ago, to receive a student into their boarding schools, give him brief welcome, classify him, and watch him with suspicion from September to June? Whence originated the habit of regarding a boarder at college as practically a prisoner, not to be lost sight of even while he slept? College boys come, as a rule, from good families, and have enjoyed resonable free- dom under parental eyes. To keep them under surveillance, military, reformative, in its aspect, is to make them resentful, rebellious, and determined through " pure cussedness " to prove that they can be driven to be what their " captors " suspect them to be, unreliable. By accepting students as gentlemen, treating them as such, and not as lads practically locked up for the peace of their families, a better element is obtained in our boarding schools, cultivated home life as- serts itself, while the youth who is coarse, vulgar, vicious, is soon pre- cipitated down and out. The atmosphere is too refined for his crass nature, and he seeks the level whence he came, that is,-if the Faculty appreciate elimination and the Bursar do not object.
The chief points in which the study hall discipline of the present differs from that of former days are those of rising, study, and recreation. The five A. M. " Benedicamus Domino " is no longer heard throughout the dormitories, and yet many a fervent "Deo Gra- tias " is offered up that the student of Niagara, in common with the workman in other spheres, has less hours for labor and more for rest. Formerly, all hands were mustered into the chapel a half hour after rising, and were kept there for an hour or more presumably in prayer. Sunday mornings were especially trying to the knees and the temper of some who were willing enough to keep holy the Sabbath, but who objected as strenuously as they could to rivaling the members of the Faculty in the length and quality of that performance. While there were always many who, because of their intention to study for the Church, willingly accepted these long morning exercises, there were
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