Wisdom of the Sages | Harvard Magazine harvardmagazine.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from harvardmagazine.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Photograph by Harvard Public Affairs and Communications
The spring of 1933 was a trying time: the depths of the Depression, a new president scrambling to reverse systemic disasters and lift shattered spirits. Sound familiar?
During that Commencement week, the Phi Beta Kappa Orator was Connecticut governor Wilbur Cross he of the eponymous parkway, and a thorough Yalie. In
Connecticut Yankee, his autobiography, he called the invitation the “most signal honor in my literary career.” Taking as his cue Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous “American Scholar” address, Cross told his audience “that 1837 and 1933 were alike in that they were both years of ‘economic confusion and public upheaval,’ and yet Emerson had no word about hard times, which must have been in the minds of all his hearers. ‘Looking beyond turmoil and distress, he did not let his gaze wander, for more than a moment, from the ultimate triumph of the human spirit over material things.’”