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Ave Atque Vale.

Friends, Robots, Countrymen, lend me your ears. We have come here to-day not to call a general strike, or to proclaim a republic, or oven to bury Caesar. We have come rather to bury the victim of Caesar's cruelty. It is my duty to say a kind word concerning the corpse whom we are about to plant. It will be the first kind word that has ever been spoken of him—at any rate, by respectable people. These poor, sobbing students are not respectable people. Consider the company they keep. Consider the opinion which Mr. Arthur Fair holds regarding them. If they had not fallen out with their Vice-Chancellor, our beloved comrade would not have received his due.

But, in the midst of our indignation at the heartless manner in which Capping was done to death, let us not close our hearts to the sufferings of these unfortunate students. Such lamentations must indeed be genuine. It may be that we misjudge them. The most enlightened citizens of this fair Dominion—I mean, of course, the citizens of Auckland—do not misjudge them. Has not their most brilliant editor declared that the students of Victoria College are shining examples of sanctimonious rectitude? There is no one among the citizens of this Capital City but will enthusiastically agree that whatever Auckland says, Auckland is right. Let us, therefore, dismiss from our thoughts the unutterable wickedness of these vicious students. Let us charitably pass over the unbridled excesses and revolting orgies with which they outrage the sensibilities of all right-thinking people. With bleeding hearts and streaming eyes, let us be one with them in their grief at the loss of their loved companion. We also loved him.

For a quarter of a century the deceased gave of his best to the University. Some honourable, high-minded men will say that this is not the truth. With the cold, clammy corpse of Capping lying here before us, ready to be committed to his final resting-place for 1927, it were grievous disrespect to say anything that sounded like the truth. What use have we, the citizens of a great and glorious Empire, for the truth? Did our comrade ever dally with the truth? To his lasting credit, never.

Sufficient it was for him to guide the infant steps of these poor mourners through the harrowing paths of youth, to free their struggling intellects from the poisonous errors poured into their ears nightly by abandoned professors, to keep them unspotted from the world of presumptuous public men. His devoted purpose was to give to Victoria College a tone. And what a tone that was! Still in our ears it rings, as the pale shade stalks through the glooms of Hades, with a cowbell in one hand and a watchman's rattle in the other, calling College Councillors from their infernal slumbers.

Is it right to think of him as having gone to the place to which College Councillors can go? "Nay, sure, he's not in hell: he's in Arthur's bosom. . . ." Wherever he has gone, let us echo a wish which we know would be nearest the heart of our beloved friend: May he never rest in peace.