Francis H. Stoddard

When Francis Hovey Stoddard joined the group in the reading-room or the Graham Library, nodding cheerfully to club acquaintances at right and left, it never occurred to his fellow-clubmen to think of him as belonging to a long-past generation. Stoddard was born before the political upheaval which, in 1848, brought to conservative minds the same mournful ideas of a world turned upside-down as prevail today. He graduated from college as long ago as 1869. He lived early enough and long enough to learn by personal observation that the world has a way of regaining equilibrium after such disquieting spasms, and that modern civilization is a hardy plant. Stoddard himself was less interested in the longer past than in the present. But, possibly because of his quarter-of-a-century teaching of that English literature which has had a way of riding comfortably through political and social storms, he never lost his hopefulness of the future.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1937 Century Association Yearbook