At a meeting held on 26 April 1886, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Johns Hopkins University, Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, Professor of Greek, spoke some words that have with slight variations been more recently applied to the study of modern languages, and indeed to other disciplines. Gildersleeve said in part:
To some, I do not know how many, certainly to some of those whom I am addressing, the special line of work to which my own life has been devoted may seem to have had its day, and to plan for the future of Greek is to plan for an elaborate structure on the foundation of some Table Rock, destined at no distant time to fall and disappear on the restless current of modern life. A monument was erected some years since to the memory of the last old woman that spoke Cornish, and it would require no great stretch of imagination on the part of some of our friends to fancy that some youth may be present here today who shall live to see the cremation of the last successor of Sir John Cheke on this side of the Atlantic, of the last old woman, trousered or untrousered, that shall have discharged the office of a Professor of Greek in an American university.
