Address to graduating class

I

Address to the Graduating Class

Delivered by Alston Ellis,--Pr~dent of State Agricultural College College Chapel, June

9,

The State Agricultural College Fort Collins, Colorado

J,4EJLBERS OF THE CLASS:

The regulations of the College provide that students who complete any one of the four prescribed courses of study shall be given the degree of Bachelor of Science and awarded a diploma as an evidence of graduation.

The day to which you have looked forward with a natural solicitude and expectation has come. Your last college exercise has taken place in the presence of friends who rejoice at your successful completion of a period of wisely-directed effort. No excuse is needed for the feeling of pride that flushes your cheek and brightens your eye. Man is ever disposed to look with some degree of complacency upon good results won by his oTm efforts. Even God looked upon his handiwork, as seen in the Creation, and pronounced it good. If it is permissible, or in good taste, to show pride in the possession of anything which the world values, it is not amiss to manifest pleasure in the OTmersbip of a diploma that speaks of industry, growth, and capacity.

You have here gained an honor which many vainly covet; an honor that money can not buy or influence secure. There is but one road to intellectual and moral wealth. You are passing one of the many mile-stones on that road today.

You go from the restricted world of college life to the wider world of human life. Let it not weaken your spirit or daunt your courage to know that the work that the latter life will bring you must be done, in great part, in the face of an active, aggressive competition that is deaf to all save self-interest. Strangers 'Will touch elbows w1 th you in the atruggle for life's prizes. There is much of human sympathy in the world, but it is not often found as an active force in the arena of life where men contend for mastery.

The friendships of youth are the most WlSelfish as well as the most enduring. The little competition that marks the students 1 _{contact with} one another in college halls is usually of the generous kind. It rarely fosters ill-will. I know it is possible for one student to have a strong friendly interest in the ability and success of another.

In the world 1 _{s college, men, in their eagerness to win and hold, push} forward for the prizes and honors forgetful of the rights of their fellows. Whittier gives us more than a glimpse of adult human nature in his little poem entitled, "In School Days." The girl grieved because she had brought chagrin to the boy by spelling the word he had missed. The girl dies and the boy grows to manhood.

"He lives to learn, in life's hard school, How few who pass above him

Lament their triumph and his loss, Like her, - because they love him."

And his experience is too common to create surprise or call forth more than passing comment.

Sturdy self-reliance is a vaJ.uable part of a preparation for usefulness in the world. Our training ought to assist us to push our way unaided by the power that weaklings invokeJ but that way should never carry us over the

prostrate forms of others whom we have pushed from their footing by our own hard, selfish, and relentless energy.

Do not enthrone selfishness in your hearts. Parkman in describing the selfish disposition of the notorious Pompadour, of the court of Louis XV,

s~1 "Her fortitude was perfect in bearing the sufferings of others and

defying dangers that could not touch her •11 _{Over against this cold-blooded, selfish} nature of a talented, yet unscrupulous, woman place the lovely disposition of Shakespeare's Portio or the womanly character of the Lady Elizabeth Hastings, of Whom Steele spoke so glowingly, and learn a life lesson by the contrast.

The great heart of humanity thrills at words of kindness or acts of charity.

"Simplest token can impart, Noble throb to noble heart."

Says Bulwer1 "It is better to sow a good heart with kindness, than a field with corn, for the heart 1 _{a harvest is perpetual."}

The assertion that knowledge is power has become a proverb. Ignorance is power too. The world is a great scene of warfare between these antagonistic forces. You are expected to take post under the white banner around which the hosts of intelligence, truth, and equity rally. Here you owe the service of a discreet leader rather thal1 the doubtful support of a camp follower. Here responsibility is assumed; and responsibility, as Emerson' s~, educates fast. "What royal robe," says Bulwer, 11_{so invests with imperial majesty the} form of man as the grave sense of power responsible in an earnest soul,n

These, and like utterances, imply that when the College doors close behind you the day of mental acquisition, the period of preparation, has not gone by.

It is better to liken the world to a school than to a stage. Instructors

change, lessons vary, modes of application differ,; that is all. A self-learned

lesson, instruction gained in the school of experience, weighs in value not

less than the work done under the tutelage of teacher or professor.

"We all of

us,

educations, one which we receive from others; another, and the most valuable,

which we give ourselves." 11_{A college training," says Lowell, "is an excelJent}

thing; but after all, the better part of every man's education is that which

he gives himself •11

Through the door of the college the student enters into a wider world of thought and effort. He should know how rightly to use the one and direct the other. He shames his college training if he advances with faltering step or

preEumptuous haste. Let him not, .MicaTiber-like, await some propitious

occasion fer the exertion of his powers, but rather let him "do the work

that's nearest though it's dull at whiles." That person has the happiest

disposition and the one that will render best service in the world, ~ho

cheerfully enters upon the path of usefulness to which the finger of duty

points.

Many lives are earnest and prosaic from youth to age. It is sad to see

faces upon which are traced deep lines worn by care and toil. The hardest

duties o£ life should not weigh upon us so heavily as to make existence a

burden. Take time to refresh body and mind. Keep the soul aglow, the light

o£ your higher and better nature bright. Learn to see and enjoy things that

have no ponderable e£fect upon the world's scales. See the flush of morn

or the tinted clouds that receive the setting sun with open eyes and rapturous

what you behold. Hear the sighing 'llind, the singing bird, or the rustling lea£ with ears open to receive instruction. Watch the rushing waters as they foam and seethe on their way to plunge over the precipice without thought of the waste of energy that you 'Witness. The cataract may mean something to you though it does not turn the wheels of a mill or set the looms of a factory in motion. Be not too material. in thought. Bayard Taylor makes one of his charact.ers say of another& "She would make every stream turn some kind of a mill, while I am willing to see one now and then dash itself to pieces over the rocks for the sake of the spray and the rainbows."

All vice is odious, but that seems doubly so that is joined with intellect and age. It is just to expect intelligence to shun the sllliiiS of life and take high post in the ranks where virtue and truth are watchwords. 11_Truth,11 says Chaucer, "is the highest thing that man may keep. 11 _{It is the jewel} that makes rich him upon whom the snows of age have fallen.

How glorious it is to live in the regard of your fellows! "To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die." Bryant lived up to high convictions of duty. Honesty and truth were interwoven in his sturdy nature. He made no co:npromise with expediency; he held no conference with wrong. Hear a verse from Holmes' poem written in honor of Bryant's seventieth birthdays

"How shal.l we thank him that in evil days

He faltered never, -- nor for blame, nor praise, Nor hire, nor party, shamed his earlier lays? But as his boyhood was of manliest hue, So to his youth his manly years were true, All dyed in royal purple through and through."

Some earthly reward for a life's devotion to the true

aDj

The eve before the capture of Quebec, Wolfe was reading Gray's Elegy to some brother officers. Finally he said& "Gentlemen, I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec." What victory is more worthy of com-memoration th~ a lifelong victory over the baser part of one's nature? Such a victory, was Bryant's, and it may be ours. To have a worthy hand pen such words of us, as Holmes penned of him, is to reap a reward for maey years of unselfish labor.

In the heat of toil men look forward longingly to a time of rest. The burden of the present is lightened by hope. In the distance the eye beholds a day when labor shall cease and its fruits shall delight. What is the earthly rest for which an earnest soul struggles'l Hear Ruskin's answer:

"The rest that is glorious is of the chamois crouched breathless in its granite bed, not of the stalled ox over his fodaer-.11

"Be not like dumb, driven cattle,

Be a hero in the strife.n

Honesty is a strong element of a true education; so is loyalty to truth and country. Without these qualities the citizen is not the living, earnest force he should be in society or state. An honest government and dishonest, disloyal citizens do not go together. Says Emerson& "Covenants are of no use without honest men to keep them; laws of none, but with

loyal citizens to obey them."

Youth is buoyant and hopeful. The young soul when depressed by

disappointment quickly recovers its strength and spirit. "Rejoice, 0 young man, in thy youth, 11 _{is the message of the preacher of old coupled with}

warning. Unite the nurture of the heart with the aulture of the mind. "Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life."

The advice of Polonius to Laertes is some of the best that human wisdom

can offer the young&

"This above all, - to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man."

Yes, or to GodJ for the conscience which unceasingly admonishes us to

be true is heaven-born and God-given. Washington called it a little spark

of celestial fire. Small though it be, it has lighted mankind to all

worthy achievements that the world's history records. Conscience, hope,

and duty whisper to us, in the lines used so often by E. E. Hale:

"To look up and not down,

To look forward and not back, To look out and not in

and To lend a hand."

~bat better parting advice, my young friends, can I give you than that

found in the words which Shakespeare lends to Wolsey when he addresses

Cromwell!

"Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee;

Corruption wins not more than honesty.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,

To silence envious tongues. Be just and fear not;

Let all the ends thou aim 1 _{at at be thy country's,}

Thy God's, and truth's; then if thou fall1_{st, 0 Cromwell,}