I
"In the laboratory of life, each newcomer repeats the old
experiments, and laughs and weeps for himself. We will be
explorers, though all the highways have their guideposts and every
bypath is mapped. Helen of Troy will not deter us, nor the wounds
of Cæsar frighten, nor the voice of the king crying 'Vanity!' from
his throne dismay. What wonder that the stars that once sang for
joy are dumb and the constellations go down in
silence."--ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY: _The Wind of Destiny_.
We tend, I think, to look upon the advice that we give to young people
as something that shall disillusionize them. The cynic of forty sneers
at what he terms the platitudes of commencement addresses. He knows
life. He has been behind the curtains. He has looked upon the other side
of the scenery,--the side that is just framework and bare canvas. He has
seen the ugly machinery that shifts the stage setting--the stage setting
which appears so impressive when viewed from the front. He has seen the
rouge on the cheeks that seem to blush with the bloom of youth and
beauty and innocence, and has caught the cold glint in the eyes that,
from the distance, seem to languish with tenderness and love. Why, he
asks, should we create an illusion that must thus be rudely dispelled?
Why revamp and refurbish the old platitudes and dole them out each
succeeding year? Why not tell these young people the truth and let them
be prepared for the fate that must come sooner or later?
But the cynic forgets that there are some people who never lose their
illusions,--some men and women who are always young,--and, whatever may
be the type of men and women that other callings and professions desire
to enroll in their service, this is the type that education needs. The
great problem of the teacher is to keep himself in this class, to keep
himself young, to preserve the very things that the cynic pleases to
call the illusions of his youth. And so much do I desire to impress
these novitiates into our calling with the necessity for preserving
their ideals that I shall ask them this evening to consider with me some
things which would, I fear, strike the cynic as most illusionary and
impractical. The initiation ceremonies that admitted the young man to
the privileges and duties of knighthood included the taking of certain
vows, the making of certain pledges of devotion and fidelity to the
fundamental principles for which chivalry stood. And I should like this
evening to imagine that these graduates are undergoing an analogous
initiation into the privileges and duties of schoolcraft, and that
these vows which I shall enumerate, embody some of the ideals that
govern the work of that craft.