Plainfield High School - Milestone Yearbook (Plainfield, NJ)

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THE ORACLE. “It may go far and meet with success on every hand; others may follow in more sheltered paths, quietly doing the little things near at hand. Of failure we hope there will be little. We have always before us our aims, our ideals. Yet these ideals will fade and disappear, unless we share them, unless we en- thuse others with the beauty and the value of the life that we ourselves are slowly learning to realize, and that we are trying to attain. We appreciate the fact that it is to wish us success on this journey that you have come here to-night. You have watched from year to year the graduation of other classes ;-you have taken an interest that has inspired us to do our best; and it is the result of your interest as well as of our own en- deavor that we can now look not mournfully into the past that comes not back again, but hopefully and confidentially forward, with purpose wisely to improve each present opportunity. E. Florence Derey. ESSAY SAMUEL CHAPMAN ARMSTRONG. ANNA LOUISE RUNYON. N these days, educational developments in the South are attract- ing general attention. Men are devoting more and more time to the study of the great problem with which the South has to deal, and are watching carefully every new step taken in its so- lution. Mr. Robert C. Ogden of New York yearly invites a large delegation of well-known northern educators to accom- pany him to educational conferences held in the South, for the express purpose of learning more about the education of the freedman and what is being done for him. You ask why we are all so interested in the education of the freedman? Why do we not let him live his happy care-free life in ignorant bliss, dwelling in his log cabin and never learning even to write his name? The reason is this: At the close of the Civil War our nation was confronted with the problem of dealing with ten million freedmen. Of this number five per cent. possessed a small knowledge of reading and writing, a fewwere skilled manual work- men, and all were totally untaught in the art of taking care of themselves. Plainly something must be done! The nation was bound to take upon her- self the task of fitting these men for the freedom she had bestowed upon them. How should this be done? It required a master to solve this mighty problem, and that master was Samuel Chapman Armstrong. From the mo-

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YEAR BOOK ° - 22 “GUASS of 7905 Managing Editor, Percy Brown. Committee, Howarp G. Lapstey, chairman; ApA WesrpHat, LILLIAN SNODGRASS. Cummrurcement Speaker of Evenng, THE REV. NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS, D.D. Salutatorian, E. FLorence Derpy. Valedictorian, CAROLYN PALMER. SALUTATORY yO you, our friends, our relatives, our benefactors, who have as- sembled here to-night because of your interest in individual graduates, in the graduating class, in the Plainfield High School, and in educational advancement in general, we extend our heart- iest greeting. We welcome you to these exercises commemorat- ing the completion of four years of study and labor. You have come here to witness our transition from one stage of our journey to another. In every period of transition we look into the past as well as into the future. Perhaps some of us have not met with the largest outward success in our school work, but what we have left undone in school need not necessarily determine our future. We can each be that which commands respect and esteem from everyone, rich or poor, exalted or lowly,—a power for good. Our influence may extend only to those around us, in constant touch with us, or it may reach out over broader and farther fields. Those, on the other hand, who have been more successful in the High School, must not stop here as if the work were over. Tennyson says: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use; As though to breathe were life—”’ Truly we must goon. There are great regions of the unknown for each one of us to discover, regions that are waiting for us alone, to explore which we have thus far been preparing. Our explorations will take us in different directions, some far, some near. We are standing together at the cross- roads, waiting—some to start north, some south, some east or west. Some

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12 DHE ORACLE, ment he put his hand to the plough he never turned back, and to-day Hamp- ton and Tuskegee are the direct results of his unceasing labors. It seemed as 1f Providence had been preparing the man for the task he was to perform Born of good New England stock and brought up in the Hawaiian Islands, he was early brought into contact with the throngs of na- tives that gathered around his father’s missionary home. With a tender love and pity he watched carefully their needs; and the desire to help them grew in his heart. He came to America to enter Williams College about a year be- fore the Civil War broke out. Here too his interest in those who were helpless in no way decreased. Although never calling himself an American, Armstrong enlisted after he had been graduated from college, and the traits of character which were to make him supremely the man needed to work out the salvation of the freedman were fostered by his years in the army. En- thusiasm, cheerfulness, thoroughness and persistency are the distinguishing characteristics of the man. These characteristics are shown in no better way than in some of his letters. While in the army he wrote: “We are kept con- stantly on the qui vive. The enemy is near. I can see their tents easily. They can at any time throw a 100-po und shell right into my camp,—yes, a dozen of them; we are in easy artillery range, but both sides seem to have tacitly agreed not to fire, and so we live on, perfectly at ease and always ready. I have a splendid regiment and a splendid opportunity; shall do or die; shall be distinguished or extinguished—that is, if I have the chance.” In the most trying times when he was about to be transferred from his own regiment to take charge of six companies of the Ninth Regiment, United States Colored troops, he wrote this cheerful letter to his mother: “To-mor- row I leave my brave old companions, my gallant Company D. It is very hard to do this, very hard. It is harder than leaving my classmates when I left college. I go into untried scenes, but with no fear to meet the future. If the Negroes can be made to fight well, then is the question of their freedom settled. I tell you the present is the grandest time the world ever saw. The star of Africa is rising, her millions now for the first time catching the glimpse of a glorious dawn. I gladly lend myself to the experiment—to this issue. It will yet be a grand thing to have been identified with this Negro movement.” T hus we see from his own words his unselfish willingness to give up the objects nearest to his own ends for the privilege of helping others. After the war, still imbued with a deep love and sympathy for those who were like sheep having no shepherd, Samuel Armstrong applied to the Bureau of Freedman for a position. “With a letter from his late chief of staff and his brilliant record as an officer of colored troops he was received