Ann Arbor High School - Omega Yearbook (Ann Arbor, MI)

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has made his name immortal? How did Newton discoverthose laws which bring man one step nearer his Creator? I-Iow did Beethoven write those great symphonies, which seem to transport one from this world of toil and care and suffering into the heavens resounding with angelic music? By hard and persistent' labor. Robert Fulton worked fourteen years on the steamboat before his efforts were crowned with success. Gray was seven years in writing his Elegy Thus we might go all through the list of modern inventors, poets, scientists, etc., and show that every- thing they ever accomplished, which was worthy of commendation, was achieved only by labor. But if there is nothing without labor, the question arises, VVhat with labor? I answer, success. WVith labor anyone may make a success of life. I say, anyone. VVe cannot a.ll become Milton's and Newton's and Beethoven's, but still. ' . - Lives of great men all remind us IVe can make our lives sublime, And departing leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time, Footprints that perhaps another, Sail-ing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. N In Europe nobility of birth may make a man great, but in America., where all men are born free and equal, anyone may rise from the depths of poverty and scale the heights of fame. James A. Garfield says that we have no horizontal stratification which holds one class down forevermore, but Our satiiication is like the ocean where every individual drop is free to move, and where from the sternest depths of the mighty deep, any drop may come up to glitter on the highest wave that rolls. Garfield himself was a true illustration of his own utterance. Canal boy-presi- dent, poverty and ignorance-rhonor and fame! What caused such a mighty change? Labor. It is not always circumstances that make men. Hundreds of men have had a good college education and have made a failure of life. States 8

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6' CLASS ORATION. NIL SINE LABCjRE. BY JAMES S. HANDY. MY CLassMATEs: School life is the river that opens into the vast sea A of human activity. Here we are taught how to manage our little skiff, so that it may not be capsized by storms and tempests. when we have launched out into the great ocean of existence. Now we are nearing the mouth ofthe river, and as we look ahead we can perceive the great sea spread out before us. In a short time we shall leave the smooth waters and find ourselves Tossedon the billows of an unknown ocean. But before we set sail in various direcf tions, I wish to offer each of you a life preserver, one which, when the waves fof poverty and despondency roll over you and threaten to over- whelm you, will prove equal to the emergency. That life preserver is the grand and glorious motto, which is stamped indellibly upon the mind of every member of the class of '91, Nil sine Labore - Nothing without Labor. 'If we sit quietly and take in the oars, we may possibly, if there are not too many whirlpools, be carried onward by the current to the river7s mouth, but when we launch out into the deep, we shall have no current to carry us on, we shall have to U Paddle .our own canoe, or sink beneath the wave. No man evermade a success of life without labor. All the great men of the past have been men who have worked. All the progress in litera- ture, science and art, all the civilization of the world has been attained only through great effort. How did Milton compose the great poem which 7

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prison records show that over, half of the inmates have had a good edu- cation. Again there have been others, who without any college education became truly great. Patrick Henry, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, George Vtfashington, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, and many other self-made men became great, not with the aid of a college education, but by struggling with poverty and ignorance. It makes no difference what advantages a man has, if he rises at all, he must do it by his own exertions. Every man is in one sense the maker of his own destiny. Labor is also happiness. The poor laboring man Who, whistling a merry tune, goes to and from his work with his dinner pail in his hand, is happier by far than the rich man who is idle. It is idleness thatis the curse of the world. An idle ,mind is the devil's workshop. I said a few moments ago that over half of the inmates of our prisons were 'educated men, it is a more .noticeable fact that the greater majority of them had no trade. They were 'idle men. We are accustomed to look at the rich man as the happy one and to covet riches, but wealth is not the hinge upon which happiness turns. It is labor. But if there are any here, who are going to make money their chief object in life-and I hope there are not-let me say labor is the only means by which you can gain-it. Labor is happiness because it is the means of escape from evil, and the open doorway of good. It is also a substitute for genius. Genius has been defined as the capability of laboring intensely. Genius differs from labor only in rapid- ity of execution. Labor ordinarily can do anything genius can: it ,accom- plishes by a succession of blows what genius does at one blow. And many strokes, though with a little axe, Hew down and fell the hardest tilnberedoakf' A genius is generally thought to be one who learns without study, is pro- found without meditation, and who can do anything without labor. Henry NVard Beecher says that such geniuses are usually found in schools and colleges and are known by being very conceited, very affected and very disagreeable. But a true genius is the man who has the power of intensity of labor. ' . - 9