Birmingham Southern College - Southern Accent Yearbook (Birmingham, AL)

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and pliant by frequent exercise, and for that reason my lack of a college edu- cation — involuntary, I assure you — has never been a source of worry. It has been my observation that while it is quite true that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, a great deal of knowledge is equally menacing to our ability to gain happiness from life. I have always believed and my experience has taught me that too much education sometimes brings affectation; and a man may be affected mentally as well as socially. It is good to retain close kinship with the simple, homely things of life, and the ability to appreciate these can very quickly be refined out of a man unless he has an extraordinary amount of poise and a viewpoint that only practical life can give. I have always thought that the thing of greatest value that a man gets out of a college education is not what he learns in class room or lecture h What he gets from the fraternity house; from commencement hops; from the athletic field; from the debating chamber are of infinitely more practical value to him in after life than all the facts that he could possibly gather about the campaigns of Caesar or Alexander or the literary excellencies of the Victorian poets. The biggest lesson in life that youngsters have to learn is to associate on amicable terms with those about them, and this ability is acquired. One is born with it only in exceptional cases. One must practice it assiduously. And this is the great lesson that college life teaches. It teaches youth how to meet the problems that he will confront after he has forsaken the sheltering wings of Alma Mater and finds himself battling in the storm where quarter is neither asked nor given. So that I do not share the outcry that is current in some quarters that ath- letics is being over-emphasized in modern college life. Or that fraternities have no proper place on the campus. It is in these student activities that a man rubs off the rough spots of selfish- ness that are an atavistic inheritance from the primeval lessons of Mother Nature. Here he forms friendships and establishes contacts which will be green spots in his memory so long as he shall live. And here he learns the two supreme lessons of life — how to lose, but above all how to win. A

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' -%o,Qjr ' Gilbert Wilcox Mead A.B., A.M. Dean and Profi-ssor of English A.B.. Allfgheny Colltge. 1911; A.M., Polumbia tTniversity. 1916; Grad- uate Student, Columbia University, 1915-191S; Instructor, Department of Englisli and Comparative Literature, Columbia University and Columbia summer s.easion, 1917-1923; Residence completed tor Ph.D.; Special Lec- turer in English, Hunter College, New Tork City, 1917-1923; Head ot Department o£ English, Westminster College (Pa.), 1923-1925; Dean and Professor of English, Birmingham-Southern College, 1925 . Member Phi Gamma Delta, Phi Beta Kappa, Omicron Delta Kappa, Tau Kappa Alpha, Kappa Phi Kappa, Kiwanis International; Honorary Member Columbian Philoxexian Society; Member of Modern Language Associa- etary, English Victorian Section, M.L.A., 1923-28; ! Research As- [ Seer tion of Ameri Member American Folklore Society; Modern Humanities R sociation (London); Vice-President, Second District, Soutlie legiate Athletic Association; Vice-President, M. E. Church, cational Association, 1927—:; Chairman, Speakers ' Bureau, : Intercol- uth. Edu-