Bradford Academy - Chimes Yearbook (Haverhill, MA)

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W W.. 'we W, ,WB Q, A vo,,. K? 1 . N -su! lg 'mf t A 35-Q, ..,h hw W . ,. Mfg H.-X 61 lg ww: 'tm Sr: l f v .M-Q.,-H -ry, N, TW? ,.-mr in .wt 91.5 . WWF ,gl .-qil aofi ,ir ...rff , ,4 if ,ini E1-ad Ord s.:-42121,aL5 ration. No great thing was ever done by accident. No great song was ever flung off by the genius of a man who had no preparation for it. It is idle to tell us that Burns and Shakespeare were not educated because they did not go to college. It is idle to tell us that Abraham Lincoln was not educated because he was not university bred. If Iliad time this morningl could trace Abraham Lincoln's education, step by step, from the beginning to the moment when he stood on the field of Gettysburg, the ex-president of Harvard University, one of the most cultivated men we have ever had in this country, standing beside him: the man of culture and academic training giving the long address, which was graceful and charming and fitting, but which none of us remember: and the man who had come by native training up to that point speaking a few memorable words to the soul of the nation. For that purpose, to do what was done that day, Abraham Lincoln was much better educated than Edward Everett, as l could show you if I had the time. Sometimes a man rises in a public assemblage, obscure, and after making a brilliant speech sits down famous: and men say it was an accident, it was an inspiration. XVell, my friends, inspirations come only to those who are ready for them. One of the most original of American artists was asked by a friend of mine if he waited on inspiration. Never, he said: I am always at work, and then if inspiration comes I don't have to lose a minute's time in utilizing it. No man ever has anything in him on his feet, which was not in him when he sat in his chair before he rose. fLaughter.l And nothing ever comes to a man or to a woman which has not been coming to them in all the years of their lives. VVhen those sudden inspirations come, it is because there has been going on inside the man for years the prepara- tion for that day and that work. Nlany of us think that we can loaf in our early life, if you will pardon a colloquialism, and that by and by when the opportunity comes we shall be able to improve it. There is a great fallacy about that. You do not know your opportunity, as a rule, when it comes. You discover it only after you have missed it or used it. The difference between men liesivery largely in their ability to recognize an opportunity-not by discerning what it means, but by using it. There is only one man in the world who makes the most of himself: and he is the man who is not looking out for opportunities, but who is doing his very best in the most competent way, moment by moment, E631

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Brad Ord Q.:-1n21,a Ls occasion by occasion. Go to the successful men of our times, and, so far as my experience goes, they will tell you, one and all, that the moment of their great advancement, as they look back over their lives, came when they did not expect itg and unless they had been prepared it would have slipped from them, as it is going to slip this morning from a thousand men the world over because they do not see what is in their hands, and they are not putting their life into their work. The battles of life are never won where they are fought. They are always won in advance. The battle of lylanila was not won in the harbor of hflanila, it was won in the harbor of Hong Kong in the marvelous prepa- ration made, and in the marvelous foresight displayed there. And, back of that, it was won at Annapolis, where the battles of the future, if there are to be battles-and I wish to heaven I could say there were not-are to be won or lost. In the colleges and the school rooms, in the lecture rooms and the libraries to-day, the battles are being won and lost which are to be fought twenty, thirty and fifty years hence. This was what Wellington meant when he said that the battle of VVaterloo was won on the cricket Held of Eton. When Dr. Angell, our minister at Constantinople, was asked by the Sultan, shortly after the battle of Manila, if he, the Sultan, could not buy such guns as were on Admiral Dewey's fleet, the minister answered, Yes, your majesty, you can undoubtedly buy such guns, but you cannot buy the men who were behind them. Ah, the gun is useless unless the man is 'trained to the gun. And the more delicate the machine, and the more nicely adjusted to its ends, the greater the necessity for training. So I say to you, my friends, that there can be no matter of more supreme importance at the end of the century of the life of Bradford Academy than the necessity of giving here the very finest education that can be given, and of inspiring every student to get the best, not for to-day, but for to-morrow, .and for a thousand years from to-day. The school is the great liberator. We are born into various kinds of bondage, we are born into slavery to a place. And unless you get out of that place in which you are born, it does not make much difference where your place is. Some of the most provincial people I have ever known were people who live in great cities. You will not have to go farther than Boston to find some of the most provincial people in the world. And so it is in New York and in Paris and in London. The personvwho lives in the town in which he or she was born, and never gets out of it in sympathy or in range, l65l