Central Manual Training High School - Record Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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It is moreover chiefly due to your sympathy and support as taxpayers of this commonwealth that the Manual Training High School idea has brought to such a standard of perfection the great system of our national public education. In maintaining such an attitude toward the public schools you have made it possible for us to obtain that carefully combined training of the 'hand and brain which ought to constitute one of the chief levers of an uplift in our lives. That schooling has widened our breadth of view-has, as it were, placed in our hands implements with which we may hope to cope successfully with the difficult problems in the struggle for existence. Whether we take up our position in larger schools of preparation or whether we plunge at once into the busy world of affairs, we shall doubtless discover that we have anticipated many of the vicissitudes that beset the paths of him who clambers forward. It is thus that there is begotten in us a conti- dence that our training will give us the ability to meet with competence whatever emergencies may confront us. On behalf of my classmates, therefore, I thank you and assure you that the sympathy and encouragement you have vouchsafed in the past a.nd your presence here to-day, have engen- dered within us a faith and an ambition to make the most of ourselves and by what measure of suc- cess we shall attain, to express to you how deeply we appreciate the interest you have taken in us. I bid you farewell, Gentlemen of the Committee on the Central Manual Training High School: Although in the course of the past three years we have perhaps been less intimately acquainted with you in a personal way than with the other directive agencies of our scholastic lifeg we have not failed to perceive your interest on our behalf. While we have never come into that close relationship which makes mutual comprehension less difficult, we feel and know that you by your unselfish efforts have done much to make possible the progress and enlarge the opportunities of our school career. . t. Nor has yours been altogether an easy task. The Central Manual Training High School of Philadelphia has deservedly earned its conspicuous success, but this success has been due in a measure to yourselves. A ca.use, however worthy or well constituted, cannot succeed without administrative T0

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Halehgnrg Ladies and Gentlemen: To-day, you as our public and we as a class, are here together for the tlrst and oddly enough. for the last time. On such an occasion therefore, it is only Fitting that we should express our appreciation of the great interest you have taken in us. Not only have you been devoted to our interests as a class, but you have observed with sympathy and understanding our progress and development as individuals. When we recall the raw material out of which we were fashioned in the difficult process to which we have been subjected, we are all the more impressed by your sympathy and support. You have encouraged us in those dubious times when the spinster of that trio of Fates has woven the dark thread more readily than the light. Without this encour- agement and help, we might perchance, have lost faith in ourselves and given up our faint hope for the future light. Speaking for my classmates, it is my privilege to express to you our appreciation for what you have done for us in this regard. There have been times, in the exuberance of our feelings when, through some deviation from the straight and narrow way we have justly earned your reprobation. These times, on the whole have been few, but we have never felt, upon due reflection that your cen- sure was misplaced. There are, however, other things for which we are grateful. Among you, no doubt, there are not a few who have had to make sacrifices in order that some of us might reap the benefits of the systematic and advantageous training in the courses of the institution from which we have just been graduated. Such voluntary sacrifices as these have been made with perfect willingness on your part, although you might have easily evaded them to your greater ease. In recognizing such an obligation to your sons. however, you may be justly proud of the silent performance of the really Hue duty of American citizenship-the bestowal of the boon of opportunity, through the gateway of the great American public schools, on those who constitute the men of to-morrow. 69

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direction and guidance from without. It is therefore much to your credit that often in the face of most discouraging conditions you have so ably fulfilled the high duty imposed upon you by your fel- low citizens of a great community. I Such devotion to the public welfare can be accomplished only by personal sacrifice of time and energy and your own affairs. The trained judgment you have devoted to the affairs of our Alma Mater, is something for which we shall be still more grateful when we finally come to understand what such devotion really implies. It is a consideration of this kind, a sense of your high public spirit and unselfish intent that gives us reason to congratulate ourselves on having been under the guidance of men like yourselves. On behalf of the class, I wish to thank you for all you have done in the cause of public education and specifically, for your efforts in the interests of our Alma Mater. Farewell. I Gentlemen of the Faculty: Q For you the exercises of to-day are but the repetition of an event which no doubt has become a matter of course. For us it is the culmination of the most important, the formative period of our lives. It has been almost altogether through your unceasing efforts that we have arrived at this stage of our journeyg we know that the best part of your lives has been spent in preparation and in the acquisition of experience in order to help us build the house of our future on a rock and not on shift- ing sands of uncertain or merely tentative methods. In giving us the fruits of this preparation you have not been as usurers but you have acted generously, devotedly, without avarice and without stint. It is because of this fact that there exists on our part a valid obligation to you. We have not felt, as is often the case in other schools, that there exists a great gap between you and us. In our struggles and difficulties we have known you not as taskmasters whose inviolate rules we might not transgress, and whose criticism we regarded with sullen discomfort but rather have we come to regard you in light of faithful and thoughtful friends whose rigor, when it has existed, was altogether for our own good. - ' , 71