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

Page 79 text:

That future will undoubtedly be different, vastly different in many respects, but let us not look forward to it with a wavering of faith. Let us remember the obligations we owe to our training, if courage is demanded, let us feel that we possess our need. When we come now to that parting which shall finally separate us as a class, most of us realize I fancy that it is the smaller, the less perceptible ties that are really the strongest, the least easy of all to dissever. In the three years that have gone by we have formed little acquaintanceships which later have been intensified and transformed into closer relati0H Of firm and Steadfast friends. These are the things that are the 'hardest to give up. It is the characteristic of our common human nature that the freshness of such friendships, will in the coming time fade away and be forgotten. It is but natural that new activities and new relations in life will bring new interests and new associations, this, how- ever, need not in any degree mar the strength of the sentiment which unites us to-day. Although at this time we are to separate as a class, for some of us the occasion is not by any means the end of our student years. The methods of scholarship to which we have been subjected and the habits of systematic study which even the least stuclious of us has to some extent acquired, will later on be of inestimable value to us. An investigation of the record of the graduates of our school in advanced institutions of learning, is one which gives us a just pride and ought to constitute for us, as you have already been told, a special obligation to maintain abroad the high repute of our Alma Mater. If after to-day our class shall separate as a class, let not its spirit, the spirit of comradeship for better things and higher purposes, depart from our lives, let not this spirit cease to be operative as one of our basic motives, Rather let it continue to operate in its full strength, when we shall assemble again in the years to come let that spirit and ambition show the fruitions of an accomplished purpose in life. Let us endeavor to be not like 73

Page 78 text:

Whatever little unpleasantnesses may have arisen in the course of our association together for a common purpose we hope are forgotten by you as we know they are by ourselves. Few schools are so fortunate as ours in the possession of men of special fitness and equipment. The consciousness of your personal integrity, your devotion to your daily duty, has been for us the most valuable result of our whole training. It is this example of the wholesome and unremitting routine of your labor that makes operative whatever ability may have developed in us as students- a reflection which brings to what I wish specifically to say-that the morale of our school unseen as it may be is nevertheless quite as valuable to us as the special knowledge that has been expended in our education as such. - I have said that there exists on our part a valid obligation to you. lt is this, that in our future career, we must show that we have not only benefited by the definite training received at your hands, a duty which naturally arises in the course of such association as ours, but we are under the further ob- ligation of developing in our own character the sterling qualities of faithful performance of public duty which exist in yours. We thank you gentlemen, and bid you farewell. Classmates : As it is inevitable that every phase of growth shall have its terms so it is in the nature of things that we to-day see the close of that association in which for three years our destinies have been so closely bound together. Each of us with a common motive has striven to develop whatever poten- tialities of intelligence and intellect we possess. At last, however. the ties that have bound us together must be severed. As we look from the vantage point of to-day and review the course of our previous three years of effort, we may be conscious that at times we have been engaged in a struggle that re- quired all of our native ability and all of our capacity for persistence to enable us to succeed. At the present moment the consciousness of that success is a cause of congratulation to us, an augury, let us feel sure, of future determination and an inspiration to strengthen our hands for whatever struggles may come. ' lo

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Ships that sailed for sunny isles, But never came to shore. It should be our purpose to steer into the roadway of the future years- l bid you farewell. Like 21 stately ship Vtfitli all her bravery on and tackle trim, Sails iillecl and streamers flying. I T4 XVILI.rxRIm KEND.-xu, S M IT II