Charles W Baker High School - Lyre Yearbook (Baldwinsville, NY)

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12 THE SENIOR LYRE selves alone. A narrow, blighting thought! Such have entered into no higher realm of hope and action, and at the close they have but a finer incense to offer to their former idols. They have never caught the meaning of a liberal education ; like their brethren of the “short cut” they have become infected with a spirit of selfish- ness. If our education has not taught us that the unseen is more than the seen, the spiritual than the material, it has been of little worth. But our privileges here summon us as well to breadth in every calling; it is an old appeal, but always new; we are never to suffer our humanity to be smothered beneath bonds or briefs or outlines or reviews. If the aspirations be the highest, the sympathy will be broad. The proper pursuit of place or fortune is most laudable ; it is the end in view that gives character to the man and to his work. If place and fortune do not sway him, if they are made the means of wider service, they themselves become holy things. Such is the call to service, but mingled in it is the voice of our highest manhood. Here as everywhere in divine law there is per- fect harmony. The good of the many is the good of the one; sel- fishness is the direst curse to self, it is needless here to denounce that type of selfish education which the names of Goethe and Byron at once recall, were there any of us headed on a similar career ; their end has pointed too many a moral to require my indication. But there is certain proneness of culture to an assertive independ- ence and unlovely self-sufficiency, which is peculiarly prevalent in the school world and'against which we cannot too strenuously guard ; peculiarly prevalent, 1 say, for to the pride of intellect is added the pride of youth. Our earliest ideal is that of strength ; acquisition seems greater than self-denial, and strife than love. For a time this is well; we are in the chrysalis state. As one has said “Selfism is the armor of our growth”; but alas for him to whom the protecting shell be- comes a prison. It must be shattered ! To every strong spirit there comes a time when it must burst from the thraldom of self, must rise into the realm of devotion ; it is the evolution of true greatness, the passing from death unto life, and from that moment conquest shrivels into nothingness before the towering grandeur of sacrifice. Mr. Ruskin tells us that the feeling that pervades all the pic- tures of Turner is “the greatest of all feelings—an utter forgetful- ness of self.” Self-forgetfulness—it is that same sublime losing of self in the higher which we find in all lofty efforts, whether of art or oratory or literature or life ; in Raphael, the transfiguration light streaming upon him painting his immortal picture; in Shakespeare, “his eye in a fine frenzy rolling,” sinking himself in myriad types. No man can begin to know what is in him until he has given himself to the grappling of a mighty thought, until he has been floated out of the shallows of self on the flood-tide of broad and ben- eficent impulse. In the future now opening, in our highest, finest development, there must be this lifting out of self into that higher devotion to humanity, that which makes possible the sublime self-

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THE SENIOR LYRE 11 DECLARATION—CLASS ORATION (ADAPTED) EDUCATION AND SERVICE Classmates:—For four years our little fleet has been riding in harbor ; to-day the anchors are weighed and slowly we drop to- gether down the tide. A few hours more and these clustering sails will be scattered and fading specks, each in its own horizon, strain- ing or drifting toward the goal. And now, as we still linger in the narrows side by side, the common school life grows foreign, and we turn from the insignificant and the petty to the thought of some worthy life principle, the vision of some high and comprehensive ideal which may waken, ’ere we part, our finest purpose and de- votion. Let us then for a little consider service as a motive and an aim, and its peculiar claims upon education. The world has ever been slow to recognize the beauty and the power of love. Ancient paganism bowing first to force of arms and then of brain has enthroned its successive ideals in warring Mars and intriguing Jupiter; humanity progressed indeed beneath its sway: they fought, and built, and sang, but selfishness was at its heart: along the streets of cultured Athens and barbaric Babylon alike, no hospital or asylum ever rose. That genius might philoso- phise at midnight feasts, the slaves of Greece perished uncounted in her mines. The worth of man as man was unknown ; individ- uals were lost in the moving mass, and if they fell the procession never paused. But paganism was spent, its1 mission achieved and at last, heralded by the song of “Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men,” the revelation of love was flashed upon the world; supple- menting the independent spirit of the Teuton. Christianity has invested the individual with transcendent worth. For centuries the light, grown dim at times, has been gaining slowly on the darkness: hate has slain, but mercy has soothed and cruelty has been relieved by heroic sacrifice. To-day sacrifice is an unfrequented path no longer, the great- est men and women of the age are daily struggling along its thorny way. Think you then, that we. members of the partnership of men. who have been permitted to appropriate the best heart and brain of the century to interpret the autobiography of the earth and the message of the stars, to read the present in the light of the past and to forecast the morrow from the trend of to-day, we who have become, in the words of Emerson, “the favorites of heaven and earth,” think you we may clutch these gifts without a debt to yonder pallid clerk or grimy, dust-choked miner? Has the acci- dent of education dissolved the bond of brotherhood or sealed the fountains of sympathy and gratitude within us? Aye, were there no questions of duty from sheerest gratitude our life should shower into service. Scholarship is a trust, and woe to that steward who turns a miser. There are those to whom their education is a mere handicap in a race of self-advancement; its gifts of mental grasp and insight but so much capital whose investment concern them-

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THE SENIOR LYRE 13 forgetfulness of the patriot and the martyr and without which the poet's inspiration itself is but an idle ecstacy, it is this alone which can save us from the barrenness of pride or self distrust; of indo- lence or cynicism, from the unhappness of strife and feverish dis- content, and bear us into heights of character and achievement to which no man can struggle in unaided strength. Man is rising through the ages into light; he shall lift himself into the recognition of the good within him and behold then, in- stead of a selfish purpose, his duty to humanity, and this it is that is to conquer the selfishness and brutality within us, to lead us to go down into counting-house and quarry and fill hearts with love and turn service into song. W hatever, my classmates, has been said of the duty of service to which we have given our consent, has appealed to us because of that pure and generous atmosphere in which consciously or uncon- sciously every gentleman has been bred and which is itself the di- rect product of this discipline of the centuries. Then in the spirit of Him “who” came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, “may we each grow as did Tennyson’s vanished friend. “Not alone in power And knowledge, but by year and hour In reverence and in charity.” M. ALPHONSUS SIN NETT. CHARACTER SKETCHES Chauncey Kingsley—“Chaunce.” Says lie can’t get the hang of the Fox Trot—he always starts on his partner's wrong foot. A democrat, the kind of a fellow who walks along the street with you and then says he is not afraid to be seen with anybody. Member Debate Club. Martha LaGarry. Rarely guilty of meanness, says it is difficult to stoop so low. Dis- agrees with Tennyson when he says, “What is so rare as a day in June?” Thinks that a night in June is much rarer. Tightwad—wouldn’t tell a story at her own expense. Member Literary Club. Mary Louise Maloney—“Midget.” Salutatorian. Very popular since being elected treasurer of the class. Mary had a little lamb, Of which you’ve heard before But did you know she passed her plate And had a little more? Avis Messick. Came from the Metropolis of Cicero. Began vVriting at four but did not accomplish much that year. Awful fretter, wonders how people who toe out can walk on snowshoes. Says she is reminded of the Royal Gorge every time she sees her brother cat. Catherine McCarthy—“Mac the Younger.” Would be all right if she didn’t have to go around with sister. An- other philosopher—says that heat travels faster than cold because a person can catch cold. Awful artist—can draw a crowd in two minutes. We have to admit that she has a spotless future.