Concordia College - Spire / Concordian Yearbook (Fort Wayne, IN)

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--li GJNCORDUHNQ 1993, E1 3 E

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HEQJNCOHDMW f it FOR THE CONCORDIAN 1923 fBy an 01d Alumnus, who is o native of Fort Wayne. and, at this moment the oldest professor in all the Faculties of New York University, and, besides, the only survivor ofthe Four Original Ph. D.'s af the johns Hopkins Uni- versity Uune l878J. The other three were: Thomas Craig. Mathematician, of johns Hopkins: fosiah Royce, the Phtosopher, of Harvard, and Henry Carter Adams, the National Economist, of the University of Michigan, Much of this little monition and hortatory note is negative. Don't'-Don't- Don't. To begin, do not, my young friends. either underestimate. or over- estimate what you have now achieved. Every apple must have been, at first, a blossom-lovely childhoodfthen a green apple. Much depends how long. Some apples, you know, ripen more slowly. These as a rule are preferred by those who seek to store in their bins goodly resources for the winter. Winter apples in fact ripen more slowly, but are more durable. PRIMA is a time when a youth fairly begins to measure his powers. l do not know whether you are stronger than we were. Time! Time! and consistent effort! The present American college is in the main, a matter of mush and mediocrity. Thank God. young men, that you have worked by a standard of studies prescribed in the main. Genuine, hardish pursuits, especially in the Classics-well, what do they accomplish, achieve, effect? perseverance of genuine effort, for one thing. Unlimited election, the folly inaugurated by Wm. Eliot, Ll. D., Ph. D.. et cetera, et cetera, at Harvard, C1869-19095 has, for one thing, almost destroyed the study of Greek there. The young men there, until a short time ago, at least, could fool and toy with a wilderness of subjects, never reaching mastery of any, and subject to a canon of positive and inexpressible silliness and absurdity, viz., that every study had approximately the same training-value as any other. Playing mumble-the-peg on the Green in May just as valuable for physical training, for the acquisition of bodily suppleness and endurance, and hardiness. as, say, the parallel bars? What nonsense! If you are wise, young men of l923, study, more than ever, the lives of the Fathers! l mean exactly what l say: the Fathers of our Church, who established it at Ft. Wayne, at St. Louis, in Chicago, in Frankenmuth: they were not spouters and shouters who with rhetorical fireworks dazzle or entertain their congrega- tions: they were not adroit politicians, seeking in the end to feather their own nests. They brought sound scholarship into the wilderness of Perry County. to the banks of the muddy Maumee: they planted and watered: they strove and toiled with sincere and wholesome prayers to HIM who is the Giver of all and the final and eternal sludge. And then, Ft. Wayne has political, historical associations. Washington -- our own noble Washington-sent Anthony Wayne out here, after Harmar and St. Clair had failed to curb the lndian tribes. I794! Ft. Wayne has been. first. a frontier post, and in time a flourishing municipalityfhas been l say under all the Presidents. l have stood, with silent reverence, at Mt. Vernon, in the death chamber of George Washington, and by his tomb also, not far from the Potomac. Learn this: a mere, brief, personal contact with the greater minds, in actual life, is rare, and at best limited to narrow concerns, and fieeting. Not so when we study with honest devotion their best works. Now the Emancipation from Britain is permanently symbolized in the very streets, the older streets of my native townfwashington, Jefferson, Madison, but do think of one, who, by any standard of valuation was supremely great, great because he had a faith and a mastery of Scripture and a character both infinitely pliable, and like granite, too, when the emergency arose, marvelously industrious. facul- ties of trenchant reasoning, and a conscience clear as a bell, unswerving as the compass pointing to the North-l mean the miner's son, Martin Luther. Get closer to him, from year to year, as you grow mature enough to think his thoughts, and follow his Faith, and God will be with you. This from your old friend, and fellow-alumnus, M, Mr fclass of I869J fg E

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