Lisgar Collegiate Institute - Vox Lycei Yearbook (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)

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VOX LYCEI 47 the object of literature in education is to open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to comprehend and digest its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, Hexibility, method, critical exactness, address and ex- pression. May I stress, for just a moment, the word 'expressionl? As a journalist, I am often asked by young men how they may learn to write. Frankly, I am not sure just what should be done. But I do beg leave to doubt, with all respect to those who are your teachers, the excellence and utility of the practice of over-much essay-writing. I have very little faith in rules of style, though I have an unbounded faith in the virtue of cultivating direct and precise expres- sion. But you must carry on the operation inside the mind, and not merely bv practising literary deportment on paper. It is not everybody who can command the mighty rhythm of the great masters of human speech, who can equal a Macaulay or a Gibbon. But everyone can make reasonably sure that he knows what he means, and whether he has found the right word. These are things that cannot be gained by writing for writings sake. They can be found only in thought, in a true love for the glories of our English speech. It is something we should all try to cultivate. For we Canadians are notoriously deficient in our use of English. XVe are prone to sneer at oratory and eloquence, to ignore the value of correct expression, to extol the virtues of the strong silent man . It is all a profound mistake. Vkfords, after all, are what distinguish man from the animal, and they have been the great agency through which liberty and civilization and all mighty human causes have pro- gressed down through the centuries. XVhenever I dwell upon these things, I think of what was once said by Mr. Rudyard Kipling at a Royal Academy banquet in London in 1906. It was then that Kipling used his immortal phrase describing the beginning of human speech, how a 'masterless man' arose and discovered words that 'became alive and walked up and down in the hearts of all his hearers'. And continuing, this great English phrase-maker said: 'The magic of literature lies in words, and not in any man. XYit- ness, a thousand excellent strenuous words can leave us quite cold or put us to sleep, while a bare half hundreds words breathed by some man in his agony, in his exultation, or in his idleness. genera- tions ago, can still lead whole nations into captivity, can still open to us the doors of three worlds, can stir us so intolerably that we can scarcely bear the look of our soulsf And two years later Kipling used equally inspiring words in an address to the Royal Literary Society: 'Gut of letters, and letters only, have proceeded, since history be- gan, those words which have gained men single or in mass-those phases by which the world has striven to live-for which the world has sometimes been content to die. After all, the phrase-the naked phrase-is the power which makes or umnakes the king- doms and the glories'. And so my advice to you young men and women this morning is to culti- vate and sustain a love for good books. They will teach you more of life and truth and beauty. They will give to you a deeper appreciation and understand- ing of the majesty and the glory of the heritage of our English speech. They will encourage you in victory, be your consolation in defeat: be your truest friends and companions when you yield to the conquering years.

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im -A vox LYCEI Then, too, besides playing the lighter pieces on regular school mornings, heavier operatic works are attempted at our weekly practices, held at lZ.3O each XYednesday noon, under the able direction of Dr. Bearder, and onlv those who have taken part can realize the kick we get out of the playing. i This year three new songs were introduced into the morning exercises and they met with instant approval from the students, who apparently enjoy new pieces as well as we. A fme orchestra pin was also obtained and proved very popular. In conclusion, on behalf of the orchestra executive, let me extend a hearty invitation to any player who has not as yet joined our ranks to come and take his place in this, one of the school's most vital organizations. A. I-I. CRQXVSQN, IV-A. Books ana' Education From an address by M. Grattan O'Leary, Associate Editor of The Ottawa journal, delivered before the Students of the Lisgar Collegiate Institute on December 19, 1929. I speak to you as one who. compelled to leave school at the age of thirteen, has had reason all through life to know and to appreciate the value of educa- tion. And the education I have in mind is not that which merely teaches men to remember, but rather that which teaches them to think: the sort of education which helps men to debate a thing through to the truth: the quality of learning which Lord Morley had in mind when he said that an educated man was a man who knew when a thing was proved. There are several ways, I suppose, by which one might secure an education of that kind. But I suggest to you young people today that there are few better ways of doing it than by cultivating now and maintaining throughout your lives a knowledge of the great writers of the present and the past. Literature alone will not make a good citizeng it will not make a good man. History, indeed, affords all too many proofs that scholarship and learning by no means purge men of rancor, of vanity, of arrogance, of what somebody has called a murderous tenacity about trifiesf' But what I do hold is that books help us to distinguish the false from the true: assist us in interpreting virtue and justice: awaken within us the diviner mind and rouse us to a consciousness of what is best. That, after all, is education. I am far from supposing that everybody is born with the ability for using books, for reading and studying literature. On the contrary, I frankly admit that the habit and power of reading with reflection, comprehension, and memory all alert and awake, does not come at once to the natural man any more than many other sovereign virtues. YVhat I do venture to press upon you is that it requires no superhuman force of will in any young man or woman to get at least half an hour out of every day for disinterested reading. Some will say that this is too much to expect, and the first persons to say it will be those who waste their time most. Now, in half an hour you can read fifteen or twenty pages of Burke: or you can read some of the greatest masterpieces of prose or poetry. I ask you to multiply that half-hour by 365, and consider what treas- ures you will have laid up by the end.of the yearg and what happiness, fortitude and wisdom they might give you during all the days of your life. Not that you should try to read everything. The object of reading is not to dip into everything that wise men have ever written. In the words of one of the most winning writers of English that ever existed-Cardinal Newman-

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