Medina High School - Medinian Yearbook (Medina, OH)

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Annual 7 Yours all the wise and bright things that men have ever thought, from King Solomon even unto Elbert Hubbard ! The legacy of history makes yours the net results of the lives of the world’s good and great. Civilization has been blood-bought. Men have deposited their lives in the bank of humanity, and yours is the accrued interest. Yea, yours is the principal, to re-invest for humanity. The legacy of art makes all beauty yours. Raphael is yours, Michael Angelo is yours, Titian is yours, and all the other artistic souls who glimpsed the ideals and dreams of humanity and splashed them upon canvas. Beethoven is yours, Mendelssohn is yours, Schubert is yours, and all those super-sensitive souls who captured the passions and sor- rows and joys of human hearts and interpreted them in music. The Temple of Solomon in old Jerusalem is yours, the Parthenon of Old Athens is yours, the Taj Mahal of India is yours, and yours all the “ frozen music ” in temple, tower and statue. To the legacy of the true, the good, and the beautiful, bequeathed in literature, history, and art, must also be added the useful, bequeathed in the results of invention and discovery. Some years ago, the International Harvester Company issued a picture book showing the evolution of the grain harvester. The first picture described a man using the simple grass hook. But the manipulation of the hook was hard on the back; and as necessity is the mother of invention, the next picture showed that the hook had grown a long handle and become a scythe. The third stage saw a cradle added to the scythe. The fourth was a mower, many small scythes on a bar vibrated by machinery. Fifth came the man-rake, followed by the self-rake, then the self-binder, and now that complicated machine by which the grain is cut, threshed, and sacked in one operation. Similar charts might be drawn of the evolution of every phase of industry ; of illumination, from the pine-torch to the X-ray ; of transportation, from the log raft to the aeroplane ; of communication, from the foot runner to wireless telegraphy; of thought preservation, from Egyptian hieroglyphics to Edison’s cameraphone. In every case progress has been possible only because each succeeding generation inherited and built upon the achievements of the past. Young people, I congratulate you because the past is yours. Behold, she stands behind you tonight with emptied arms and says, “ All things are yours. All my treasures are yours. Yours to possess. Take them; go, and serve your age.” II. The Present is yours. It used to be a boyish pastime for me to dream and wish myself born under different circumstances or in another age ; instead of having been born an obscure widow’s son, to have been born of royal blood ; instead of living in this present age, to have lived in the strange ages of the past, or to live in the golden ages of the future. But since I have grown to manhood, I have ceased dreaming about these fantastic impossibilities, and am content to be just plain “ me,” and am thankful that I live in the “ now.” This is a good time in which to live, young people, and you and I ought to be glad that our visit to earth was not timed a hundred years earlier or a hundred years later. There are, among many others, three peculiar characteristics of the present age which make it highly auspicious for young people. First, this is a practical age. The question that the world now asks is not, “Where were you born? Who were your ancestors? What is your pedigree? What were your antecedents? ” The question that the world now snaps out is, “ What can you do? ” Not blue blood, but red blood counts in these days. Your ancestors may have come over in the Mayflower, but the world will forget it if you don’t make good. Your parents may have come over in the steerage, and the world will forget it if you make good. This age cares naught for the aristocracy of birth, it cares everything for the aristocracy of worth. Not the antecedents of your life, but the consequences, matter. Young people, you ought to rejoice and be exceedingly glad that you are living in an age when the only thing that really rates you is efficiency.

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Annual of “ Commencement,” your eye fixed on its delectable summit. To-day you stand on that summit, and like to Moses of old, it is to you a mount of vision. Behind you lies the land of bondage where you were often obliged to make bricks without straw — that is, give a good recitation when you were out the night before and had no time for preparation ; where your backs were often bent under the taskmaster’s lash — metaphorically speaking’, of course; where you passed through the “ ten plagues ” in the form of final examinations. Behind you lies the tangled wilderness of grammar and rhetoric, Latin and German, physics and chemistry, science and mathematics, and you wandered in that wilderness, lo, these four long years. But all these things are now past, and before you stretches out the vista of the promised land, a land that flows with the milk and the honey of the possessions and services of life. That last phrase suggests the theme that I will endeavor to bring to you to-night — Possession for Service. 1 submit two texts, both from St. Paul, a New Testament writer who was also a college graduate, and therefore had the educated man’s view of life: 1 Cor. 3:22, “All things are yours;” Rom. 12:11, “Serving the age.” The latter text in the Authorized Version reads “ Serving the Lord,” but an alternate reading is “ Serving the age.” The meaning is the same. No man can serve the Lord without serving his own age, and no man can serve his own age without serving the Lord. “ All things are yours ” — Possession. “ Serving the age ” — Service. We may combine the thought and say, “ All things are yours to serve your age ” — Possession for Service. The purpose of my message to you graduates tonight will be to arouse your thoughtful consideration of the magnificent sweep of “ all things ” which are yours whereby you may serve the age in which you live. I. The Past is yours. God, in his plan for the evolution of the race, has wisely or- dained that each generation shall build upon the understructure left by the preceding generation. Each new generation begins where the past generation left off. The progress of humanity is like the building of a tower. A generation of men places a circle of stone on the ground. The generation passes, but the circle of stone is left. The next generation places a new circle of stone over the first circle. The third generation adds a third circle on the other two, and so on and on, each successive generation building the tower a little higher. Were it not for that wise divine provision which permits each succeeding genera- tion to inherit the achievements of the past and build on them, humanity’s progress would be like ten thousand sejjarate desolate circles of stone never rising higher than the first layer. ■ The tower on which you young people are called to build has already been reared to no mean height. Every high school class likes to excel its predecessors in some respect, and I congratulate the class of 1913 because its graduates enter into a greater inheritance of the past than any previous class. And a glorious inheritance it is! Yours all the past achievements of all the “ Hards, patriots, martyrs, sages, The noble of all the ages, Whose deeds crown history’s pages, And time’s great volume make ! ” The past lays at your feet all its treasures of literature, history, art, science and invention, and bids you possess them and use them to serve your age. The legacy of literature makes yours all the keen thought of the past. Rightly does Channing say, “God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.” Yours this flower of the world’s literature, the book which Coleridge said he knew was inspired because it found him at greater depths of his being than any other book — the Holy Bible, in which is the record of how “ God made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel.” Yours all the poetry from Homer to Walt Mason, the philosophy from Aristotle to Henri Bergson — “ the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.”

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a Amtital Here let me pause to say that efficiency demands its price. You must be thoroughly trained. Your graduation from high school completes a part of that training, but only a part. Y on are not yet fully trained to be really efficient in life. You need more than you have now. Go to college, if at all possible. If not possible, then continue your study at home. A liberal education is almost an absolute necessity in these days. Get it in college if you can, get it alone from books if you must, but by all means, get it. “ How priceless,” said our martyred President McKinley, “is a liberal education! In itself what a rich endowment ! It is not impaired by age, but its value increases with use. No one can employ it but its rightful owner. He alone can illustrate its worth and enjoy its rewards. It cannot be inherited or purchased. It must be acquired by individual effort. It can be secured only by perseverance and self-denial. But it is as free as the air we breathe. Neither race nor nationality nor sex can debar the earnest seeker for its possession. It is not exclusive, but inclusive in the broadest and best sense. It is within the reach of all who really want it, and are brave enough to struggle for it. The earnest rich and worthy poor are equal and friendly rivals in its pursuit, and neither is exempted from any of the sacrifices necessary for its acquisition. The key to its title is not the bright allurements of rank and station, but the simple watchword of work and study. A liberal education is the greatest blessing that a man or woman can enjoy, when supported by virtue, morality and noble aims.” Another characteristic of this age is its youthfulness. This is the day of the young man and the young woman. In the past generation a patient would hardly trust his case in the hands of a doctor unless he wore a beard betokening age; now the young physician is sought because it is believed that he represents the latest in medical science. Then the preachers that were in demand were the men who had back of them many years of experi- ence and study; now the seminaries can not supply the demand of the churches for young- preachers. Then great business enterprises were managed by men whose years gave evidence of discretion and conservatism ; now the great corporations give their most responsible offices and pay their largest salaries to young men. The trend of the time is anti-conserva- tive and ultra-progressive. The fact that these are distinctively youthful qualities explains the remarkable demand for youthful leadership. It is being predicted that the pendulum is soon to swing back the other way; but be that as it may, you young people are fortunate in being young when the age is youthful, and the demand is for young people. The third characteristic of the age is its idealism. The world is day-dreaming. It is dreaming of a coming golden age, when things will be better than they are now, when the evils of intolerance and intemperance and ignorance and oppression and superstition will be driven out. The world is dreaming of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. And there are many and abundant signs that the world is awakening from its dream. When it awakens, it will set to work to make its dreams come true. Already we hear reports of fulfilment. The air is intense with expectation. Something is coming, coming, coming ! Christ is coming — not in the fantastic and crude notion of antiquated theology, but Christ is coming into the life and heart of organized human society! Even so come quickly, Lord Jesus! Happy are you who are young in these electric times! Y ou will be in it ! Y T ou will see it ! III. But I find that I have just been speaking in the future tense, and this leads me to say that the Future is yours. Thus far I have spoken mostly of possession, now let me connect up the idea of possession with the thought of service. Possession for service. The future is yours. Yours is the future. The past belonged to “them,” and they built well; the present belongs to us, the older generation, and we are building as best we can; but the future belongs to you, and it will be what you make it. The past lays its treasures at your feet, the present puts its opportunities into your hands — you have all the material necessary to build a glorious future. In the glowing words of Edwin Markham,