Norfolk High School - Milestone Yearbook (Norfolk, NE)

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THE MILESTONE. 29 vating since childhood to languish. Each member of this class is capable of contributing more than the average to the sum of human action. Develop those divine powers; they are a precious gift from iod. ( ne person in 10,001) w it h-out a college education attains eminence; one college bred man in forty reaches the same distinction. Secure a college education. Do not cherish the feeling that you are now fully prepared for life’s duties. You are not. Do not conceive it possible to succeed in the practical nisiness of life without special and careful preparation; it is not possible. If you desire to become a blacksmith, do not imagine you can enter the shop in the morning and make a horseshoe; you can not. If you would become a successful merchant or farmer, you must serve an apprenticeship at the counter or on the farm. If you choose to become successful as a lawyer or a physician, you must make special preparation for the profession. So, also, if you choose to follow the profession of teacher, it is most essential that you begin a course of special study and careful training. Whatever the objective point fixed upon, fortune will co-operate with labor, zeal and intelligent persistency to attain. All these years—and may the practice continue you have been students of books. You are henceforth to become students of the mysteries of life. In this study your best teachers will be found among those who received their own education in the unrelenting school of experience. Such instructors are worthy of honor and respect. If ever you may be tempted to make display of your advantages, remember Socrates, who, as a rebuke to those vain friends who prided themselves on their wisdom, picked up a handful of sand from the seashore and exclaimed: •‘All the wisdom of all the ages is as this handful of sand to all the sands of the sea.” My friends, I congratulate you on whatever of success you have achieved. Strive to make more complete the education you have begun. And as the years draw on be not unmindful of the earnestness and sincerity of those who, as parents, citizens or teachers, have labored to mold each of you into a noble character. And be especially grateful to Him, the divinity and loveliness of whose life, made all these things possible unto you.

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Prof. O'Connor's Address Young Ladies and Gentlemen ok the Class of ’98: It is with feel- ings not unmingled with pleasure and pain that 1 undertake to address you in these the closing exercises of your public school career. Emotions thrill the heart as we revert to the past and note the progress of each of you from childhood to young manhood and young womanhood. Through summer’s rain and sunshine, through winter’s storm and snow, your zeal for improvement, for culture and learning, has inspired you to exert noble energies to reach the present goal of your ambition. These, ennobling virtues a desire for self-improvement, devotion to duty and an ambition to excel, added to patient labor, energy and love, produce a charm whose spell can not be broken except through pain. And the pain produced tonight is such as devoted friends feel for each other, w hen with clasped hands they say good-bye, perhaps for the last time. So far. all your life, perhaps, has been basked in sunshine and serenity. I trust that the future has in store for each of you only such trials as will test the truest manhood and womanhood of each. Do not hesitate at obstacles in your pathway; surmount them. Do not fret and pine because of disappointments; brush them aside. Do not mourn because of recreant friendships: cling the more closely to the friends you have. Some one has said that a land without ruins is a land without memories; a land without memories is a land without history; the land that wears the laurel crown may be fair to see; but twine a few sad cypress leaves about the brow of any land, and though that land be barren, beau-tiless and bleak, it becomes lovely in its consecrated coronet of sorrow, and wins for itself the sympathy of the heart and of history. Crowns of roses fade: crowns of thorns endure; the triumphs of night are transient, they pass away and are forgotten: the sufferings of right are graven deepest on the chronicles of nations. Likewise may it be said of men. They who 3ass through life as through one ong continued day of sunshine, unclouded by the disappointments of adversity or the sorrows of misfortune, can not understand the loveliness of the laurel crown, nor the tender sadness of the cypress wreath. Tonight you are garlanded with the laurel crown crown as nobly won as any that ever adorned a victor’s brow. The memories of this night shall cling to you as the fragrance of fresh blossoms. May they often recur to cheer you in life’s pathway. There is another suggestion we might be pardoned for offering at this time. It is this: Do not allow the talents you have been culti-

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THE MILESTONE. SUPT. I). C. O’CONNOR MISS SARAH L. GARRETT. MISS WINNIE K. HARTLEY. MISS MYRTICE E. MYGATT. HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS.