Princeton University - Nassau Herald Yearbook (Princeton, NJ)

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THE' NASSA U H ERA LD. 19 These plans, these prospects, these fancied achievements are glorious possibilities. The earth is still the garden ofthe Lord! But, alas! the child is in the mire, the rainbow has vanished, and there is no pot of gold to be found. So, at the outset, let us not be dazzled by the prizes of life, for we have looked about us to little purpose if we have not seen that the vast majority of mankind end life in the mire with the sad conviction that they have been pursuing phantoms. There is no great need for me to urge you to action. In the fierce competition of modern life a man is often enough dug in the side by an exhortation to work. Every pulpit preaches energy, every oration implores us to clear the way for men of action. The whirring looms, the throbbing engines, the huge furnaces that night and day pant hot and hungry, all hum in our ears the word tt work. This is the magic key that will open the lock for us, and what a garden of reward is painted to our hopes! We are pointed to a picture of material prosperity. White sails flecking the broad seas, tall masts towering above the busy warehouses, iron steeds running hither and thither over the face of the earth, from where agriculture sits amidst her bursting sacks of grain to all the busy marts where the sooty factories rattle with their clanging, clatter- ing machinery. We are shown man everywhere bending heaven and earth as slaves to his knowledge and pleasure, robbing the 'clouds of their life tp, whisper his words over miles of land and sea, and deeply probing the great heart of the earth for warmth and power. All materials are held out as food for a strenuous hunger for work. The human race are rapidly becoming all nerves that are forever ting- ling. We need not expect that amidst all this rush we can sit with our arms idly folded. The picture the world paints is intended to teach no such lesson. We shall soon enough give way to the incentives to work, and our nerves will tingle in sympathy with those of the restless multitudes around us. But is this all that life is to have for us in the future, work, action, a strenuous endeavor, a feverish beat-

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18 THE NASSAU HERALD. and the sense of parting has crept upon us like a feeling of pain. I. Even as the emigrant leaving his native land looks back from the deck of the ship upon the land of his birth, already beginning to grow dim in the distance, so we look back to-day upon our past, we recall the generous rivalries that have marked it, those kindly struggles where victor and vanquished could both share in the success. We recall the home life of Princeton which clusters about certain pleasant rooms, which are the holy of the holies of 'our college recollections. We recall the manly sympathy which has brightened our joys and lightened half the burden of our sorrows. And we cannot but wish that in the future we may find rivals as generous, victors as kindly, and sympathy as ready, as we have among our classmates of '85, It is quite true that our blessings brighten as they take their iight, and it may be that we exaggerate to-day the joys of the past four years. Exaggerate the honesty of our rivalries, the generosity of our impulses, our good will and the abounding pleasantness of our work here, and quite forget the -selfishness, the bitterness of the past, and the grinding, often apparently useless, toil. These latter have existed, for college life is but mortal life. College friendships are very precious to-day, but there have been times when we have cried out with Emerson, Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables. There have been times when we have tired of all this training for life, and have looked with quickened longing onto life itself And so to-day, although there is a feeling of sorrow at part- ing, the absorbing thought for us is the future, and it lies before us misty and vague, suggesting wondrous things to the imagination. A bow of promise is arched over it, at whose ends lie treasures of fame, of gold, of power. I can say truly, we feel like the little child, eager to rush out in the rain, over the Wet fields, through the swollen brooks, to find the fabled pot of gold that lies at the end of the rain- bow's path. Away with thoughtsiof doubt or hesitation.

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20 THE NASSAU HERALD. ing of the deep unqniet will, the delusive hope of a little enjoyment of material reward? Look beneath the surface, and see the real nature of these rewards which the material world has to oiier us. .Is this feverish turmoil a reward? Is a life-in which rapidity is the highest. good worth living? in which rich men's sons are hurried oft' in their teens to business before they are scarcely beyond their spelling-books, in which the fruit is plucked green and allowed only a pre- carious ripening upon the market stand? ' The god of modern life is indeed become a material god, a god of wood, iron, gold and brass. Practical achievements are his burnt offerings, and money-making his heave offering. Such a Divinity!! His Worship is robbing our lives of much beauty and nobility. Look into the faces you meet upon the streets. Anxious eyes, expectant eyes, a wearing out of brain and nerve and tissue, but scarcely a thought about the golden streets. Truly his feet are miry clay. Somewhere and somehow that appalling question will meet us. What protiteth a man's 'labor under the sun ? Some- times a breath of real life, of anguish or bereavement will blow upon- us, and our Divinity will fall upon us and crush us as we raise our eager hands to him for comfort. What will it matter then that we can 4' mould the great earth to our will ? My classmates, if we have a mission, I do not believe it is to reform politics, as we are so often told, but rather to carry into life some of the grace and dignity of intellectual pursuits. It becomes us not to rush into life as into a selnsh struggle, with our neighbors for prizes which turn to dust and ashes in our grasp. We have been living an ideal life for four years. We have been members of a society from whose borders the intense interests of the outside world have been excluded, where friendship and sympathy have bloomed into full growth, a society hallowed by a noble history, rich in the treasures of literature and all the means of culture. Surely