Princeton University - Nassau Herald Yearbook (Princeton, NJ)

Page 24 text:

22 THE NASSAU HERALD. us? Are there not parched lips never wet with water of sympathy? Are there not imploring hands and piteous voices who may be stilled? Are there not wrongs that cry out to heaven to be righted, and rough places to be made smooth for the progress of humanity? But the time draws near now when we are to separate, when ties are to be broken and new interests are to take the place of those which are to live but in memory. Before we meet again as a class, changes must come, from the thought of which we shrinkg but no change can take from us the memory of Princeton, no change can wipe out its iniiuence. And, as the broken circle re-unites again, as we mark the vacant places, where once were living links, we shall not feel that we have not parted with any of our classmates forever, but We will look forward to another re- union and will not be sorrowful, for Somewhere is comfort, somewhere faith, Though thou in outer dark remain, One sweet, sad voice ennobles death, And still saith softly, , Ye meet again.

Page 23 text:

THE NASSAU HERALD. 21 her influence upon our lives cannot have been in vain. Never, even in our most intense struggles in the time to come, can we forget her high teachings, can we subside into the belief that the highest reward that life has to offer us is a temporal one, that self-renunciation is an old vvife's fable, and material good is man's safest and surest aim. Our Alma .Maier has brought us face to face vviththe great souls of the past, the fragrance of whose memory can never wholly .escape us. She, has bid us learn from them that 4' life is more than meat, as thetbody is more than raimentg that achievement is not needed to make life a success. Even that apparent failure may be real success, whose influ- ence may affect ages beyond the present. V As she sends us forth from-her walls she speaks to each one of us- Greatly begin z though thou have time But for a line: be that sublime, Not failure: but low aim is crimef' If our class relationship has taught us anything it has taught us the' interdependence of men, and I know of no grander aim for life than that taught by modern altruism- the living with and for others, the brotherhood of man. We are at times apt to think it merely poetry, and sensible men have declared that it is largely nonsense, a creation for poets and pale sentimental college graduates to babble over. . They say a man is born and dies alone, and, while sympathy and charity are very sweet, a man's chiefest duty is to himself. This is true in a sense, and the answer of the Princeton catechism is worthy of remembrance, The chief end of man is self-realization and the glory of God. But still the greatest road to self-realization is through altruism. It pours into us the wealth of other's natures, and, while drawing from' us, leaves us neither flaccid nor drained, but only hastens the development of our character, which is growing more and more to be the most powerful factor in life, far outweighing achievement or action. And is there not scope enough here for the strongest and the weakest of

Page 25 text:

THE NASSAU HERALD. 23 filing: Ellratiaim. CHARLES F. MC CLUMPHA, OF NEW YORK. OUR LIVES are shadovvs on the dial-plate of time, and the World reads its hour-history from the flight of life over this human time-teller. Eternity chimes out its seconds, minutes, hours, in the varying harmonies of man's existence, and announces itself to the World in spiritual rather than in material tones. Men have fashioned many arbitrary signs which Will trace the path of this phantom, ever gliding before them, but hovv futile their attempts to mark it in the running ofthe sand or in the music of the bell, when it visibly shapesritself in man's ovvn soul, forming a living link in that tissue of history which invveaves all being, and joins the yesterday With the morrow. Life, therefore,is the great time-recorder of the past: The dainty, tender fern carved in solid rock the data from which We reckon dizzy cons, the poems of the Iliad have long echoed in their rhythmic verse the vanished dreams of the past. It is a grand plan of creation that moulds the delicate ,shells of the sea into foundation stones ofthe World, that converts the flowing rivers into rosy billovvs of cloud-ocean, but hovv preeminently magic the soul that precipitates action and thought from. the subtle fluid of time. It is impossible to analyze those soul-elements that have performed the deeds which color the pages of history. We call them energy, culture, genius, but these terms are insuiiicient, they only designate varying activities of the human mind. Energy never could explain a Luther, nor genius a Shakespeare.