Princeton University - Nassau Herald Yearbook (Princeton, NJ)

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in the inal accounting We see the rough places smoothed, Weak- nesses strengthened, and characters broadened. Our alma mater has placed the university seal upon us. She has itted us to meet the crises which lay before us. Whatever success may be ours in the years which we now enter upon We will ever turn with love and grateful reverence to the place which has trained us and moulded us and made us vvhat We are. We are gathered to-day a body of university men. Over our heads We hold the numerals which alone separate us from those who have preceded us and those who will follow us in this most Worthy procession of academic life. The work and pleasures of the years spent here are behind us, but the associations, the pleasant memories, and the bonds of eternal friendship formed Within these Walls will never be erased from our memories. Deeper still than memories, deeper still than associations, deeper still than friendships, will live forever that spirit of loyalty which unites us into one body, which gives us one theme, which makes us bound with a bond of true devotion to our class and to our alma mater. This is the loyalty which gives us the right to be what we are and forever will be-true Princeton men. 19

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Salutatory. PAUL s. SEELEY M embers of the Class of 1906 and Friends: It is my honorable though regretful duty to bid you welcome to the exercises this morning whichsever one more bond of the close and united fellowship which it has been our fortune to enjoy during the past four years. Untried, untrained, with but a scarce imprint of individuality an-d with characters but roughly formed, we entered within the walls of this revered place short four years ago. Since then the machinery of a world, great though small, has been wielding its forces upon our minds and bodies. Our muscles havebeen strengthened, our minds trained and broadened by the irresist- able force of men and manners. It is not that we have joined company with a few of our fellows and worked and studied to- gether for the term of a college course. Far more. We have come to a great university, we have become its members, we have breathed of its breath 5 lived of its life and made ourselves as one with its laws and its customs. Words fail to express the sense of deep gratitude, of kindly affection, and unlimited appreciation toward our alma mater which must fill the mind of everyone of us during these last days of sad farewell. The years which must remain dearest to all our memories are past, never to be forgotten. From henceforth we must stand not as undergraduates under the protection of our college flag but as men of the world from whom the world asks something worth while. Princeton has given to us of its very self. The joys, the pleasures, the cares, the sorrows of its sacred walls have all been ours. We came to its shelter as strangers, lacking the bonds of fellowship. Under its roofs and spires we have been united into one body by the kindly spirit of brother- hood and fraternity. Man has met man for his true worth and 18

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The Class Oration., KENNETH M. M7EWEN Classmates, Ladies and Gentlemen: We have come to a period in our lives when we cannot avoid a serious consideration of what our relations should be to exist- ing society, and the nature of the influence which We should exert therein. It is not to be inferred that such thoughts have been apart from our mental routine during the four years We have dwelt together in this place. The true uses of education are nowhere recognized so clearly as in a university such as this. So the man whose horizon extends no farther than his bachelor's degree, who regards his college course as a thing apart from the life he is to lead at its conclusion-to be put aside as a childish thing when he becomes a man-is indeed a rarity. I am confi- dent that there is no one among us who has not deeply pondered the question as to how the lessons which we have learned here may be made most applicable to the tasks of life, who has not looked forward to the time which now confronts us, and sketched for himself the outlines of a creed which shall govern him in the wider relations which we are about to assume. We do not ex- pect that these creeds will be adequate. We shall be disap- pointed, in fact, if the fulnire reveals no new lessons 5 if we find no additional material to be embodied in our creeds. But does not this show most clearly that we have come to regard our edu- cation as but a preparation for other duties, as a means to the end of wider usefulness and greater efficiency? The college man of to-day is not a dreamer 5 the practical affairs of collegiate life press too hard to permit the construction of a purely sub- jective world. Again and again we have evolved theories, only to have them shattered by a new experience, or by a new revela- tion of fact. We have found ourselves face to face with condi- 20