Trafalgar Castle School - Yearbook (Whitby, Ontario Canada)

Page 27 text:

Address to the ' Graduating Class ( cont ' d ) those words of wonder in the Book of Job: Where is the way to the dwelling of light? I remember so many wonderful aspects of the lights which the Book of Genesis says God set in the firmament of the Heaven to rule the day and the night and to give light upon the earth. There was the lunar rainbow one February night just after lights-out bell and we all came out to the playing fields to see what the astronomer Dr. Chant told the ' Globe ' was the best lunar rainbow he had ever observed. There were the five planets all at once in the western sky in the early evenings one spring. One July evening there was the loveliest triple rainbow, lasting for more than twenty minutes in undiminished brilliance as if it had come to stay. Again and again there were the Northern Lights in their solemn mystery. How strange and beautiful ' the dwelling of light! ' In the Book of Deuteronomy there is a blessing upon some lovely things, for the precious things of heaven — for the dew and for the precious things of the earth. Walter de la Mare has said, Look thy last on all things lovely every hour , and if you think poetry too transcendent, then turn to ' A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ' by Betty Smith, where the old grandmother counsels — look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Thus is your time on earth filled with glory. A. A. Maxwell. Twenty-three

Page 26 text:

Address to the ' Graduating Class (cont ' d) for mankind. Thou, therefore, for whom they died seek not thine own, but serve as they served, and in peace or in war bear thyself ever as Christ ' s soldier, gentle in all things, valiant in action, steadfast in adversity. She read these words over, and, after a bit, said thoughtfully, I never thought of a school meaning as much as that. So I told her to keep thinking, and the result was a valedictory of sincere feeling and real distinction. To-day I want to talk to you of two gifts that O.L.C . has offered you, and to turn your minds to their worth. An old student who went to Smith College, North- hampton, for her B.A. degree, kept in touch with me for some time by letters and visits. She once told me that President Neilson used to say some of the things that I had said — not so surprising that two educationalists should find similar values for students. Among other things he often stressed the value of quiet. In the auto- biography of one of the professors at Smith College occur these words: Over and over again he (President Neilson) has said these words or others like them: ' The person who can afford to be alone with himself, often and long, acquires a quality of personal dignity which is dissipated and lost in any other kind of life, — the self- possession, self-restraint, patience, which come with practice of solitude — these are essential for the acquisition of a philosophy and a religion. And it makes all the difference in the world to your life whether you arrive at a philosophy and a religion or not. It makes the difference between living in a world which is merely a constantly changing mass of phenomena, and living in a significant and ordered universe. ' This gift of quiet solitude that O.L.C. offers her students is the first of the two gifts of which I am speaking to you to-day. During the Great War I came upon a book, which was to me an invaluable revelation, ' The Ultimate Belief by Clutton-Brock. The spirit, he said, desires three things and desires these for their own sake and not for any further aim beyond them. What were these three things? Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. It was the third of these that constituted the revelation to me. The war, of course, was being fought that goodness and truth s hould prevail, but in the midst of its dreadful suffering it seemed a selfish indulgence to think of beauty, and so I had been turning away from one of the great desires of the spirit. To see beauty is not merely to amuse yourself, but to be aware of a glory of the universe .... and it is an end of life to be aware of this glory. So it is of great importance that the second gift O.L.C. offers her students is beauty — the loveliness of the trees, of the orchards, of the lilacs, and as you step inside the old castle itself, the spacious and noble beauty of the great hall. In spite of its dimensions, in spite of the fact that there is no window in the hall itself and that the furniture consists merely of two massive carved benches and some carved chairs of the same design, this hall is neither dim nor bare. Through beautiful glass in the entrance from the porch, and the soft colours of the painted glass in the doors to the right and left, together with the glowing warmth of armorial glass in the high arched windows on the landing of the grand staircase, there pours a flood of mellow light. The division to the middle hall from the space before the staircase, and the space beneath the tower, effected by the graceful Tudor arches, together with the ribbed vaultings beneath the tower and the slight arch of the ceiling of the middle hall, relieve by their decorative grace any suggestion of bareness in this spacious simplicity and harmony of proportion. In my memories of O.L.C. the element of beauty is the paramount one. Nowhere else have I felt so constantly and marvelously the beauty of light. You remember Twenty -two

Page 28 text:

o z CO CO U i — i Q w Pi O 3 3 J 1= sc — -z - u 2 t» C „i 3 §13 j s 5 o = i i i J O Q E W3 O — • Q- t (j c ti .S c « c a, H 5 o i2 ffl • 3 o • •—» « qj o C w ■§3 1 1 S o , v c a 2 oj ■ = g 6 -o csi = 2 a 2 i 2 c C « H P pj P4 O Q aX X X Bi Z 2 H H H Twenty-lour