University of Cincinnati College of Medicine - Annual Yearbook (Cincinnati, OH)

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DULIA The prairie schqoner winding its way westward, Filled with souls seeking an ideal, stops when it has ascended u hill to 100k backwards over the ill-marked road traversed. Thus. today. with faces still turned to a newer and hoperhlled West, we gaze back upon a panorama whoae horizon measures a century and in the ennampass Of which are the wheel-marks 0f paths traced, retraccd and traced again to that plateau upon which now we stand. Covered. as we are today, by a canopy woven for us by a stalwart leader we rest, perhaps. too languidly in its pleasant shade. Unannoyed by heat or rain it is well to review the journey and to ask which or its parts have been essential. We have been mired, the sandstorms have cut our flesh, our bodies have wearied in effortebut forgotten are these things in the knowledge that we have been on our way. Because our hands were not sufhcient and our feet too weak, we built equipment-wagons for our weary and shelters for our ill. The wagons have gone the way of time; and one shelter after another, each glorious in its day, has been forgotten in its successoreas all have disappeared in the new one now before us. To us this resting place may seem as the end of a pilgrimage. But others have so fell before us towards theirs. Obviously nothing material has outlasted them; and, should we confess it. nothing material will outlast us. What we celebrate today is either something less Or something more than the ponderable thing. If we feel joy, it is the joy of going: and if taught that is secure has remained in our hands. it is the memory of our men and of their faiths. We raise n0 monument to the memory of those who said it could not be done; not will stones arise for these who inform us that, being dang they thought so, also. WE cherish the memory of fmat believers only; there are no great acceptors. If we are content to have come thus far, to what men do we. owe it? Cer- tainly to none who was in his day satished to confess a roadhed hard or :1 rivulet the waters of Eden. We record none who acknowledged his present the best of all living worlds. Not they who sang 11s siren songs have driven L15 hither, but the gadllies stinging us when the heat was already intolerable. We have to rememher this when tomorrow we journey on. Great men do not soothe; great journeys are not comfortable; great goals are not met but must be attained. The experience of a century Sl'lO'lIlt'l teach us method. Our leaders will again show us mountains to be climbed to reach the- valley beyonde and stand alone; and too many of ms will follow the crowd because the path down the river is easy. But El Dorado lies in the seers, and with sweat and tail over the mountains. To mark our tasting place we leave behind a monument-on its one face the names of the masters gone before; the other blank for those to grave upon who will. MARTIN H. FISCHER. Page Nine