Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1883-10-25
THE VALUE OF LIFE.
NJ Ernest Remains Remarkable Speech
Before Students.

livered before the pupils of Lycee Louis
le Grand, will be found below: Con
slider the life before you as q matter
serious and full of responsibilities. But
is that reason to regard you as less
favored by fate than your predecessors
Quite the contrary, young people!
Never say, rs did those malcontents of
whom the prophet speaks: Our fathers
have eaten sour grapes, and their
children's teeth are set on edge Your
lot is fair, and see thousand reasons
TO envy il, not merely because you are
young, and because youth is the entry
upon an excellent thing, namely, ex-
istence; but you will see what we shall
never see; you will know what we seek
for rcstlessly; you will possess the solu-
ton of many political problem about
which we hesitate, because the facts
have not yet pronounced themselves
with sufficient clearness.
.Your years forbid you to be cautious.
Nobody is fearful about life when he is
beginning ii. A kind of blindness,
skillfully arranged by nature, presents
existence to you rs tempting booty
which you burn to seize upon. Wiser
men than you will warn you against the
illusion which underlies your youthful
ardor. They will tell you OF disap-
pointments-they will say that existence
does not keep its promises, and that if
people only knew what it was they
took in hand they would not have the
naif empresSement of your age. But
/ declare to you that it is not my senti-
ment. have traversed this life, which
opens before you like an unknown and
limitless land. / expect to encounter
nothing much more in it of the novel
its termination. which seems to you in
definitely far off, is very near for me.
Well. with my hand on my heart l say
that have found this.life, which it is
tho fashion to calumniate, good and
well worthy the appetite which youth
shows for it. The one real illusion OF
which you are guilty about it is to be-
lieve it long. No, it is short, very short,
but even thus 1 assure you it is we'll to
have existed, and the first duty of man
toward that infinitude from which he
energies is to be grateful. The gener-
Gus rashness which makes you enter,
without shadow of arriere-pensee,
upon u career at the close of which so
many enlightened folks aver they have
found nothing save disgust, is really
very philosophc after its kind. For
ward, therefore, with good hearts; sup
press nothing of your ardor; that flame
which burns within you is the same
spirit which, providentially spread
throughout the bosom of humanity. is
the principle of its motive force. For
ward! forward! say /; lose not your
love and passion for living. Speak no
evil If the boundlessbountifulness from
which your being emerges, and in the
special order of individual fortunes
bless the happy lot which has bestowed
on YOU n generous country, devoted
teachers, kind relations, and conditions
of development in which you have no
longer to strive against the old barbar.
isms.
That joyous intoxication. then,
which springs from the new wine OF
life, and which renders you deaf to the
weak complaints of the fecblc-hcarted,
is legitimate. Do not be ashamed to
abandon yourself to its influences. You
will find existence full of sweet SAVIOR
if you do not expect from it what il
cannot give. When people complain
of life it is almost always because they
have asked impossible things of it.
Upon this belief, wholly the teaching OF
the wisest-there is but one foundation
for a happy life. the pursuit, namely,
of the good and the true. You will be
we'll pleased with existence if you
make fair use of it, and if You abide
well pleased with yourselves. A noble
sentence is that which says: Seek We
first the kingdom of heaven, and all the
rest shall be added unto YOU.
''On similar occasion TO this of to-
day, but forty-li7e years ago, the illus
trious NJ, Jouffrey addressed the folluw-
ing stern words TO the pupils of the
Lyccc Charlemagne: Our dutv, to
whom experience has unveiled the ulti-
mate truths about the things of this
world, is to announce it to you. The
mountain top of life hides from You its
further slopes; of its two sides YOU see
but one, that which you are ascending;
it is bright, beautiful, fragrant rs
Spring time. You are not able, us we
are, to contemplate the other fall, with
its melancholy aspect, its pale sunlight,
and the icy river floating at the bottom.
Well, my lads, say no to all that. Ii
is too mournful. The sunlight is never
pale, though it is often yelled. Because
man grows old has he the right to say
that flowers have grown less lovely and
the Springtide less RADIANT Are we,
forsooth, TO grumble because we cannot
live forever on earth? What rubbish is
this, just Heaven! Amid all the flow
ers (and how sweet and fair that flower
world isD only one seems to me with
out any charm. 1t is the sickly, dry,
stiff. withered, disagreeably gliitering
thing which gardeners wrongly call
the immortelle.' / do not call it
flower. prefer the bright and sweet
rose, though it has the defect of fading
away all too soon.
You will behold the twentieth cent
ury, my young scholars! All! | con-
TESS L envy you that other privilege;
you will see the unforeseen! You will
hear what posterity says of us; YOU
VIII know what there was of solid and
what of frail in our dreams. Be kind
to us who preceded you. This poor old
nineteenth century, which will be so
well abused, had good people in it,
faithful souls. warm hearts, and heroes
OF duty. Generations as they follow
each other are ofttimes unjust to each
other. You are the nursery garden of
the talent of the future. fancy | de-
scry amid you the very critic who,
about the year 1910 or 1920 A. d., will
sit in judgment on this age. inn
agine l read his indictment (permit me
to indulge my idea.) What n sign of