The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1888-07-05
AS to Commencement.
INSTRUCTIVE LETTER WRIT
TEN BY REV. DIR. TALMAGEI.
What Are We to Do with Ali the
Graduates ?-They Must An
swer tn at Question "A
Word for the Equality
of the Sexes.

of the Sexes.
The Rev. 7. De Witt Talmage, D.
D., is now absent from Brooklyn, and
his Friday night lectures are there
fore suspended for season. We print
from him letter bearing date June
Is. It's subject is "a Flutter Of Di-
plomas,' and the letter itself follows
at full length:
I have been out attending college
commandments. Our literary insti-
tutions are in a blaze Of celebration.
Six baccalaureate sermons in one day
and sixty-fve commencement speeches
in another, and hundreds Of young
doctors coming forth from our medi-
cal colleges, and hundreds Of young
advocates graduating from our law in
stitutes, and hundreds Of ministers
launched from our theological semi
naries, arouse the question: What are
we going to do with so many? The
question is easily answered. They
will decide for themselves upon their
lifework. Scores Of those educated
for physicians will never stay doctors.
Scores of those educated for lawyers
will not stay advocates. Scores Of
those educated for ministers will not
stay clergymen. Many Of them
launched by their parents or particu-
lar surroundings to do one thing, will
do another. They will naturally drop
into that for which they are best
qualified. But is not the supply great
er than the demand? No. The worlds
population is nightly increasing, and
we want in all departments more
hands and hearts and heads. The
world can never have surplus of ed
ucated men. You say that hundreds
of those highly educated men turn
out nerveless and useless. Yes, but
how much more their deficit had no
opportunities been offered them! The
work will go on until thorough edu-
cation will come within the reach of
all the people, and ignorance will be
forever banished from the earth.
What is now called liberal education
will come TO help labor in all depart
ments, until chemistry and geology
shall be harnessed to every plow, and
science will prune and trim and en-
rich and redeem every orchard; and
mathematics and natural philosophy
will help in the construction and
management Of all machinery, and
those things that are considered the
luxuries Of education will be the COM
mon and universal possession Of all
the people. So much has the stan
dard Of collegiate education been ad-
vanced, that those who used to grad
uate with honors from universities
would not now be qualified to enter
some OF our modern colleges. The
speeches now made by the young men
at commencements are far superior to
those of our boyhood. The cold hum
drum about Greece and Homer has
been exchanged for harangues about
the things Of here and to-day. The
sylphs, the dryads, the naiads, the
gods have gone out of business. Long
fellow turns out to be a better poet
than Homer, and Bancroft a better
historian than Herodotus, and we
have fifty orators who can beat De-
mosthenes. The absurd halo has melt
ed from the brow Of the ancients, and
the old philosophers could not keep
up with class in our Polytechnic or
Packer. | have more respect for the
moderns than the ancients. Wash
ington got angry and pitched negro
servant out of the window at Mount
Vernon, and in the biography Of
Thomas Jefferson we find that the
signing Of the declaration Of indepen-
dence was hastened by the fact that
next to Independence hall, Philadel-
phia, was livery stable, and that the
horse flies left their perch one day
and attacked the American Congress,
and bit and stung the MEM
bers so that those who could |
not before get their courage up to
sign the tremendous document, at the
annoyance Of the flies has
tily penned their names, so as to get
out and away from the cutaneous irri-
tation. Collegiate education has been
revolutionized, and the mind of the
student is not so stuffed with the bag
gage of Latin and Greek that he has
no room for practical, every day infor-
nation. Look at the graduate Of this
and you will find vast improve
ment in physique. By regatta and
baseball club, and gymnasium and
drill, classes of healthy men
are launched from the dry docks in
stead of those crazy crafts that were
loaded to the waters edge with physi-
cal infrmities enough to sink them
before they they got out as far as
Quarantine. In many Of the institu-
tions a great achievement has been
made in the fact that male and female
education go side by side, as God in