Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1891-09-18

dear old college friend, and going together
into the gallery above the dome, for two
hours we talked over our plans for the fli-
ture. Today he lectures on moral phioso-
phv to the young ladies of Vassar-Presi-
dent Taylor of that institution.
At hours when we least expect it, and i'm
scenes apparently the most remote, these
echoes from the past, these associations of
school days follow us, on throughout our
life.
The finest favors of life and its most
satisfying enioyments we often miss entire
tx because we do not understand that we
have them for the taking. The beautiful
landscape which you long to see, as YOU
read of the traveller who found it in a dis
tant land, You may have for a walk or
drive to the mountain yonder that over
hangs our noble Connecticut. The hero
whose courage fires your heart when you
read of his exploits, has his equal among
the men you have known who once wore
the blue perhaps in your neighbor and
friend. if you open your eyes to see what he
has borne and overcome. The same per-
feet. self-devotng love which charms us in
poetry and romance may pour ont its whole
life upon us. quietly blessing us without
our discerning it, unless our eyes are open
ed. The beauty and the poetry of our
every day life may be as rich and full as we
have heart to make it and eyes to see it,
For. "the actual well seen is the IDEAL"
and the wise and the happy are those who
see most and enjoy most in their daily sur
roundings.
To see clearly the essential nature and
the true value of our immediate surround
ings. to know the possibilities for good of
our everyday friends and our everyday
life, is a great gain.
Anniversaries help to reveal to us the
truth in these matters. They reveal to us
beauty and power and the finest possibili-
ties for good in the persons and the sur
rOundings to whose real significance we
have been blind.
What father has not seen new radiance
of spiritual beauty in the maidenly face of
his daughter, when her sixteenth birthday
reminded him that she was now
standing with reluctant feet
Where the brook and river meet,
WomanhOOd and childhood teety'
However faithfully husband cherishes
the wife whose presence at his side sweet
ems life and continually strengthens his
heart for life's labors, there is a new, an
added sense of her worth and preciousness,
comes round, and all their past love and
their united experience of life, like an In
dian summer haze, lend calm beauty to
her face that transfigures the time-touched
features and is more calmly satisfying than
the remembered beauty of her spring-time,
as he looks into
"A beauteous face in which there meet
Fair records, promises as sweet.
&c
ing time and rapid change which father 5
or a mothers birthday rU suggest to low
ing children, often flashes into the con-
seriousness a truer vision of the pure essen
tial nature of parenthood a stronger emo
ton of filial love and a truer appreciation
of filial duties.
As time hurries us on in the journey of
life. on anniversary days such as this, on
these halts and camping-grounds on points
of vantage where the view over the stages
we have travelled in the past is clear, and
memory is vivid, there come to us our truest
thoughts of what has been, our cleareSt
visions of what ought to be, and our deep
est sense of privilege and blessing in what
is, when we see it in its true relations.
But when such anniversaries occur in
the life of person, however pleasant the
surroundings, however happy the circum-
stances, there is always a touch of pain in
the heart. We do not speak of it. We
put it under; but it is there. After the
early spring days of perpetual hope and
careless JOY are passed, there is a secret
pang for every loving heart at the anniver-
sary of friends birth-a pang that comes
from the ever-present knowledge that each
Understanding anniversary brings one
year nearer the time when that life will
have ceased among us. This is the reason
why in some families where love is deepest,
the anniversaries bring more of pain than
pleasure. The mortal life of one friend is
so short. The strongest man, the dearest,
most gracious woman so soon comes to the
allotted end of life, that on such anniver-
sary days the sweetness of the present love
is always Swallowed by the apprehension of
the coming loss.
But the anniversary of self-perpetuat-
ing institution like the school which we
honor tonight, has in it no such haunting
suggestions of pain. AS we go on i'll life
and feel how short is any one mans lease
of power, we feel growing satisfaction in
the life we have in common, in institutions
which endure from generation to genera
ton.
There is reason, then, in the nature of man
y
together tonight. And in an anniversary
when an entire communityis united to honor
an institution of learning there is reason for
the feeling of pleasure and hopefulness
which fills the air; for it is in schOOl-life next
to home-life and in schOol-life hardly less
than in home-life that ideals of life and of
achievement are formed. Here the fOunda-
lions of character are laid. Here are formed
mental and moral habits of lifelong, bind
ing power over the man.
when a man dies" says SchOpenhauer,
"a world perishes-the world which he bore
in his head" That subjective world of ideals
and standards and relations which each one
us has framed for himself, and in which
each must live, is so conditioned and col
ored by ones surroundings in these early
formative years of life, that we may well
say the boy creates the social and ideal
world in which the man must live.
1t is this permanence of impressions,
this lasting and conditioning power of the
influences that surround childhood, that
give to the work of the teachers of the
young its dover of sweet yet grave respon-
sibility, to the whole life and work of the
school its profound importance.
No thoughtful parent who understands
the mighty influence upon the young OF the
thought and speech of those of their own
time of life, can for moment estimate
slightly the influence of school life upon
his children To me it has always been a
wonder that so many parents are content
to turn over to teachers, whom they allow
to remain utter strangers and to the COM