The age-herald., 1899-06-13
-aAs----sssA CLOSING DAYS Al HOWARD COLLEGE
Commencement Sermon at Ru-
 hama Church.
SOPHOMORE DECLARATIONS
Richard Johnston Last Night Delivered an Address to the Literary Socie- ties-Nature and Her Teach
 ings Made Good Subject

Q
 Commencement exercises at Howard col- lege began Sunday morning, when Dr. J. NJ Frost, of Nashville, delivered the com mencement serman at the Ruhama Bap- tist church. He took for his text the 10th and 11th verses of the 4th chapter of Isaiah:
 "For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
 ''So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which l please, and 1t shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
 This was a splendid subject and offered to pr. Frost an opportunity to give some excellent advice to the students of the col lege.
 Sunday night at the East Lake Methodist church pr. G. c. Kelly, pastor of the First Methodist church of Birmingham, preached another sermon to the students.
 Sophomore Exhibition
 A good audience assembled in the college chapel at 10 o'clock yesterday morning to witness the sophomore Reclamation con test. All the speakers acquitted them- selves well, but the judges decided in favor of Frank Hatcher Watkins, of Virginia.
 The following is the list of declaimers and their subjects:
 Goodhue Weatherly-"Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene.'
 Allen Edgar Dorman-"The New South"
 Walter Warrington "Renzfs Last Appeal to the Romans"
 John Sylvester Hall-"Alabama," an original paper.
 Atticus Haygood Mullen-"To the Roman Envoys."
 Henry Bascombe Woodwa -"Mississippi Contested Election"
 Frank Hatcher Watkins-"Lasca."
 Leronzo Thompson Reeves-"Curse of Regulus."
 The musical selections of Miss Palmer, Mrs. Hobson and MT. Prestwood added very much to the attractiyeness of the pro- gramme.
 Athletic Contests
 Yesterday afternoon at o'clock large crowd assembled on the campus. notwith- standing the lowering condition of the weather, to witness the athletic sports which consisted of racing, hammer throw ing, performances on the parallel and horizontal bars, tumbling, jumping etc. The boys were in full gymnasium uniforms and acquitted themselves we'll Athletics have become quite a feature at Howard and the boys are developing brawn as well as brain.
 MT. Johnston's Address
 Last evening an appreciative audience was lghly entertained by the address of Richard F Johnston, city editor of the Bir- mlngham News, before the literary so- cieties.
 MT. Johnston's address was in the na- ture Of sermon from nature, practical lessons being drawn from such homely things as the setting hen, the brokling hen sparrow and the laborious army of ants making hill of myriads of grains of sand The speaker dwelt upon the necessity of getting close to nature in the pursuit of guidance.
 Touching upon the development of the natural resources of the Birmingham dis trict. he said
 'Now that Alabama is shipping iron to all parts of the world and landing 1t in foreign markets at the cost of manufac- ture here in the United States the stu dent of natural resources is dumbfounded to think that this foreign trade is but two and half years old, and again, when one goes back over the past ten or fifteen years, during which time Birmingham has been literally advertised as the cheapest iron producing center in the known uni verse, 1t seems strange fnded that 1t was only last August that northern capital which is always anxious for investment de- cided to take advantage of Alabama's na- tural resources, and planted It's millions in the steel business at Ensley City. Bir- mingham would have had a half million in- habitants at this time and this county would have had every hillside dotted with a cluster of houses, had the steel experts of this country gone to the iron instead of trying to bring the iron to them; if they had invested their money in the cheapest iron manufacturing center of the globe in- stead of exhausting themselves and their capacities in a vain endeavor to keep south ern iron out of competition with their own."
 Speaking of the simplicity and the hones- ty of childhood, MT. Johnston said: Every time a man goes back to the days of the old swimming pool he becomes wiser and a better man. He remembers how his mind drifted out on the sea of new and unknown things and how they impressed him before he knew what it was to veil self from self. He can learn how far he has strayed from the pursuit and acknowl- egment of the truth. He can recall the deceit and the guile which he saw in his elders and the pain of that discovery. He can recollect the simple divine light which he threw upon problems, often too much for his parents and teachers. He can go back to the old straightforward way of looking the truth in the face and acknowl- edging 1t as blindly and faithfully as the fowls do the coming of night.
 "It is well to sometimes recall the days of the old apple orchard, when we loved a girl as goddess We loved her with the purity of an angel. It were well to go back to the old straightforward way of looking the truth in the face and acknowl- edging it as blindly and faithfully as fowls do the coming of night. With all their sad