The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1900-05-25
PEACE COMMENCEME NT.
Continued From Fifth Page

much the hour of graduation. or have
exaggerated its Importance at the eX-
pense of culture that has no ending.
We have heard a great deal from the pull
pit about the hour of conversion and not
enough about the endless growth of the
Christian life-the expression Of ones
soul.
"a great deal about the mourner's
bench and too little about the means by
which healthy and beautiful life may
be built up. / should like to know some
times not whether you have been convert
ed. but what you have done since your con-
version. What new truth do you see now
that you didn't see then. | should like to
know not whether a woman has gradu-
ated nor where, nor when, but what she
has done since Observation-Disclosures the
life of culture is a greater thing now 1t
is saying too little for education, when
we shut it up within the compass of
few years.
Il am constantly meeting with college
and university graduates who have lost
all interest in the development of their
intellectual life-who have not looked at
a book since they received their diplomas.
have seen students who seemed inter-
TO have caught some glimmering of what
it means to study the best that has been
taught and said in the world-and yet two
CT three years after graduation they have
lest what they once had.
IF education means anything, it means
a great deal-the training of the mind
the enlargement of ones faculties, the
widening of ones horizon is not the work
of two years, nor four years CT ten years
it is the work of a life time-the work
CT eternity. My prayer for the college
men and women who graduate this year
would be- that they shall continue to b.
students. but men and women who know
how to apply knowledge to the problems
CT this life. who believe that mind and
soul, accordingly, will make one music.
II would have you feel today that the
courses of study you have followed here
have been but the suggestion of richer
and better courses of study. Your life
will be fully deficient if those three or
four years are to be the only direct effoc;
to develop your intellectual powers.
Have you studied history? and fel5 at
times that it was a miserable lot of dates
and unmportant incidents? Keep on anil
you will feel some day what history is
the study of the past with a view to the
life Of the present If you do not know
he Age Of Pericles and the Age of Martin
Luther, and if you do not know waat
Edgar Poe spoke of as the glory that was
Greece and the grandeur that was Rome
Have you studied biographies of great
men and women here? | tell YOU today
| that you have many yet to read. You
| may be able to lead some kind Of lie,
| Tut you will not lead the highest life uh-
| less you have the inspiration that comes
| from the imaginative study of The great
personalities that have made this world
what it is. Through such souls alone God
| STOPPING shows sufficient of himself for
Us. in the dark to rise. Let US rise. Some
| CT you have become interested in science,
| ] have no doubt. Do not Calico and News
| ton and Darwin and Huxley-do not the
great laboratories of this country inspire
you with a hunger and thirst after
| a more accurate and far reaching scientific
study? And finally, not 70 mention all
your studies you have surely, if you
have the good taste l think you have,
Lecome interested in the 1t Ily OF .;tera-
ture. Will YOU take The wocl of one who
has gone a little WY in the path that
leads to literary culture to tell you that
he more you READ. the more there is to
read you go from Longfellow and Irving to
Scott and Hawthorne to Tennvson ant
| Wordsworth and Burns.
| Most OF all to Shakespeare, but !
tell you frankly you do not know one of
| them or several, until you have felt some
thing of all the men who here write great
poetry, in England or in the ancient or
| modern world.
will you let me say today that teach
crs are not the only people who need
| the highest and best culture. You will
| be greater women if you lay the founda-
| ton of your life in broad and liberal
culture. There IS an impression among
some people that higher education units
women for the duties of life-there is the
sheer at the literary woman who becomes
| Indifferent to home duties. Unfortunately
hat is true-I have known women at the
great universities of this country who
seemed to have lost the distinctive charm
CT womanhood; they affected a masculine
temperament the well-springs of emo
tion were dried up--and they rejoiced in
The crude unregenerate strength of in
tellect. But the same objection might be
Elduc u the HlSHeT OF men. NO,
sirs, none of these abnormal cases can
shake my faith that culture becomes to
the true woman a source of greater.
ION an occasion like this we all need
to be reminded of the ultimate end of
an institution like this-to give women
the best there is in the way of culture.
We shall never be free from the shackles
Of medialval thought until we realize that
women are entitled to all the knowledge
and all the culture that man is, and that
such culture does not destroy her wo-
manhood, but constitutes to the building
up Of finer type of woman than the
world has ever seen.
"A second way of developing your Gull
tured life is through travel. l do not
mean by travel going on cheap excursions
to Niagara Falls or great conventions of
various kinds, but travel with a definite
end in view. You don't want to be in a
crowd.
THE right kind of travelling is one of
the best ways to improve oneself There
is, first the knowledge that comes to
one of new places different people. We
suffer from provincialism and narrowness.
We need to see what other people are
doing, to know what other people are
htr1ly iv1r A |t.tt1 10 NnNU @pls M Mon