Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1908-07-10


share the common responsibility and
common field of the sisterhood Of
eastern Colleges. / do not take UP
this work with the idea that the field
of Middlebury College is Addison
County, or Western Vermont, or even
the Champlain Valley. The field Of
Middlebury is wherever there is a
young man or young woman who
needs her work. belong in any city
or hamlet, west or east, where the
representative of any College belongs,
for the towns are without number,
large and small, far as well as near,
where there are boys and girls who
need the Middlebury encouragement
to 60 to College, and whom Middle
bury can serve with higher education
more economically, more efficiently
for them, and therefore with more
help and less handicap for their after
life, than any other institution they
would be likely to find.
The limitation of our work to a
narrow field would be criminal. Our
location in frugal agricultural region
favors economy. The standards of
living in our beautiful village are quiet
and plain. The climate is one of the
most healthful and vigorous in the
world. The advantage of four years
in the country is itself worth more to
many city youth than the cost of an
education here. 1t is the body behind
the blow that tells. The limit of our
growth need never be the numbers
whom we ought to reach; it need only
be our ability wisely to care for them.
If some one this day could stir ambi-
ton in thousand boys in the sitting
cities to prepare for our Vermont
College, he could not serve them
better.
We men of Middlebury need to lift
up our hearts, that we may see. Our
College is too great for any restricted
sphere of influence. If we extend our
service, boys by the hundred will
thank God that we enabled them to
enlarge their lives by contact with the
worlds masters of truth if we fail of
breadth of outlook, we shall deny the
privileges of the higher life to thou
sands whom we ought to help.
assume that we shall continue to
have in our hearts the dominant
desire in the hearts of our fathers,
to have here College where the
youth of humblest homes are on an
absolute equality with those whom
fortune has more highly favored.
When Middlebury forgets the boy who
has hard time to get start, she will
have forgotten her glory. I would
not call her the "poor mans College"
for there are many sensible folk
thank God-who still desire to fortify
their children by simple living in their
early days. Plain standards Of life,
with strict democracy, will not keep
from our halls the scions of the most
privileged American homes, at least
those of them that are worth edu-
eating. Simple ways and democratic
principles, coupled with high scholar
ship, thorough training, and nobility
of ideal, will rather attract them. No
American College should set itself to
serve any particular social class, either
poor or rich. But may God forbid
that We should ever cease to search for
the hesitant, backward boy, Of the
home that knows severest hardship,
that we may establish him an equal in
the company of those who seek for
truth and self-mastery under the
guidance of the worlds greatest spirits.
invoke the independent spirit of
Vermont to keep us from silly aping of
the worser features of collegiate life
elsewhere, and to hold us true to our
Puritan democracy, remembering our
own timid, clumsy knock at Alma
Matters gate, and the sweetness of
hope when it dawned on our own
early life.
The need of work like this is i'm
measurably great. The truly critical
period of American history has not