Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1911-06-23
nth MMENCEMENT.
CONTINUED from page u

need direction every moment, and who
then can not do as they are directed,
there may be a surpusage, but of those
who have trained themselves by ener-
getic obedience to command and direct
there is painful lack.
We need men alert and active to catch
their own calls to service, not asleep
with the listless crowd, but awake to the
worlds crying needs, who put into their
work that nerve of energy, that tensity
of grip, that fixity upon achievement,
which delights the onlooker, which
cheers ones fellow-work ers, which sets
the world forward and carves foothold
higher for the next man on the climb.
1t is not to idleness that most of US are
tempted, but to doing things half way,
with half our manhood, half our mind.
One of the rarest phenomena in this
human world is man who really
thinks. The trouble with this country
Just now is not so much idle freight
cars and locomotives; they are but the
symptom; the real trouble is idle minds.
If men would get their minds to work,
they could create enough industry to
change the whole face of things.
Goethe once said to a despairing man,
'Ach, you have only to blow on your
hands. 1t is gesture much needed
hereabouts down to this present.
Our college has set itself to the task
of contributing its utmost to the up
lift of the State which granted it life
and whose people have ever been its
loyal friends. We claim no exclusive
privilege, but only that according to
our ability and in ways proper to GU
genius we may render to this home
land of our fathers the largest good
within our power. If Vermont is back
ward, it is not that her natural re-
sources are not abundant, that her
soil is not fertile, that her situation
is remote and untoward. If we have
lost our best blood for generations,
giving it freely to the great empires
of the West, we have only made the
sacrifice common to the entire rural
East. We should be proud of our gift
to the nation, not use it as an excuse.
1t is for us who remain by the intel
ligence and intensity of our efforts to
quicken the industries of the State, to
raise the standards of education, to
purify and uplift its moral tone, and to
awaken the od-time fear of God and
reverence for his His holy law. The
spirit of the fathers is not dead in
these valleys. On the soil of the old
time republic of Vermont, and here
! OlllJ VII lllC AnltIlCdu COllllntllI, we Gail
say, 1--WE were never in bondage to
any man. 1t is for us to summon
from its sleep that od-time energy
and faith. Our people are too lethargic
in the face of difficulty We are too
easily satisfied with the condition into
which things drift. There are too
many weeds in the fields, too many
rivers running idly down the hills.
There is to much droning of dull tasks
in the schools and not sufficient alert
ness to the responsibilities of American
citizenship. We are too easily content
with conditions which allow elderly
people to get living, and not sufficiently
alert to furnish our young men opportu-
nifty to live a life.
Our college cannot in a day change
the economic conditions in the State.
We cannot at once bring a new spirit
into its schools, or revive its churches.
But we can, by the spirit we make to
prevail among us, set an example which
will reach every hamlet from the Con-
necticut to Champlain Let it be known
that our college loves the State that
gave it birth, and here at least we
yield no permanence to inferiorty, to
supine resignation to conditions as we
find them, to cowardly surrender to diff
ficulty and encouragement. If there
are ills, we will cure them. If there
are needs we will meet them. If there
is work to do no man shall tell us it can
not be accomplished. Let it be felt in
the grip and bearing of everyone that
goes out from US that obstacles are
only for the development of power,
that what ought to be done can be done
and must be done, that faith and en-
thusasm and high courage in the face
of difficulty may be bequeathed to our
children as our fathers have bequeathed
them to US.
Receive this spirit from your alma
mater. Bear it wherever God in His
gracious leading may guide you. Hold
it firm through all the years He gives
you. Depend upon it to kindle fire that
will reflect glory upon the halls from
which you go and make them a beacon
of guidance andinspiration for the State
your fathers loved.
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS.
The anniversary of the Christian As
sociations, of Middlebury college was
observed Sunday at s p. M, when Rev. /
William T. Esng, D. d., of the Dewitt
Memorial church, New York, delivered
an address at the Congregational church
on 'The Bright Side of Life in Dark
Part of New York" He spoke touch
ingly of the qualities possessed by the
people of the East Side and declared
that the situation had been misrepre-
sented, stating that the morals of the
people were praisworthy and that
poverty was much less prevalent than
commonly believed.
CLASS DAY EXERCISES.
On Monday morning before a large
commencement and audience the 1911
Glass Day exercises took place. The
senior class formed in twos before the
chapel and marched to the rear of
Painter hall where they planted the
clacc iUv From bara tbaxy nrooooJod