Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1912-09-20
COLLEGE OPENS.
President Thomas Delivers EIo-
quent Address to Students.


The opening of the 18th year of Mid
dlebury college took place on Thursday
morning with very able and interest
ing address by President John NJ
Thomas in the Congregational church
at S:45. In spite of the inclement
weather the church was filled with the
students and friends of the college.
The freshman class is one of the largest
in the history of the collage. The ad-
dress of President Thomas follows in
part:
This month some $4,000 young men
and women Will set forth from their
homes to enroll as college students in
more than 800 colleges in the United
States of America. The number is
larger than it used to be, and larger
relatively to the population. The
American people are gaining increasing
faith in higher education. They are
supporting colleges and universities
more literally, both by private erdow-
ments and state appropriations, and
they are sending their children to re-
ceive their benefits in rapidly increasing
numbers.
What are those benefits? What do
parents expect by way of return in
good to their children for the sacrifices
which are necessary?
For several years | have tried to get
from students themselves their ideas on
these matters, and | remember one boy
wrote that he had noticed that people
without advanced education usually had
to work very hard, and he thought it
prudent to take a college course in order
that his life might not be spent in
la5orious toll. That young man only
expressed in naive, blunt form the
staple argument for a college course
not so many years ago. and which is
not without considerable influence still.
To get off the farm with its back
aching labor and steady grind of unin
teresting toll, to secure equipment for
professional or commercial life in some
large center of population. has been the
motive which has sustained many
youth through the pages of Livy and
Homer and induced him to perse' ere
despite the travail of Analytic Geometry
and Calculus.
We ought all to understand by this
time that as far as work is concerned
this argument for college was della
sion. Many man in city lawyers s
office or banking room is today signing
for the content and quiet, with the
healthful toll of the farm where he was
a boy. There is some sentiment in his
longing, but more substantial fact.
Machinery and the application of science
to agriculture have made farming a diff
ferent business, while the press and
hurry of modern commercial life have
diminished the relative attractiveness
of city occupations. There is today no
more promising and desirable college
student, both from the point of view of
the college and the good of the country,
than the young man or woman who
proposes to gain all the college can give
him, and then return to life in the open
country to enrich and enlarge it by the
added personal power he has gained in
college.
Mlddlebury College should have for
its purpose, not to take men from Yer
mont, but to enable them to live in
Vermont life of usefulness and power,
with ability to gain here a livlhood
sufficient for comfortable and generous
living, and power and grace to add to
the community life those elements of
intelligence and virtue which give to
State stability and worth. The service
of Vermont by enriching the life of the
whole State must be our goal, not the