The daily commonwealth. (Greenwood, Leflore Co., Miss.) 1916-1919, 1917-05-26
v~ALEDICTORY ADDRESS
OF Miss Ruth Dickins at GRADUATING
Exercises Of Greenwood High
School. May 22d. 1917.

Exercises Of Greenwood High
School, May ed, 1917.
The night to which we have been
looking forward with so much eager.
ness has at last come, and were ! to
hold up a calendar en~umerating the
days in the life of each member Of
this class, this day would be a red
letter day for US all. Most Of our
lives are so drab, so common place, so
mediocre, but let us hope that many
more red letter days are to come into
our lives-days perhaps unseen and
unnoticed by the world, but days the
recording angel will count, when we
have overcome a temptation, endured
with, logged patience and finished with
thoroughness an unpleasant task.
Tonight when l bid you dear super
intendent, dear teachers, dear fellow
students, dear trustees farewell, ! AN
not but be sad, l would drop a tear
for sorrow of parting-another for
the things we should have done and
did not, and for the things we did not
do and should have done. Beloved
teachers charge all these things not
to hardness of heart but to the
thoughtlessness and selishness of the
capricious youth. Fellow students we
hate to tell you good bye, but as the
poet says parting is such a sweet
sorrow" We leave you this farewell
message-study. The ideal Of most
pupils with regard to going to school
is: ut is better to have come and
loafed, than never to have come at ALL"
Scholarship will not give you popular
ity with your fellow students, but it
will give you something better-their
respect. Then your future career de-
ponds on it.
~"Contentment with mediocrity,"
says Professor Lowell, "is perhaps the
greatest danger that faces the stu
dent" Professor Foster of Reed Col
lege, Oregon, has compiled some in
teresting statistics after some years
Of, painstaking investigation. / will
cite these figures from the Harvard
Law School, extending for q period Of
l2O years. Of the pupils who gradual
ed with no honor 6 IL per cent. at
tanned distinction, Of those who grad
,uated with honor % per cent. attained
distinction, 40 per cent. who GRADUATE
ed with high honor attained distinct
ion, and Of those who graduated with
great honor 60 per cent. That is 20
who studied succeeded, where n who
did not study succeeded. Enjoy your
new suit now, pay for it later" cries
the bill board. Many a boy and girl
expects to get an education on the
same plan.
Class Of 1917 life is out before us.
We regret to say goodbye. We will
soon be scattered who knows where.
Most Of us will attend college, some of
you boys will perhaps soon be carry
ing Old Glory, somewhere in France"
and who can tell what. events may
come into our uneventful lives?
To you l leave this message: Be-
come men and women Of high ideals.
High ideals Of patriotism, truth, just
ice, happiness, and of God. .Idealism
dignifies poverty, glorifies work. The
woman of high ideals will be happier
in the woods with the yellow autumn
leaves blowing about her than she
would be to become the possessor Of a
$40 hat. The man of ideals feels his
soul satisfied by the beauty OF the
tender green grass, the blooming
hawthorne and the whistle of the
blackbird rather than by the pleasure
of the most luxurious club for men.
Whit high ideals we can not be self
ish, ignoble, commonplace, self cen
tered, self satisfied. Much more do we
need ideals than ambitions. Ambi-
lions destroy, they seek self alone. The
eyes of idealism look not to what this
man and woman next to me are doing
but to the North Star. So let us bid
farewell to the happy year that has
just passed with this little poem writ
ten by a young Mississippian:
Good bye, Old Year; the road walked
with you
Was not all flowers, and yet l found
among
The thorns along the path a rose or
two
That made the way seem short, my
heart seem young,
And all the world a paradise to see.
Good bye, Old Year; though l have
loved you well
] would not keep you now; your WORK
is done.
They say that you are soaked with
blood; they tell
|Of pestilence and strife, but / am one
For whom you held a rose. Enough
for me.
l .#.t % .H... .-.