2
THE BATTALION.
welcome to our beautiful campus. There are those of you
who have almost completed your life’s work; you have had
your failures and your victories, and now stand ready to
guide us into the paths of happiness and success. With
you is the capital or estate of experience. With us are the
duties and blessedness of youth. We cannot change
places; we would not, if we could. We cannot substitute
your experience for our own; but we can avail ourselves of
some of the advantages, and of some of the warnings
which a longer experience than our own can address to us.
Again, there are those who once stood upon this platform,
as we do to-day, and having received their diplomas, were
sent forth into the world, entrusted with the good name of
this institution. They have kept the faith. They have
made a successful beginning in life, and to-day, they have
returned to encourage us with their example, and to hear
once more the shrill notes of the bugle, although it calls
them no longer to the performance of duty. Great indeed
is our encouragement, yet we would still hesitate, but for
woman. With the lamps of purity in her hand, she has
ever inspired man to lofty deeds.
The time is no longer in the future, but is now at
hand, when a young man in order to cope successfullv with
the struggling mass of humanity, must have a college
education. Although, there are few great men now, and
thought has no privileged hierarchy any more, the dif
ference between former conditions and present ones should
well be borne in mind. Hitherto great leaders have
thought above and beyond the masses. Now the}' are
giving way to men who think with them, and such men