Graduation Address

"Address to Graduating Class" University Monthly 30, 8 (June 1911): 332-335. (UA Case 67, Box 1)

Your Honor, My Lord Bishop, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I have been honored with an invitation from the Chancellor to say a few words this afternoon in the name of the Senate of the University, and I accept with the greater readiness because of the attached condition that I should be brief.

The time has arrived, ladies and gentlemen of the graduating classes, for a change in the current of your lives. You are leaving be hind you the familiar pathways and entering upon an unknown country.

Change is a universal and inexorable law of creation. The golden grain of autumn becomes the waving field of summer; the youth is father to the man. All onward progress through the aeons is accomplished by the preservation and evolution of the race alone. The individual must and does fall by the wayside.

The generation of today but hands on a blazing torch to those coming after, and this accomplished in turn makes way for its successor. Such being the case it is strange with what lagging steps we approach the parting of the ways. Man the creature of change longing for permanency. You have with these graduating exercises finished a chapter in your lives,—yes, more than a chapter, a volume and the influences to which you have been submitted during the past few years will do much to shape the future.

No Mean University

You are graduates of a University, small in size and poor in financial resources compared with its larger and more wealthy sisters, but one nevertheless in which you may well take pride. The glory of a University consists not in its buildings, though of noble proportions and stately architecture; not in its museums; not in its libraries, but in the greatness of its teachers, its alumni and its students.

This University, the offspring of our ambitious Loyalist ancestors, was founded more than a century ago and during that long period has been the keystone of the educational structure in this province, and has by its teaching in very many instances moulded the character and stimulated the energies of those who in various activities of life have brought credit and renown to themselves, their college and their native land.

The words of the Hippocratic oath come to me here: "Spondeo me in onnibus gratia animi officis nerga universitatem ad extremem vitae halitum perservaturum." Never fail to thus discharge your bounden duty. And let me express the hope that the time may indeed be far distant when the prime object for which this venerable institution was founded and endowed—the giving of a liberal education to the youth of the province—may be so far departed from that the study of the humanities may be neglected, or deposed from the position of honor which it is their right to occupy.

Value Of Classics

A fair working knowledge of Greek and Latin cannot, in my opinion, he omitted from the education of the young without irreparable loss. Time forbids me to say more, but the fact never to be forgotten is that the aim and object of the University of New Brunswick is to lay broad and deep the foundations. May it never degenerate into a mere technical school.

How I would that it might be vouchsafed to me to give utterance today to a single word which soon forgotten may at some future time arise in your consciousness and be of help in the struggle all must maintain.

Moderation

It is not for me, were I indeed able and the Chancellor's time limit removed, to enter upon a discussion of the rules of conduct. Spiritually, I bow to the representatives of the faculty of divinity here present, but in another way, as a member of the profession of medicine, perhaps you will permit one line of advice equally applicable to the mind and body.—Be Moderate.

Moderate in work; moderate in play; moderate in thought and in deed. This middle course, between Scylla and Charybdis, so far from clipping the wings of genius, will strengthen them for higher flights and the easy tempered idler will be spurred to greater ambition.

For we have had given to us a mechanism with which to live our lives and perform our life work. A beautiful mechanism, but none the less mechanical although surpassing in complexity of construction and in variety of action any of human contrivance.

It possesses rare powers of self-repair and great stores of reserve energy, but they are as truly limited as in any mechanical device.

Excessive energy means destruction; excessive rest deterioration.

A strain of the machinery, though unnoticed for a time, is a draft on the bank of nature and surely must be paid. The laws of physiology are just but strangers to mercy.

Economise Energy

It is not given to one to compass human knowledge. Confine your attention largely but not entirely to that which bears upon your life work. This economises energy. Be practical but not materialistic. "The knowledge that a man can use is the only true knowledge; the only knowledge that has life and growth in it and converts itself into practical power; the rest hangs like dust about the brain or dries like rain drops off the stones. And work! Work on! Seek not to know too much, nor think that what you do is of vast value. Work because it is yours to be adjusting the machinery in your own little work-shop of life to the wide mechanism of the universe and time. One wheel set right, one flying belt adjusted, and there is a step forward to the final harmony."

In the land upon which you are entering success does not always come by competitive examinations; honors are not the invariable accompaniment of industry and worth. But success as measured by the multitude is often not quite the same as that tested by a truer and more reliable touchstone—the consciousness of work well performed.

Be Not Discouraged

How often you will fall far short of this standard; you will see of the travail of your souls and be not satisfied; but it is well within the reach of each one of you to arrange and govern your life that you may earn that great satisfaction which so exceeds the more material results of effort. And when the times of stress and strain come upon us, as come they must to all of us, when disappointment dogs your footsteps and your labor seems ever in vain, be not unduly cast down, but "not with outcry to Allah nor any complaining," exercise moderation in your sorrows even as in your joys."

As you stand today upon the shore ready and eager to set out upon the sea of life, the Senate extends to you its congratulations on the work you have already performed, coupled with the wish and sure belief that your progress in the future may equal and even excel that in the past.

"On the shore stood Hiawatha,
Turned and waved his band at parting;
On the clear and luminous water
Launched his birch canoe for sailing
From the pebbles of the margin,
Shoved it forth into the water,
Whispered to it, "Westward! westward!"
And with speed it darted forward.
And the evening sun descending
Set the clouds on fire with redness,
Burned the broad sky like a prairie
Left upon the level water
One long track and trail of splendor
Down whose stream, as down a river
Westward, westward Hiawatha
Sailed into the fiery sunset
Sailed into the purple vapors,
Sailed into the dusk of evening."

May the "dusk of evening" and the darkness of night be dispelled by the rising sun of health, happiness and success for each one of you, as passing out from this University, well equipped for the journey, you strive forward toward the lofty ideals here held on high to beckon you on your way.