Catholic college. Your principles are not taught you for the sake of exercises of piety, nor attendance at religious duties. These you have got to do anyhow, but they are meant to inflow into every action of your life and to make the basic principle of them all, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." You are graduating from a Catholic college with high aims, you have had many advantages, more than are accorded usually in our time to men of your years in the training of heart and will as well as intellect, and much is expected of you. You are rich in real education and a stewardship of great intellectual and moral wealth is given over to you, and you must be better than others and be, above all, ever helpful to others. Your education was not given for your benefit, but for that of the community. Your neighbors are all round you. See that at the end of your life they shall all be happier because you have lived. If you do not do so you shall sadly disappoint the hopes of your teachers and, above all, you shall be false to the trust that has been confided to you. Pass on the torch of charity. Let all the world be dear to you in the old-fashioned sense of that dear old word charity, not merely distantly friendly in the new-fangled sense of the long Greek term philanthropy. Be just while you are living your lives and you will not have the burden of philanthropy that so many rich men are now complaining of in your older years, and, above all, you will not have the contempt and aversion of those who may accept your bounty, but who know how questionably you acquired the means of giving it and are not really thankful. I have done but for just one word. Be just and fear not. If you will be just in your dealing with men, you will have no need for further advice and no need for repentance. I thank you. "It isn't so much the ignorance of mankind that makes them ridiculous as the knowing so many things that ain't so." JOSH BILLINGS, writing as "Uncle Esek" in the "Century." NEW ENGLANDISM * THERE is a little story told of a supposed recent celestial experience, that seems, to some people, at least perhaps it may be said without exaggeration, to most of those alas! not born in New England-to illustrate very well the attitude of New Englanders, and especially of the Bostonese portion of the New England population, towards all the rest of the world and the heavens besides. St. Peter, the celestial gate-keeper, is supposed to be disturbed from the slumbers that have been possible so much oftener of late years because of the infrequent admissions since the world has lost interest in other-worldliness, by an imperious knocking at the gate. "Who's there?" he asks in a very mild voice, for he knows by long experience that that kind of knocking usually comes from some grand dame from the terrestrial regions. The reply, in rather imperative The material for this was collected for a banquet address in Boston on Evacuation Day, 1909, before the Knights of Columbus. It was developed for various lectures on the history of education, in order to illustrate how easy it is to produce a tradition which is not supported by historical documents. In its present form it appeared as an article in the West Coast Magazine for July, 1910, at the request of the editor, Mr. John S. McGroarty, with whom, more years ago than either of us care to recall now, I had learned the New England brand of United States history at a country school. |