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The University Courier.
"After the fair ideal of college life has been overthrown and it is found that the college has its faults just as any other fact of the world, the student asks himself 'of what good is my college course?' The question may be answered in many different ways and in all there is no doubt truth. But when the student comes to look back over the four years spent in college he will find the one thing he would not exchange for all else he might have hoped to gain is the influence of the noble men and women with whom he came in contact there. He finds it is to them he owes the good of all work done in college for it was from them he learned its bearing upon life. What would have been a shapeless mass of facts became, when interpreted by worthy teachers, the means to a pure and nobler life. Nothing has such power to move the student to a better life than the example of men and women who in public life and in their homes are fair, unprejudiced, just."
"Tempted Fate will Leave the Loftiest Star was the subject of W. D. Ross' oration. Mr. Ross, though not having a good voice, is a very earnest speaker. He said:
"Lord Macaulay has said that 'Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in their imagination may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose view of the present.' This statement contains the germs of a false philosophy. It is only the ideal in the imagination that can result in the perfect in production, and not the achievements of the past but the possibilities of the future should be the guide for the present. To the American his own age is the golden age of the world; to him the past is all degenerate, and of the future he reckons not. And it is just this self-complacency and self-satisfaction that is fraught with the saddest portends for the future of the republic. When the incentive to improvement disappears retrogression has begun.
"It is the irrational enthusiasm of the masses for a party name that has generated the power and maintained the supremacy of the practical
politician, that most baneful personality in American history. It is the servile acquiescence of intelligent party men to the dictates of ignorant party bosses that above all other causes has enervated political virtue and engendered political crimes. 'Principles not men' is a delusive and dangerous motto in a land where personality is the paramount qualification for preferment. Our leaders are continually becoming more degenerate and depraved and their system of rewards more vicious and venal."
Ralph Dorman O'Leary, of Burlington, spoke upon "Learning and Life." Mr. O'Leary has a good voice and is a deep thinker and a pleasing writer. He said:
"A modern English writer has said that art and poetry are valuable only if they can be absorbed into life, and that life is not valuable because it can be absorbed into art and poetry. Let us apply these remarks to the books in any great library, especially the learned books, and see if they have any real bearing upon life. Taking for example the profound works of philological scholars. They deal with words of every kind; but are they anything more than words? Can they really do anything more than minister to the the vanity of the philologian himself? Many of us believe they do not. Is this belief justifiable? No, and for this reason: one of the fundamental principles of human nature is that in order that many men should care even a little for anything good which does not appeal directly to their emotional natures or their love of pleasure it is necessary that a few should care for it supremely. These learned books, which seem dry and lifeless to many of us, are the creations of men who care for learning and education supremely. Without such men our modern university, with all its incalculable influence upon life would not exist, or would at any rate be immeasurably less useful than it is."
The master oration, "More Freedom for the Free," was delivered by Prof. Miles Wilson Sterling.
The orchestra rendered some delightful se-