12
UNIVERSITY COURIER.
be particularly industrious or enduring; but they are strong of will and firm of purpose, undaunted by fear of responsibility, single-minded and trustworthy. In practical life a man of this sort is worth any number of merely clever and learned people. Of course, I do not mean to imply for a moment that success in examination is incompatible with the possession of character such as I have just defined it; but failure in examination is no evidence of the want of such character. And this leads me to administer, from my point of view, the crumb of comfort which on these occasions is ordinarily offered to those whose names do not appear on the prize-list.
It is quite true that practical life is a kind of long competitive examination, conducted by that severe pedagogue, Professor Circumstance. But my experience leads me to conclude that his marks are given much more for character than for cleverness. Hence, though I have no doubt that those boys who have received prizes to-day have already given rise to a fair hope that the future may see them prominent, perhaps brilliantly distinguished members of society, yet neither do I think it at all unlikely that among the undistinguished crowd there may lie the making of some simple soldier, whose practical sense and indomitable courage may save an army led by characterless cleverness to the brink of destruction; or some plain man of business, who by dint of sheer honesty and firmness may slowly and surely rise to prosperity and honor, when his more brilliant compeers, for lack of character, have gone down, with all who trusted them, to hopeless ruin. Such things do happen.
Hence, let none of you be discouraged. Those who have won prizes have made a good beginning; those who have not may yet make that good ending which is better than a good beginning. No life is wasted unless it ends in sloth, dishonesty, or cowardice. No success is worthy of the name unless it is won by honest industry and brave breasting of the waves of fortune. Unless at the end of life some exhalation of the dawn still hangs about the palpable and the familiar—unless there is some transformation of the real into the best dreams of youth—depend upon it, whatever outward success may have gathered round a man, he is but an elaborate and a mischievous failure.
It has become a settled conclusion with those who have spent a number of years at college that fully one-half the benefit comes from the society work.
In the school you are a listener and learner in the society, a speaker and teacher. At one place you receive, at the other impart information. The one makes you a full man, the other a ready one. No student should think of going through college without being a member of a literary society.
It is the ready man that succeeds everywhere, and nothing will make one a ready man but long and constant practice. The great benefit from the society that is rarely mentioned is of the utmost importance, and that is, it strengthens the memory.
"We are learned, not so far as we have learned, but only as far as we remember." The practice of ready debating fixes facts and principles in the memory that will last for life. It calls up for instant use all the knowledge, not only of dates, facts and theories, but what is of more consequence, of human nature, how to persuade, how to convince, how to present. These are the things that the debater early learns, and the things without which no one can expect to succeed as a public speaker.
A RHYME OF THE TIME.
BY NELLIE G. CONE, IN SCRIBNER'S.
Miss Pallas Eudora Von Blurky She didn't know chicken from turkey; High Spanish and Greek she could fluently speak, But her knowledge of poultry was murky.
She could tell the great-uncle of Moses,
And the dates of the Wars of the Roses,
And the reasons of things—why the Indians wore rings In their red, aboriginal noses!
Why Shakspere was wrong in his grammar, And the meaning of Emerson's "Brahma." And she went chipping rocks with a little black box And a small geological hammer!
She had views upon co-education And the principal needs of the nation, And her glasses were blue,and the number she knew Of the stars in each high constellation.
And she wrote in a hand-writing clerky,
And talked with an emphasis jerky,
And she painted on tiles in the sweetest of styles;
But she didn't know chicken from turkey!
The Paris papers sued by Don Carlos have been acquitted. The Court ruled that, though political personages have a right to respect as regards their private life, it is not certain that a pretender endeavoring to get possession of a throne otherwise than through the regular practice of the institutions of the country, does not place himself in an exceptional position.