THE COLLEGE-MAN. 35 1 



aspirations; it has no more value, unused for noble purposes, than any 

 other mineral, than the most common and the dirtiest of dirt. 



Struggling for wealth for a great purpose glorifies the otherwise 

 inglorious contest with all the lowest elements of greed and selfish 

 ambitions and meanness in all its protean forms. Williamson, living 

 a life of almost miserly frugality, seeking and saving and piling up 

 wealth from early manhood to old age, living and dying in apparent 

 penury that he might do a great work at the end, becomes a noble figure 

 when seen by the reflected light of his philanthropy and the fine closing 

 act of that long, inglorious life. The founding of the Williamson 

 School for orphan boys where they can find homes and careful training 

 and apprenticeship to useful trades, and later work with selected mas- 

 ters and employers, is a deed which renders immortal the man whose 

 life seemed so unheroic. That act built for him a memorial that shall 

 last as long as human respect and admiration for heroic deeds and love 

 for self-sacrifice, self-immolation in a good cause, shall endure. He 

 gave opportunity to humble and poverty-laden youth aspiring to educate 

 themselves for their work. 



Already we are seeing evidence of the change that is coming and 

 of the value of careful training of the gymnastic and the educational 

 improvement of the man through systematic and scientific instruction 

 and drill. The leaders of even the world of business are educated men, 

 as a rule. Morgan, the leader of finance to-day, is a college-man, a 

 graduate of Gottingen; none of this class of men is likely to advocate 

 the endeavor of a people to become a crowd of wealthy boors rather than 

 a nation of gentlemen, scholars and wise men. The great financiers 

 of the coiintry are now usually college-men; the heads of railways are 

 often of that class, even though they have begun at the foot of the lad- 

 der ; all distinctively learned men are of that class ; our greatest men in 

 literature, science and art are practically all educated and cultivated 

 men; the inventors of the telegraph and the telephone were both edu- 

 cated and, in fact, learned men; all the great men in medicine and 

 surgery are college-men; all the great lawyers and every great jurist 

 on the bench is of the same rating. We make our presidents of learned 

 men and usually of college-men; the same is true of the members of 

 their cabinets, of the judges on the Supreme Court bench, of the chiefs 

 of bureau, and practically all men in liighly responsible positions. 

 Our foreign ministers and ambassadors where reflecting special credit 

 upon their country, like Lowell and White and Hay and Choate, have 

 been not only college-men but distinguished for their attainments in 

 the highest fields of academic learning. 



In engineering no man will in the coming generation have even 

 an average chance of success professionally, without uniting to the 

 essentials characteristic of a ' general of industry ' in generations 



