32 Presidential Addresses 



to do it for the sake of doing it well, not for the 

 sake of any reward that comes afterward or in con 

 nection with it. Of course, gentlemen, that is true 

 of almost every other walk of life, just exactly as 

 true as it is in politics. A clergyman is not worth 

 his salt if he finds himself bound to be a clergyman 

 for the material reward of that profession. Every 

 doctor who has ever succeeded has been a man in 

 capable of thinking of his fee when he did a note 

 worthy surgical operation. A scientific man, a 

 writer, a historian, an artist, can only be a good 

 man of science, a first-class artist, a first-class writer, 

 if he does his work for the sake of doing it well; 

 and this is exactly as true in political life, exactly 

 as true in every form of social effort, in every kind 

 of work done for the public at large. The man 

 who does work worth doing is the man who does 

 it because he can not refrain from doing it, the 

 man who feels it borne in on him to try that par 

 ticular job and see if he can not do it well. And 

 so it is with a general in the field. The man in 

 the Civil War who thought of any material reward 

 for what he did was not among the men whose 

 names you read now on the honor roll of American 

 history. 



So the work that our colleges can do is to fit 

 their graduates to do service to fit the bulk of 

 them, the men who can not go in for the highest 

 type of scholarship, to do the ordinary citizen's 

 service for the country ; and they can fit them to do 

 this service only by training them in character. To 



