382 Presidential Addresses 



and lofty in our several communities, in the State, 

 in the Nation 



You men and women who have had the ad 

 vantages of a college training are not to be ex 

 cused if you fail to do, not as well as, but more 

 than the average man outside who has not had 

 your advantages. Every now and then I meet 

 (at least I meet him in the East, and I dare 

 say he is to be found here) the man who, having 

 gone through college, feels that somehow that con 

 fers upon him a special distinction which relieves 

 him from the necessity of showing himself as good 

 as his fellows. I see you recognize the type. That 

 man is not only a curse to the community, and in 

 cidentally to himself, but he is a curse to the cause of 

 academic education, the college and university train 

 ing, because by his existence he serves as an excuse 

 for those who like to denounce such education. Your 

 education, your training, will not confer on you one 

 privilege in the way of excusing you from effort 

 or from work. All it can do and what it should 

 do, is to make you a little better fitted for such 

 effort, for such work ; and I do not care whether that 

 is in business, politics, in no matter what branch 

 of endeavor, all it can do is by the training you 

 have received, by the advantages you have received, 

 to fit you to do a little better than the average man 

 that you meet. It is incumbent upon you to show 

 that the training has had that effect. It ought to 

 enable you to do a little better for yourselves, and 

 if you have in -you souls capable of a thrilLof gen- 



