218 MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 

 GENTLEMEN OF THE OLD SCHOOL 



A few days ago at the annual luncheon of the Mount Holyoke 

 Alumnae Association of New York City, President Wooley 

 said: "We are in danger of filling up the blessed margins 

 of quiet." She referred to the over-strenuous activities of 

 the modern college girl, especially in college dramatics and 

 fraternities. 



Kindred dangers are common to all our colleges, but the 

 gravest, I believe, is the danger that our new college life may with- 

 hold from the world the best thing which the old college con- 

 tributed to it. What that something was will be sufficiently 

 connoted by the simple mention of the title, "gentlemen of the 

 old school." Such citizens the old college created. 



We are too often told today that all avenues into positions of 

 prominence and usefulness bear on their gates one or the other 

 of two legends, "Push" or "Pull." None of the merely Philis- 

 tine elements of society can here be discussed. One very real 

 peril, however lurks in the path of our new education, and this, 

 in conclusion, we must for a moment consider. I refer to the 

 large amount of time demanded by laboratory and practice work 

 in our highly technical courses, and the relatively limited amount 

 of time given to that training and cultivation which frees the 

 mind. 



We are in danger that our strength may become our weakness. 

 The educated man today, the man who would be freed by his 

 college cultivation from the trammels of ignorance and incom- 

 petence, must be scrupulous to reserve for communion between 

 his own soul and the best spirits of the world certain blessed 

 margins of quiet. And we who are responsible for outlining 

 courses of study should see to it that our institutions, east and 

 west, north and south, turn out, not merely good farmers, good 

 housekeepers, good mechanics, good engineers — good special- 

 ists in whatever department, whether of labor, superintendence, 

 instruction, or research — but, at the same time, turn out grad- 



