Things Worth While 25 



French compte; no count, had not the Roman emperor 

 been surrounded by attendants, cotwtes, those who jour- 

 neyed with him, in time the officers of his court, the 

 governors of sections of his realm. And so the Roman 

 emperors go marching up and down before us. County 

 is not English; it stands for the old Teutonic shire-, 

 and so by whatever term you call the territory, the 

 sheriff or shire reeve is, in English lands, lord of the 

 situation to this day. And that is your history and 

 mine. 



This is just a glimpse of history as illustrating the 

 conditions under which we live. Everything about us, 

 all our institutions are historic; they are what they are 

 for reason. Why do we have two chambers in our legis- 

 lature? And why is one of those called a senate*! 



But these things are perhaps less important. We use 

 many things because we have them; they come to us as 

 part of our inheritance and we are less concerned as to 

 their significance. Nay, we sometimes persist in retain- 

 ing customs and institutions meaningless if not actually 

 inconvenient. Some people actually advocate the aboli- 

 tion of the United States Senate: why not? 



But this historical relation touches us more intimately 

 still. We have in the past a personal, an individual 

 interest which, when realized, may wonderfully aid in 

 solving many of the problems of life. I have little 

 sympathy with the thought of ancestry; possibly for 

 good reasons ; nevertheless there are many things in our 

 personal history which we can never afford to forget. 

 We are nearly all of us of Teutonic or Celtic origin. 

 This means that we are by nature free. We are free- 



