CULTURE AND THE STATE 



Very welcome indeed to your speaker is the opportu- 

 nity and privilege of this hour. To be summoned by one 's 

 Alma Mater to any position of privilege is an honor that 

 may well stir his best enthusiasm and endeavor; there 

 is nothing finer ; your speaker knows it and is grateful. 



But to stand before these young people, this class of 

 1915, to speak to them and for them, to voice the con- 

 gratulations and felicitations of this glad season, in pres- 

 ence of proud parents, happy friends, and seemingly 

 supreme accomplishment, of sunshine and roses and all 

 things of beauty and of promise this, I say, touches 

 your speaker with a sympathy, a pathos, an appreciation 

 of all that wells up in the human heart, and really makes 

 the honor of the moment, the program, the titled and 

 stately pageant of these older people, a thing of alto- 

 gether less concern. 



Yours, young people, is this day and hour; long on 

 the creeping calendar of youth have you waited for its 

 coming, and a stranger now shall not intermingle with 

 its joy. Your speaker is as one who has long traveled 

 on the road you this day enter. He has been called back 

 from far down the way, perchance to tell you how the 

 travel seems its gladness, its hardness, if such there 

 be; its arbors of refreshment, its opportunities and re- 

 wards. 



But these fresh aspiring spirits may not be cheated 



