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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. 660 



of our country, bids you God-speed, and 

 offers you its commendation of work well 

 done, its confident expectation of the 

 equally successful work which it has a 

 right to look for at your hands in the 

 broader fields of your future activity. 

 But the Jefferson Medical College does not 

 say " Good-bye " to you, no more than 

 you can, in the higher and broader sense 

 of mental and moral activity, ever break 

 the bond which you have here formed for 

 all time. A valedictory must, vinder such 

 circumstances, of necessity become a salu- 

 tatory to the men who, having completed 

 the preliminary stage of their professional 

 life, enter into the full development and 

 exercise of their chosen duties, a welcome 

 to the broader expansion of their coming 

 usefulness to mankind, a greeting of fel- 

 lowship, not a farewell. It is not the 

 bricks and mortar, the iron and stone of 

 the Jefferson Medical College which your 

 memory will hold among its most valued 

 and cherished associations. No matter 

 where your lot in life may place you, your 

 thoughts and your hearts will turn, with 

 the image of your alma mater before your 

 mental vision, to the men you have here 

 encountered, men who have taught you 

 and modelled your lines of thought, men 

 who stand to you as examples of success in 

 the chosen field of their work, as standards 

 of professional honor and of an honored 

 profession, of upright life and dealing, of 

 high place in their community. These are 

 the men who have given to this college of 

 yours, all through the long years of its 

 honorable career, the high reputation and 

 exalted standing of which you are to-day 

 pioud. That is what the Jefferson means 

 to you, and will continue to mean all your 

 life, and those ties are not broken by 

 graduation. You, the most recent gradu- 

 ates, share with your predecessors, and will 

 so share with those who are to follow you 



in the years to come, an heritage of untold 

 value in the influence and incentive which 

 your alma mater through these men has 

 extended to your development. 



But it seems to me that it is not enough 

 for you to be merely justly proud of this 

 association, to be satisfied with a grateful 

 acknowledgment of your institution's serv- 

 ices to you as undergraduates. Noblesse 

 oblige— and I think that each one of you 

 owes her a debt, which for value received 

 in stimulation, example, incentive and 

 education, you will try to discharge to the 

 best of your individual ability. It is true, 

 as we have just said, that the strength of 

 a school lies not in the value and extent of 

 costly buildings and equipment, but in the 

 force, character and ability of the men 

 selected to perform its work. That is 

 clear, because they form a concentrated 

 group, where the individual effort and the 

 combined efficiency are evidenced in the 

 daily contact with the student body and 

 with the public at large. But it is also 

 true that the real strength of a teaching 

 institution is dependent in equal propor- 

 tion upon the character and standing of 

 the men sent forth from its training to 

 their life's work. Their relation to their 

 college is not so strongly in direct evidence, 

 because they are distributed as individuals, 

 but it is none the less real and vital. 

 Their very dispersion affords the oppor- 

 tunity of carrying to all parts the influ- 

 ence and stimulation which they have re- 

 ceived, the standards which they have been 

 trained to hold in their work and in 

 their broader relation to the community. 

 Lowering of these standards, failure and 

 inefficiency in the work— that is, perhaps 

 you may think, a wrong which will pri- 

 marily wreak itself on the individual at 

 fault. But it has a more extended mean- 

 ing, it carries beyond the mere personality 

 involved, it is a wrong to the institution to 



