88 
THE GUIDE TO NATURE 
to the Sound Beach public. Throngs 
of people, young and old, in real pride, 
in strong hopes for the future or in idle 
curiosity, strolled through our build- 
ings. We welcomed them all and some 
of even the doubters are now numbered 
among our best friends and have stood 
by us faithfully for more than a decade. 
But Sound Beach friends, in the very 
success there is a danger to you and to 
the management of ArcAdiA. There 
is danger of our stopping and saying, 
“There it is. We have done it. Could 
anything be better?’ Once in a while 
I frankly confess that I feel like say- 
ing with you, “Isn t it beautiful? Isn’t 
it efficient? What more can heart de- 
sire?” Then it comes to me over- 
whelmingly, as I want it to come to 
you, that Sound Beach is worthy of 
the best. Do not let us be compla- 
cently self-satisfied with anything we 
have done. We are going to have bet- 
ter school, better churches, better busi- 
ness facilities, better roads, better sur- 
face drainage and a better ArcAdiA. 
The thing that does not grow is dead. 
In this world there is no standing still. 
If Sound Beach and its ArcAdiA do 
not go on to better things, if they do 
not constantly win new friends, if new 
families do not come and build up 
Sound Beach’s idle acres, if we do not 
have improved facilities of every kind, 
if ArcAdiA does not grow into a gigan- 
tic Nature University, then it has failed 
to fulfill its mission. “The greatest 
good to the greatest number of people” 
must be the ambitious slogan of the 
community and its community center. 
We are at the very beginnings of 
things and I sincerely hope to live to 
see the time when I shall print in this 
magazine and call the attention of 
Sound Beach people to the ArcAdiA 
of 1920 and it will excite a smile at its 
present primitiveness as much as does 
that original little lunch wagon post 
office. 
Think, my friends, think of 
the tremendous possibilities of 
Sound Beach and think of what 
The Agassiz Association has thus 
far accomplished for it. To the 
ends of the earth it has made the place 
known. Let us go on to bigger and 
greater achievements. Your dollars 
in this Institution have always yielded 
good returns. Now frankly admit it. 
Dividends beyond your wildest expec- 
tations, yet not for a moment, not one 
of you, no, not even the management 
itself, in those early days dreamed of 
what it would now be accomplishing in 
1920. 
Pause, if you please, as I pause and 
with satisfied feeling look over the past 
but let it be for only a moment. On, 
let us go on, to the great Nature Uni- 
versity, on to have Sound Beach the 
A BEAUTIFUL BLOCK WAS MADE POSSIBLE AXD AROSE OUT OF OLD ARCADIA. 
