One of his strongest  Dr. A.S. Welch, Prest Iowa Agrl College,  Ames Iowa,  Grad. Address  1878  (slightly modified in pencil for  subsequent delivery elsewhere.)  The Ideal Worker.  And now, how can my  words harmonize better with the  thoughts natural to the hour than  by sketching for you with rapid  touches some of the ideals of life  which every large and generous soul  will surely seek to realize.  After  four years of intellectual effort  I need not assure you that in the  order of things an ideal of every  excellence must precede its actual 



attainment.  In every undertaking  within the scope of human experience  a definite notion of the object sought  is a prime requisite to success. Not  a single great project by which soci-  ety advances but some individual  thinker has shaped it beforehand  as a pains-taking artist shapes  his figure of clay [?] it is cut into  marble. Not only does every indi-  vidual achievement find its proto-  type in a mental image but all  the minor links in that chain of acts which make up the sum total of a life are  preceded by a mental chain whose 



links and length are precisely similar.  And so all productive labor, wheth-  er of the hand, the eye, the muscle  or the brain is simply an effort to  transmute the inner thought into the  outer fact.   	Thus wealth, power, skill,  culture, even character are inevitably   prefigured and then slowly and  painfully realized. The marvellous  achievements of industry by which  the Earth teems with plenty and  the countless triumphs  of art 



by which it glows with beauty are  only ideas which have, through hu-  man agency, put on the happiest  forms of matter. There stands  not a hut or a palace today  that was not first built by the   imagination out of "such stuff   as dreams are made of."  There sails  not a ship today on the real ocean  that did not sail first as a phan-  tom ship on the ocean of fancy.  Franklin caught the lightning   in his thought before a spark was  emitted from the cloud to the key. 



Even the boy must invariably send up  an ideal kite before the paper one can  skim the air.   	If then all the fruits of  science industry and art are simply,  the inevitable outgrowth of human  conceptions can be not ascend by  analogy from art to nature, from  humanity to Deity and accepting  the sublime doctrine of Plato affirm  that divine conceptions are the models  of things, that ideals precede and  govern alike the making of a pin  and the making of a planet, that  the celestial spheres that whirl in con- 



centric orbits around the sun which  in turn changing its planets to moons  careers with its vast compeers around  an undiscovered centre, are omnipo-  tent ideals of form and motive ex-  pressed on a scale of unspeakable  grandeur. In all things that con-   cern our welfare finite or infinite, in  work or play, in society, education,   politics, government, religion, the   invariable order of progress  is ideal, action, attainment.  And  among all the incitements that  prompt us to effort two are of most  vital moment, namely, a clear and  accurate knowledge of what we are 



and an intense and clean cut ideal of  what we should be. For it is the exact-  ness of the one and the spur of the other  that give to character its growth, to  labor its fruits and to the entire life  its highest values. Indeed lacking   a just knowledge of our mental   resources we surely overrate them and  so have no motive for seeking that  which we think we already possess,  and lacking ideals of our possible  attainments we certainly can never  hope to gain that which we have  never conceived of. Without definite  notions of the good, the better and 



the best within the grasp of steady  effort, society would be given over to  aimless torpor and to mere animal  impulse and it may therefore be  said in literal truth without a   touch of hyperbole that ideals  which are just, attainable and pro-  gressive, are the great intellectual urgent want  of the world. And every man there-  in in whose life the struggle has  been crowned with triumph, owes  his eminence to the lofty ideals that   thrilled his pulses and fired his ef-  forts. Woe to the individual or the  nation whose ideals have fallen 



below the intellectual and moral level  on which they stand. For the one  shall lapse into idle hopeless selfish-  ness and the other be doomed to  perpetual stagnation.  	In view of the fact  then that your future success de-  pends primarily on the ideals you   strive to realize I shall therefore offer for   your inspection, with such vividness  as language may give it a sketch  of the ideal self, the ideal friend, the  ideal citizen, the ideal worker, and   the ideal man. Now since self which  commences and man which crowns 



the series have some of the common  tints which belong to synonyms let   us spike them to separate walls of  thought with their respective defini-  tions.   	First by an ideal self I mean  all that we have and are in com-  mon with the other  vertebrates devel-  oped to the highest perfection achiev-  able and furnishing as strong and  stable basis on which the  higher  ideals can build. By the ideal man  I mean the full and harmonious com-  plement of all those capacities which  though resting upon the carnal rise  above it into the purer regions of the 



esthetic and the spiritual. In other  words, he who upon the foundation of   a genuine self builds up a character  which embodies in just proportion the  loftier elements, fills out to the largest  limits of the word the ideal of a man,  For it is the animal plus benevolence  knowledge, love, beauty, truth and  goodness that make the man. But  however symmetrical the structure   it rushes to ruin if the foundation  be weak and crumbling. It will   not abide when the winds blow,  and the rain descends, and the  floods come. 



It were indeed a sub-  lime existence if these souls of ours com-  prised only the pure intellect, the  pure reason, all-seeing intuitions,   and the finer sensibilities wholly  untrammeled by the murky ap-  petites and the mud-gathering senses.  It were indeed a loftier life if this  body were made of a more etherial   mold which, secure against hunger,   cold, disease and decay could  defy gravitation and find amuse-  ment for its inmate by soaring  to other spheres. But the vulgar fact  is we cannot soar except in sen-  timent, we cannot visit the stars 



except in fancy, love, alas, is the  counterpart of hate; our benevolence  is forever pitted against selfishness,   which often overpowers it, our sym-  pathies are clouded by self-love.  If under rare incitement we rise  to heroism we must soon shuffle  down to dine. Be our esthetic  and moral  sentiments as lofty   as they may all the same, at sure  intervals will hunger and thirst  assail us, will the cold chill and  the heat oppress us, and drowsiness 



return nightly to lay its heavy fingers  upon our eyelids. If the intellect  struggle out to gather new treasures  of knowledge then against the strug-  gle will cry out a host of Earth-  born sensations which, if we for-  get or neglect them, will turn into  dragons and devour us. If the  ideals of the infinite, of grandeur  and truth that lie above us propel  us upward like the streaming fire-  work, the powerful gravitation  of our carnalities too often bring 



us back to Earth like spent and shrunken  cinders that fall and offend the eye.  Indeed it is hard to overstate this  powerful all prevailing tyranny of  the flesh. Withdraw the air we  breathe a moment and science and   art are worthless. Lie but one  artery and the poetry of Milton is  no better than dawdling prose.  Let the mercury fall a few degrees  and the glowing hearth is more   beautiful than the glowing heav-  ens. Let dyspepsia clutch the  



tortured stomach with its iron  fingers and the skies are clothed in  a gloom that blackens the  very sun. Let pestilence, famine,  flood, earthquake or cyclone come  upon us and all the higher ideals  we cherish totter and topple over  in an instant. And so strong  and perfect is this despotism of   the body that many a physiol-  ogist studying with exclusive fer-  vor its marvellous mechanism  of bone, muscle, artery and brain,  declares that the higher ideals are 



figments of fancy and that, in man,  the animal is all in all. Lacking  the profundity which the study of  both sides of our nature would give  the mere physicist proclaims that the  brain makes ideas as the press makes  print or exudes thought as the tear-  gland exudes tears, that this thought  machine is beautiful and wonder-  ful and all that but still only a   machine, propelled like other ma-  chines by external forces. But hear,  O, physicist, the voice of conscious-  ness which if she deceives in one  deceives in all when she declares 



that she is not the passive product  but the propelling power. Where  on Earth is another finite mill  that grinds out an infinite grist,  or where, I pray you, in the heav-  ens above or the Earth beneath, is   another machine that is run by  its own products. And who shall   presume to say that these products  are in part real and in part il-  lusory? Who shall dare affirm  that our lower instincts attested  by sense are less fallacious than  the upper instincts attested by reas-  on? Who shall determine beyond 



cavil that man is one third an-  imal and two-thirds dupe? Not  he, who scrutinizing matter alone  shuts out from his benighted  vision the wider and grander  realm of mind. Or if he claim  such audacious license then  let him say whether this stupen-  dous mockery of truth springs  from the perfidy of a creator  or from the survival of the fit-  test. If from the Creator then  neither time nor space could  measure the inconceivable vast- 



ness of his guilt. If from the sur-  vival of the fittest, then does life-  long insanity constitute the fittest?  Did man alone of kindred brutes  rise from all fours and reach to-  wards heaven to grasp the phan-  toms of fancy? Is he the highest  of animals by reason if a per-  petual hallucination? Not he!  He is lower and more groveling  than the crawling reptile if the  very root of his nature is a lie.  No, the animal and the spirit-  ual, the brute and the angel,  the body that hungers for bread, 



and the soul that hungers for  immortality all united in a   common manhood, are equal-  ly real and the fitting ideals  you form of each are equally  realizable.   	But this animal self  of ours is, at any rate, a large  factor in the sum-total of life's  values. Being the basis of human  existence it lies near the Earth  and so gathers something of its  grossness. Fire and water, solid  and fluid, the electric current, the 



air and ether unite with subtle complex-  ity to hold and hide the marvellous se-  cret of life. In its calmer moods the  human frame is, in outline, a thing of  beauty manifestly akin to flowers, brooks  and sunshine, but too often when the  fury of passion rages, betraying its  affinity with the conflagration the  cataract and the cyclone. And then  it is that he approaches the godlike  who can say to his tumultuous soul  in a voice potent as that which   calmed the stormy sea "peace be  still." But we are fully aware  that this grosser stock of our na- 



ture on which the intellectual and  moral scions are grafted is not of  our own planting. We may modify   its growth and prune it into sym-  metry but we cannot control its  original character. That comes to  us by lineal descent full of the  countless effects of past ideals  whether lofty or low, and in us it  is only an instance of that per-  petual renewal by which the  earth is peopled and the innu-  merable generations come and  go. "Man" says Emerson, "is 



physically as well as metaphys-  ically a thing of shreds and  patches borrowed unequally from  good and bad ancestors and a   misfit from the start." It is one of   the purposes of a noble life, I add,  to reduce the patchwork by Gods help to a har-  mony of color and texture, to  lend to it through the ideal of a   genuine self-hood the qualities  of beauty and strength and then  to pass it on. To subject the self  to a steady intellectual and  moral control, to subdue all  



surplus sensualities to their precise  limits, to make hunger and thirst  simply subservient to health, la-  bor, to vigor, sleep to restora-  tion, fear to safety, anger to defense,  in short every passion to its pur-  pose and that only, and to make  the whole the base of a pyramid  whose acme is love and duty, this  when harmonized and made  permanent, is the ideal of a gen-  uine self.  	But out of the ideal  self thus humanized and held



in salutary check with two higher  elements super-added, namely  benevolence and sympathy, springs  the ideal friend, or to submit   the fact to figurative statement  when similar natures in whom   centripetal sympathy overcomes  centrifugal selfishness, gravitate  into one constellation they  beautify the skies with the gold-  en light of an ideal friend-  ship, an ideal on which, simple  as it is, rest family, state, govern-  ments, the nation, and the whole  fabric of human brotherhood. 



For in proportion as benevolence  triumphs over self-love, in that  proportion will our hearts go out  with irresistible yearning towards  our fellows. And it is a felicitous  adjustment of our complex  nature that we reach a higher el-  evation of soul when we live in  our sympathies rather than in our  sensations. More wintry and des-  olate than the arctic ice-fields  is that life on which no rays of   tenderness have ever shone, while  many a life though struggling  with poverty and want and bur- 



thened with a toil that trenches on  the night's repose, is lifted into  light by the devotion of one  loving heart. Though cares op-  press and calumny assails us,  though the load of anxieties we  daily carry be heavier than that   which pressed on the shoulders  of the stooping Atlas, we can   yet bear bravely up against  them all, if only there are those  whose eyes brighten and whose  pulses quicken at our approach.  And this benign gift of affection 



which indeed has its roots in a just and  salutary self regard, is the very con-  dition which takes us out of our-  selves and enables us to attain that  habitual self abnegation for other's  good which is the very essence of a  generous character.  	For the sympathy  which underlies friendship widens  out to include within its charmed  circle all kindred souls, but  selfishness unmingled with the   nobler elements, is essentially  narrowing and would gather 



into its own shriveled and shrunken  heart all the good of the universe  to batten upon it alone. Since then  the qualities that constitute man-  liness find their growth in friend-  ship let us gather them for your  inspection into the picture of an   ideal friend.  	In the first place then,  friendship is the affinity of souls  that are closely akin in the better  elements of character. It is a co-  attraction of similar natures  whose force increases in propor-  tion as the qualities from which 



it springs rise in the scale of human  excellence. It is the pre-established  harmony between those melodies  of different minds which are pro-  duced on identical keys, and   its value enlarges as the melo-  dies multiply. Its deeper tones  are kindred virtues and moral  convictions. Purity, rectitude of   purpose, enthusiasm and inspi-  ration blend together in perfect  and beautiful unison. But  there can be no real harmony   between minds wherein the melo-  dies are utterly wanting. Mere noises 



yells and frightful execrations make  no musical union. So men embruted  by vice, wickedness, cruelty and  crime are perpetually discrepant  with each other. Insatiate self-  seeking, or colossal self-conceit  in whatever characters they become  the ruling traits, are mutually  repellant. Intense selfishness  and all the uncanny imps it  hatches in the human soul do  not naturally affiliate with kin-  dred broods in their minds. The  whole wretched stock breeds in-  and-in and tending to deformity  and to solitude. And they unite 



with others only under the pressure of  self-interest. Thank God for that!  The triumph of justice and truth  the supremacy of law and the   progress of society depend on their  natural bent towards seclusion.  Let them retire to their congenial  deserts and reign alone.   	There are friendships  of like pursuits, of like tastes, of   artistic acquirements, friendships  of culture, magnanimity, hero-  ic fortitude but it is only when  all these together come into sym-  pathetic contact in kindred 



characters that friendship reaches its  highest form, its finest exhiliration.  And this is ideal friendship. But  there can be no community of love  between misanthropes, slanderers,  sharpers ,cheats or tricksters. Nothing  but fear, doubt, jealousy and dark  suspicion. "Honor among thieves"  or the simplicity of natural af-  fection among savages are mere  sentimental whimsies.  Friendship  is not an attraction between fe-  rocities or inhumanities of  whatever sort. It is not a plant  that flourishes in the mire and 



slums of vice. It is moreover spirit-  ual and not commercial. Who-  ever calls the ties of business or  of interest, or the mere associations  for manufacture, gain, or gov-  ernment even by the name of  friendship profanes that sacred  name. For friendship is sim-  ply an unerring fascination  subsisting between the nobler  similitudes of mind, attended  with lesser disparities to give  it seasoning and piquancy,  and its inner nature is immuta-  ble. Nor is it a treasure that 



can be prospected for and dug  up as the miner seeks and digs  his gold. If we only attain the  finer qualities it demands  they will spontaneously and surely  find their fellowships.  	A fundamental  element in the ideal friend is   unvarying sincerity. He deals  with a friend, with the same  candor and clearness as with  his own thoughts. Let the inmost  soul be transparent as crystal  to the eyes of those we love and  let them see their own images  magnified and reflected therein.  



Concealment, deceit or treachery  is the bane of friendship, poison-  ing all its vital currents. Once  betrayed by social treason it   expires and you can no more  resuscitate it than you can raise  the dead, for its very life is perfect  trust.   	Another prime character-  istic of the ideal friend is quick  and strong sympathies. When  superior natures unite in amity   sympathy is the fusing element.  No matter how many and great  the superiorities we may have 



gained if sympathy be wanting  we fly into cold antagonisms.   Floating icebergs, though the sun  gild their summits with a   thousand rainbows cannot   mingle until the warmth of  the ocean streams shall melt them  into fluid. Admiration for  another's merits pride in his at-  tainments and joy at his tri-  umphs as though they were our  own, will kindle in our hearts  that fervor of attachment im-  plied in the divine precept, "thou  shalt love thy neighbor, as thyself."  



Another quality essen-  tial to the ideal friend is stead-  fastness. That friendship alone is  worthy of the name that endures  to the end. That friendship alone  is worth the seeking that lasts  not only through sunshine and   serene skies and gentle breezes  but stands like granite moun-  tains when the storm rages and  the winds and the waters are   are out.  Seek and sustain  friendships, young ladies and  gentlemen, that shall be found- 



ed on the grander elements of  soul, friendships that shall out-  last all possible vicissitudes,  friendships that are pure, sincere,  loving and steadfast, and then  shall you approach the perfect-  ion and enjoy the fruits that are  bodied forth in the ideal friend.  	But if individuals   need the exalting influence of   the ideal in friendship much  more do the state and nation  need everywhere the perpetual  example of the ideal citizen.  You know full well how clear- 



ly history reveals that bad gov-  ernments have oppressed the hu-  man race and that tyranny  has trodden under its iron heel  the rights and natural aspi-  rations of man ever since the  world began. You know too  that during the long torpor   of the middle ages priest-craft  and king-craft combined  successfully against freedom  of worship and freedom of  thought and drugged into  sleep both the human intellect  and the human conscience.  



You know too that only in the  centuries that lie close behind  us began the great strife against  absolutism and the divine  right of kings, and under its  mighty impetus the lofty era of  free intelligence, free worship,  and free government came  wheeling and struggling in.   An era in which science, in-  dustry and art combine with  invincible strength, to uphold  the sovereignty of the people.  And no words can tell the ex- 



ultation we ought to feel in the  fact that not only the free gov-  ernment that protects us but  freedom of thought, speech,  worship, research, feeling and  franchise are all the direct  offspring of this vast and irre-  pressible movement. But no  truth is more patent than   that an increase of privileges  and powers involve in like  measure an increase of responsi-  bilities and duties. Higher than  the distinction your diplomas will  confer upon you is that you gain from 



the name of an American citizen, a dis-  tinction which crowns you as equal  units, with the largest liberty of will  and thought and action compati-  ble with the good of the great sum-to-  tal of units to which you belong.  Shall not your ideals of American   citizenship hold in lucid perfection  all the qualities it demands and  all the duties it implies? And hav-  ing the perfect ideal can life's nobler  purposes be better answered than by  striving to realize it in your own   characters?   	History reveals without an  exceptional instance that the safety 



and permanence of political insti-  tutions rest on the shoulders of the  unselfish, the intelligent, the edu-  cated - those who are at once the  purest and the wisest of the citizens.  Experience has also revealed that  formidable dangers annually  menace the perpetuity of the nation  which have their birth in the dwarfed  and distorted ideals cherished by  ignorance. Out if defective, half-  formed ideals sprang slavery with  its inhuman and groveling tenden-  cies, sprang Mormonism with its 



gross superstitions and grosser practices, sprang state rights  that would devour the Union, sprang,  spawned by error and selfishness  that blatant and bloodthirsty  monster - Communism, sprang  but yesterday, so near as to smite  our very ears with its senseless din  the amazing crotchet  that in finance  as in no other scheme of production  under the sun, the fiat of Congress  could make something out of  nothing - a miracle which it is  doubtful if even the fiat of Je-   hoval could perform.   	And not less do all 



the minor political whims that daily  afflict the body politic have their ori-  gin in ideals whose ingredients are  the magnified visions of fancy, or  the blunders of ignorance and self-  ishness. Rash speculation, public  and private extravagance, over-  strained credit, crazy avarice that  seeks a shorter cut to wealth and  a currency that is forever fluctuating  all these and all the greater errors  and evils that still assail us, must  find their permanent cure in the  wider prevalence and greater pre-  dominance of an ideal that em- 



bodies, in harmonious union, politi-  cal wisdom, statesmanship, knowl-  edge, and unflinching integrity.   And the fundamental element in   this ideal is patriotism, Patriotism!  the same attributes of character that  constitute friendship, but enlarged  extended, opening out to gather in-  to the sympathetic heart a Country  instead of a friend. As the ideal   friendship is based upon the bed-  rock of an ideal self so the quali-  ties of an ideal citizen rise out of and  rest securely upon, the qualities of  an ideal friend. And the man 



whose icy heart and morose temper  chill all the genial warmth of fellow-  ship, can never rise to the nobler   and more exalted condition of  patriotism. Patriotism! Love of  Country! How the pages of histo-  ry glow with the reflection of its  golden images!  How many sub-  lime examples of those who have  sought their graves to save their  fatherland! Love of Country!  Without it the state would perish,  the framework of free govern-  ment would crumble like sand,  and society lapse backward 



into barbarism.   	Scarcely less vital to the  portrait of a model citizen is a   knowledge both wide and accurate  of the social and political laws  and the machinery of government.  It is in fact the scientific scruti-  ny of ourselves, and nothing stirs   the depth of enthusiasm like the  study of our own nature. Our intense  interest in man, in his origin, his  struggles, his growth, his triumphs,  pales all other interests as the sun-  light pales the stars. And all  sciences therefore yield the su- 



premacy to the science of human  living. To this final science all   other sciences pay their homage  and bring their offerings. Begin-  ning with the simple and univer-  sal laws of number, form and  motion and solving thereby the  problems of matter in its masses  and matter in its molecules,  science reaches in beautiful order  the first faint phenomena of life,  and then rising with growing  complexity, through its wonder-  ful evolutions reaches at last  and throws its gathered light up- 



on the stupendous problem how to  live. How to live physically, how  to live socially, how to live intellect-  ually, how to live spiritually, how  to live so that the harmonious com-  plexity shall yield us the widest  issues and the grandest outcome.  And all the sciences below what-  ever be the strength they gain or  the strides they make owe their  value to the contributions they  bring towards the solution of these  all-embracing questions.  	Now the ideal citizen  knowing well that men's lives can 



never rise above the high water mark  of their intelligence, gathers in with   precision and clearness, a knowl-  edge of all the underlying laws  of life which the sciences of human-  ity reveal, and especially and with  exhausting scrutiny those which  regulate social order and social   progress. All the more specific   questions that affect human wel-  fare, comfort, health, growth,  the laws of production, of ex-  change, of money its instrument,  of the helps that lift men up out  of the slough of drudgery, the  



principles of legislation, justice, pun-  ishment, administration, religion, together  with the comparative strength of   those better impulses, by which  humanity struggles upward  and the world gets on. All these  will the ideal citizen probe to the  bottom and armed in such pan-  oply will bear aloft the standard  of political truth; prepared with-  out passion or prejudice, fear  or favor, to mount the stump, or  guide the caucus, or deposit the  vote. And this ideal becoming  the actual in your characters 



and in thousands such as you through-  out the land, would save it from   hopeless panics, blind fanaticism  sectional fury, and intestine strife  forevermore.  	Visions of the unlim-  ited scope and possible grand-  eur of human life crowd upon  me as I attempt the portrayal of  the ideal worker. The fundamen-  tal realities are as we have seen   not things but thoughts, and  everywhere throughout the vast  domain of nature spirit is the 



pre-existent and productive agent  forever clothing its conceptions in   material forms. Creation beyond   doubt was primarily the effort  which changed the images of   mind into the magnitudes of  matter, and the universe is the  product of an infinite worker.  And man is the feeble but con-  stant imitator of the eternal  prototype from which he sprang.  Made in the image of the creator  we continue, in miniature, the  act of creation, and shall con- 



tinue it till the end of time. For  the best life is a perpetual striv-  ing whereby ideals struggle into  the forms of use or blossom in-  to beauty. Above the sensual   and the carnal the very essence  of life is effort. Gathering their  elements from the world with-  out and from the depths of  the soul within and molding  therefrom ideals of comfort,  plenty, wealth, convenience,  culture, power, the innumer- 



able army of workers moves on  to turn these ideals into tangible  shapes and, in its resistless  march, it has subdued the  forces of matter that are hostile  to man and transformed  into ministering angels the  subtle demons that would de-  story him. Not like the steel clad  columns of old whose advance  spread death and desolation,  this vast array of invincible work-  ers advances to create and not  destroy, and at its approach all   



the means of comfort, and all the  forms of beauty and the forces  of life spring into vigor and  multiply without limit. Its  mighty progress has extended the  new empire of industry to the  remotest boundaries of civili-  zation, an empire whose   beneficent sway has reduced,  to ready and untiring servants  to do its bidding, all the  powers whose mission was  once to ravage and destroy. 



Even mythology has sent its  wrangling deities to ply their  vocations as artizans on the   rejuvenated Earth.  	Jupiter Tonans has  descended from the clouds  that surround Olympus to  thunder along the track. Mer-  cury, once messenger of gods,  now carries on wings swifter  than the shafts of light, the  messages of men. In the  forges of the limping Vulcan 



whose ascending smoke sullies the air  of our great cities, ring a thousand  anvils with blows that fashion orna-  ments more beautiful than those  which adorned the Olympian  temples, or safegaurds  more im-  penetrable than the armor of  Achilles, or engines faster and  more furious than the brazen   fire-breathing bulls wrought  for the monarch of Colchis.  All the misty and mythic gods   of classic times have indeed 



deserted their celestial abodes to serve  below in the army of workers and  Ceres, goddess of the harvest, and   Pomona, goddess of fruits, hold   their abandoned thrones and  rule the smiling heavens alone.  Work, the heaven sent agent  that redeems the Earth from   barrenness, finds and gathers  its treasures, quickens and   multiplies its fruits, emanci-  pates man from the slavery  of want and gives birth 



and growth and fullness within  his soul to the ideals of a grand-  er destiny. Invention, art,  science and commerce are  only its methods, and innu-  merable harvests that supplant  the wilderness, a thousand   cities that dot the shore, and  ten thousand prows that cleave  the wave, are its offspring.  	But the goodliest  gem that flashes in the coronal  of work is its benignant ef- 



fect on the worker. All strenu-  ous and manful endeavor is  the constant sire of double values.  This incessant strain after the   good that lies without awakens   and strengthens with unerring  certainty the power that lies  within. As surely as repeated  blows enlarge and harden  the muscle that directs them, so  surely does every faculty whether  mental or moral, grow to its  outermost limits of strength  and acuteness under the dis- 



cipline of repeated exertions. In  habit, earnestness, in working   power, in our whole characters  we are simply the creatures of   innumerable reactions which   spring from effort, put forth  immediately by ourselves  or remotely by the ancestors  that stand in long per-  spective behind us. Of the  two unvarying effects that follow  intellectual or spiritual endeav-  or that is of surpassing mo- 



ment though perpetually for-  gotten which molds the work-  er into forms that endure  forever. For the product of  every human enterprise  when embodied in matter  shall perish and mingle,  like the buried cities, with  its kindred dust, but when   embodied in the soul shall  take on immortality and  become eternal. Only that  repeated and persistent 



strain of energy carried daily  to the verge of weariness culmi-  nates at last in the loftier qual-  ities and the grander pro-  portions of manhood. Sur-  roundings, environment, may  make a trilobite or a mush-  room, they cannot make a   man. He is the product  of the inner fires whose  fierceness, self-sustained,  frees finally the reason   from the dross of passion 



and refines it into purity and  clearness.  Gorge the passive  omniverous intellect with knowl-  edge till the crack of doom  and you produce unseemly  distension but not vigor. Only  brutes feed and grow and fat-  ten with natural inertness.  But the higher human ener-  gies are from the natal to  the burial hour built up by  their own incessant strivings.  Intellectually and spirit- 



ually we are all self-made if  made at all. Libraries and  faculties and colleges and  schools are only subordinate  helps. It is the moral forti-  tude which never flinches, the  mental grip which never re-  laxes that gain at last the  treasure of a true education  and no other education is  worthy the name or worth  the having. Out of self-sac-  rifice, self-denial, unyield- 



ing resistance, the tug of strife  and the smoke of battle, rise  full armed the leaders of arm-  ies and the leaders of men.  Work, effective, unceasing, is  the sole path to conquest  whether of nature or of the im-  pediments that clog our own  advance. Genius, talent, cul-  ture, expertness, are only its  synonyms or rather the dif-  ferent forms of working ca-  pacity. All allurements to 



repose, pastime, or supineness,  inherited wealth, luxurious  living gained by another's toil,  or a mistaken tenderness of  nurture that leads its lisping  object to shudder at the  rough winds of heaven or to  touch its trifling task gin-  gerly with gloved fingers, are  obstructions to discipline which   few alas can ever overcome.  Away with the protracted pet-  ting and unreasoning indul- 



gence that condemns the child  to a life of perpetual babyhood.  The one firm standing place  from which we leap into the   widest life is unshaken confi-  dence in our own powers when  trained to the highest efficiency  by unyielding exertion. Work,  self-strengthening work, feeding  and clothing the teeming  millions, forever opening,  by the aid of science, new  avenues to thrift, turning the 



hidden strata into fuel, the soil  into food, the formless rock and  clay into structures that adorn  the landscape. Work, at its  magic touch sterility is fruit-  ful, ugliness turns into beauty,  poverty into plenty, disease  into health, death into life,  and all the unsightly objects  that deform the Earth or  defile the brain put on   the perfect symmetries 



of art. Work, guided at  once by learning and  skill, crowned by treasures  that are untold, and a   love that is infinite, this   my pupils, is your grand-  est birth-right. And the  fervent and life long desire  to realize the ideals of a   disciplined self, a tender  lover of kindred, a de- 



voted friend, an enlighten-  ened patriot, philanthro-  pist and Christian, shall  be your motive and  your inspiration. For to  strive unceasingly for a   pure and lofty character,  to labor joyfully for those  we love, and to gather   into the ever widening  circle of affection that



prompts our efforts fam-  ily, friends, country, hu-  manity, God, and to  strive in such nice harmony  with the laws of health that  the decades shall come and  go and find you still working,  working to the furthest verge of  human life where lies the fi-  nal reward - this is in truth  the ideal worker.  	Young ladies



and gentlemen, Class of  Seventy-eight, last but not  least of seven classes sent forth  from this seat of industrial  learning to verify the values  of its work and the wisdom  of its founders, let your fu-  ture lives, strengthened by  the practice of manly vir-  tues, beautified by the Christ-  ian graces, justify the sym-  pathy you have awakened 



the confidence you have in-  spired, the hopes you have   raised. Let the loftier ideals  direct your purposes and in-  cite your efforts. Master the  vocation you follow, and  master yourselves as well.  Be patient in suffering,  quick in sympathy, slow  in passion, strong in prin-  ciple, earnest in labor. Ex-  emplify the power of self- 



sacrifice, practice the amenities,  pray by conduct, preach by  example, and in all the endless  permutations of experience be  true to yourselves, true to the  obligations of friendship, pa-  triotism, philanthropy, God,  and thus at last shall you  blend into one all the ideals  of true living and reduce  to an actual fact grand  in its passage and trium-  phant in its ending the ideal  of a genuine manhood.