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Show A Hf ek-Iag &zrmonBAVE you time, gentle student, as you delightedly turn through the pages of this book, to listen to a week-day preacher who believes that he has a message for you ? I know that you are a "wedding guest" and that you long to turn to those pages where you may taste the pungent flavor of a well-aimed joke at that natural but esteemed enemy of yours who would be a friend-the meek professor. I realize that you have turned with some regret from your admiration of the faces of those who have brought honor to our University in the forum and on the gridiron; that the contemplation of your own lineaments looming large as a member of the Beta Something is infinitely more satisfying than any sermon that I can preach to you. But there will be this merit: truisms are usually brief, and this will be no exception to the rule.I believe in students-in their earnestness, in their devotion to their ideals, in their desire to do the right thing-to be an honor to themselves and to their University. I have been happy as a teacher and much of my happiness has come from my daily contact with you, gentle student. Your cheery "Good morning" and your quick glance of comprehension of a difficult point have helped me more than you know. But there are some big and vital truths which your young eyes have not discerned. So, to my self-imposed task-to my sermon.Has it ever occurred to you that the facts which you are laboring so earnestly to acquire, that the dates, and names, and formulae which you are so diligently garnering against that stern time of reckoning-examination day-are mere educational outposts, but outposts that must be taken before you can hoist the conqueror's flag over the intellectual citadel-the power of logical, coherent, sustained thought? But such is the bare truth. Facts are but means to an end. The labor that you have spent in collecting, sifting,161 |